The Path The US Is On Is Unsustainable, Which Will INEVITABLY Lead To Social Disorder

Anyone paying even a mediocre amount of attention to what’s going in the United States is aware that the country is on a path that is unsustainable.  That unsustainability will inevitably lead to social disorder that could have the US looking a lot like Venezuela.

Joe Joseph from The Daily Sheeple says that this social disorder will be the result of widening wealth gaps because the status quo will continue. There will be no changes in the input or feedback loops of society.

Since the corportate mainstream media is basically a haven for well-educated hoity-toity individuals…I’ll give you just a example…Anderson Cooper. A lot of people don’t know that he’s the son of Gloria Vanderbilt. Everybody knows the Vanderbilt money, right? They [the mainstream media] are basically these well-educated people with some family wealth, upper-middle class social circles, and the media coverage of the slow drip of financial anxiety is sparse. Why? They’re making money. They don’t care. They’re not gonna ‘upset the apple cart.’ And why should they?

It’s sort of amazing that the US hasn’t already exploded in class warfare, says Joseph. “Because the fuse is lit.”

They’ve got these fixes like universal basic income that are embraced by the likes of Zuck at Facebook…They don’t offer a real stake in the nation’s productive capital. As a result, they are just band-aids on a sucking chest wound. That’s a great analogy by Charles Hugh Smith. 

The solution, for most, is to give the power to the state to fix it.  But they can’t, and they won’t.

Our problems are now, of course, exhasperated by markets and centralized power. They aren’t fixed by the state. They can’t be because the state’s owned by the markets. [And the state is literally centralized power]

I’ve always said that the root cause of the problem is money. I mean, we can go back and we can look at [how to change it]…let’s not forget that in everything we do, people will always find a ‘workaround’. So, somehow, someway, you gotta take that workaround away. You can impose legislation, you can try prohibition, it doesn’t matter what it is, money, my friends, is the root of all this evil.

And Joseph is not wrong. When looking at a scandal or a problem, if everyday Americans simply asked themselves “who will profit from this?” the answers would appear. This goes for everything, from the flu epidemic (the vaccine manufacturers are profiting) to the Uranium One deal (Hillary Clinton profited.)  It isn’t that hard to discern the fact that the state is profiting.  Look at how much politicians are worth compared to yourself, and then ask yourself, “have I profited from electing any politician?”  That answer is a resounding ‘no.’

The economy can turn on a dime and we have set ourselves up for epic failure. This isn’t a ‘kick the can down the road’ scenario anymore. This is a serious…this problem has to be fixed and fixed fast. Because if it doesn’t, I fear what’s happening in Venezuela could very easily happen in America.

Be prepared but don’t live in fear.

Afghanistan: Why Won’t the Taliban Just Go Away?

Billions have been spent on the conflict in Afghanistan. First the object was to liberate the country from the Soviets, at a time no one really thought that would happen as touch upon in Charlie Wilson’s War. But at least would at least make them bleed as the Americans and French had in Vietnam.

Then it was to remove the Taliban, the logical consequence of the sane groups who had been funded and armed before. Now it is to support the Afghan government to construct a virtual reality – pretending there is a functioning administration in a country the government can only partially control, whilst still depending on periodic US airstrikes to keep the Taliban at bay.

Like Al-Qaeda, whose presence in Afghanistan was the original ostensible reason for the US presence there, the Taliban claims responsibility for any act of terrorism to make itself look all-powerful. However it is, as it claims, the most probable suspect in the recent Kabul hotel bombing, which has claimed over 100 lives. 

Hotels attract international visitors, even in Afghanistan, and the presence of foreigners is the issue the Taliban has with the Afghan government. The bombing is exactly the sort of symbolic gesture which would satisfy the Taliban’s own supporters and embarrass the Afghan government, which should be guaranteeing the guests’ safety. It also demonstrates to a worldwide audience that the Taliban is still news: and they of all people should know the value of such publicity.

It is unlikely that many ordinary Afghans want the Taliban back in power. But many things the organisation represents, in default of anyone else representing them, do resonate with Afghans. The US probably thought, as the Soviets did in the 1970s, that importing their own vision would give people something new and better to believe in. But they ignored one vital lesson from history: that Afghanistan has never been permanently conquered by any other country, including the great powers who have flocked to it to secure trade routes.

Go into Afghanistan and you take on the whole identity of every Afghan, past and present. Successive military personnel and prospective conquerors have found that this is not a turn of phrase but a concrete reality. As long as the Taliban still represents that identity, however unpalatable many of its actions and teachings are, it cannot be defeated and Afghanistan cannot prosper. But can any of the powers which want to help the country move on make that happen?

Don’t play in our backyard

We were all brought up on stories coming out of Afghanistan. Few noticed or cared when it turned Communist in 1973, when the mighty Soviet Empire was thought to be too tightly controlled to ever disappear. Then the Soviets themselves intervened and removed the local Communists, an action few in the West, and increasingly fewer in the Soviet Union, could explain.

This coup was described at the time as the “will of the people”, as they usually are. But like the rise of the Taliban, it was popular will by default. The 1973 coup which overthrew the monarchy had not achieved many of its aims, and people had begun feeling let down and distrustful of the spate of murders and arrests. So when the Communists took action, where else could the public turn for a saviour? In this sense, the Communist takeover was indeed the “will of the people”

Afghan Communism was essentially secularist. It declared women’s rights and introduced severe repression designed to reduce the influence of Islam. Most Afghans objected to these things because they were foreign, and foreigners can’t tell Afghans what to do and get away with it.

The greatest ever British military defeat was in Afghanistan, and the Duke of Wellington was Commander-in-Chief of the British Army at the time. In spite of three wars, the British had been driven out each time because Afghans make their own rules, they do not respect those imposed from outside.

When various armed groups rose in revolt in 1979 the Afghan government respected the “will of the people” by remaining in power but murdering the president, so the one-party regime could distance itself from Moscow. For the West, this did not signify a political change in the country. But the Soviets objected to this win-win situation and intervened to put a Soviet loyalist in power. Thus began nearly forty years of continuous war, which anyone, at least in policy positions, who knew the history of the place could have seen coming.

Afghans always claim that their ultimate victory over the Soviet Union, with considerable Western material help, was the factor which led to the downfall of the entire Soviet empire. Unfortunately the West then made the same mistake the Soviets had—forgetting the end game and what would come next.

The US stated it would organise free elections to choose the next government but then allowed the particular mujahedeen faction which controlled the part of Kabul where the government buildings are, and few other places, to declare itself the Afghan government. This government was then recognised around the world, without the people being consulted, which was seen as another foreign takeover.

None of the other many groups the West had happily armed had a better claim to run the country, but all disagreed with Burhan Rabbani’s group claiming to be the whole government. As the fighting continued, and alliances between different groups were made and broken weekly, the people lost faith in any of the combatants, who continued their campaigns without popular support, often targeting whole civilian populations due to political changes those populations had not made or even known about.

This is why the Taliban was able to advance on Kabul without fighting a major battle. Rather than preaching radical Islam and further terrorism, it upheld the system of Pashtunwali – the traditional code of values of the Pashtun community, which had been historically dominant. Even if people aren’t Pashtuns, they understand and respect this code. In effect it was Margaret Thatcher’s concept of “Victorian Values” – a morally superior system from a better age which would restore the country to its former glory.

Afghans soon realised that the Taliban is an amoral and corrupt gang of thugs whose radical interpretation of Islam is that of a psychopath justifying his behaviour by quoting scripture. But the alternative is foreigners, or those perceived as taking orders from the foreigners who put them there and have constructed the contemporary virtual state. The Taliban itself is used by the US for its own purposes, as all terrorist groups ultimately are, being part of the drug supply chain which funds ISIS as well as the Taliban itself. But no one else has come along to give Afghans another set of values they can support, shorn of the unacceptable extremes which characterise the Taliban in the West.

The further we get from the days of Taliban rule, the more persuasive its support for Afghan independence and traditional values will seem. These things still are, and always will be, the “will of the people”. The West will not be able to counter them by offering blue jeans and milkshakes in return for joining the Afghan army. It will have to make the preservation and promotion of Afghan values the centrepiece of its own policy – but as we have seen in many other countries, it cannot do that simply because it is the West.

I’ve always spelt it that way and always will

Every great empire thinks that its own way of doing things is better than anyone else’s, simply because it rules so many other people. If it wants to conquer more people, it does the same things it always does because those ways are demonstrably superior, simply because it has a larger territory.

When empires start to decline, as Russians remember, their leaders start to question those ways of doing things at look at other models. But this is an internal process: in foreign policy the old ways are promoted with ever greater vigour, to justify the country in the eyes of the world. Belgians always objected to what their King Leopold was doing in the Belgian Congo, which was his own private business, and took it into state hands to stop those abuses, but many of those crimes against humanity continued because Belgium couldn’t admit it was wrong and remain in charge.

The US empire is now in decline due to its economic weakening and military overstretching. Americans themselves are questioning the long-held belief that The American Way is the one every other country would freely choose to follow, given the chance. So how does the US defend itself? By being even more insistent that the US model must be introduced into every nation.

It is this, rather than what Western troops have done, which has led to the Taliban remaining a force in Afghanistan. Afghans respect democracy, but not one they are told to have by a foreign power, structured the way a foreign power wants it. Traditionally they have had different systems of their own, such as the institution of the Loya Jirga, roughly equivalent to the House of Lords. Similarly, though a Pashtun will not be a tenant of another Pashtun they have no problem being a tenant of a representative of one of the hundreds of other ethnic groups in the country, and this spills over into political relations, making a flat universal franchise a nonsense.

Similarly, Afghans have sophisticated trading relationships with each other, and the rest of the world, based on Islamic monetary principles which have been around for centuries longer than the ideas of Adam Smith and David Ricardo which form the basis of modern free trade. Most also pay voluntary taxes under the Zakat system, which has an effect on governmental use of taxation. Above all, if they see a moral case for taking a welfare action they just do it, without seeing the need to do things like register charities and record how the money is used. They will not be told what they can and cannot do by an aid programme, however well intentioned.

The way to defeat the Taliban is to institutionalise the traditional Afghan systems, which are understood even by those who do not like or practice them, in the same way the Orthodox Church and its teachings and practices are understood by non-Orthodox in Russia. If these are made the basis of government practice, and then protected by foreign troops for that reason, this will turn foreign occupiers with their infidel Western ways into friends.

But it will also mean that the US doesn’t have as much to offer as it thinks it has, and call its role in all other countries into question. The US is capable of riding this storm by adopting the same policy everywhere, and encouraging a more diverse global order based on partnership. But there are very few signs the US is thinking in this way – indeed, quite the opposite has been the policy for generations, whatever the complexion of the White House.

As has been pointed out, the countries the US has recently taken a shine to invading, such as Libya, Iraq and Syria, all made one decision prior to the US intervention – abandoning the dollar, and thus becoming more independent of US financial control. Similarly, the Western model, which is the US one coloured differently depending which country is preaching it, is still the only one its friends are allowed to accept. Viktor Yanukovych had his own plans for Ukraine, which needed both Western and Russian help to be realised. However he was told to choose, which meant his plans would have to fit the model of the chosen donor rather than being Ukraine’s, and we all know what happened there.

The West cannot become the guardians of all Afghans think is good, because the West has no respect for those things and cannot develop that respect. However bad the Taliban is in practice, it still defends those values in theory. The good deeds done by the West in Afghanistan only work for as long as people do not see, or care about, the strings attached. But every time the West makes any false step, even in faraway countries, Afghans see the strings and not the good deeds, and they find themselves agreeing with the Taliban, however reluctantly.

Sold out by yourselves

The West’s failure to respect Afghans presents opportunities to both Russia and China. Both of these countries are positioned, either directly or via proxy Muslim states, to do both the things the US won’t do – support a government and system based on Afghan traditions, and remove the radical element from the Taliban whilst leaving its positive values in place. Russia is unlikely to try, given its previous history in Afghanistan. But China will have no qualms becoming the new protector of Afghanistan, provided the price is right.

Evil Red China is as Red as ever. But the West can’t do without its funds, so suddenly this doesn’t matter. If China wants something which is in Afghanistan, like roads, minerals or licorice, the Afghan national plant which isn’t used to make confectionery there, it will pay for it provided it sees the benefit. As it has found, it will not need to tell the government what to do to obtain the influence it needs to achieve its goals, and the West’s kowtowing to it has set the template for how other countries respond to Chinese economic co-operation proposals, which are made by the state-owned companies US economics is determined to destroy as a matter of faith.

The Chinese would approach Afghanistan the way the West can’t – by supporting the locals and their culture from behind the scenes to pursue their own interests. But this also creates a problem for the West. Such is its desire to impose its own ways of thinking that everything good which comes out of Afghanistan must be a Western achievement. The West will be treading a dangerous path if it helps Afghanistan get back on its feet and then flogs off vast array of the new infrastructure to the Chinese, making Beijing the senior partner in any such geopolitical arrangement.

The Taliban found out the hard way that it cannot murder its way into the hearts of the Afghan people. But some of its values are still, unfortunately, the best available from an Afghan viewpoint. Treating it as an irredeemable enemy, which has bombed its way to the negotiating table, won’t solve that. Only a change of political approach and winds would remove the Taliban from the scene, but if the West makes that change, Afghanistan might ultimately be responsible for the death of another Great Empire.

Seth Ferris, investigative journalist and political scientist, expert on Middle Eastern affairs, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Robots Will Soon Be Punishing Humans: Ford Files Patent For Robotic Police Cars

By Nicholas West

In October of last year, I reported on the network of autonomous police vehicles being deployed in Dubai that included hoverbikes and fleets of mini police surveillance vehicles that look like electric cars. The vehicles are part of a citywide initiative of embedding artificial intelligence to patrol with biometric and conventional surveillance tools. I commented at the time that these measures were fairly easy to dismiss by readers accustomed to a constitutional republic, since Dubai is ruled by an absolute monarchy under Sharia Law that has free rein to rapidly implement new forms of governance. Nevertheless, I warned that Dubai was playing host to the World Expo 2020 where they would be featured as a model for any large city of the future.

Apparently, stalwart all-American company – Ford – is prepared to help usher in the technocratic police state to the (diminishing) land of the free.

Business Insider is reporting on a partnership that Ford has established with the U.S. government that granted the company a patent for autonomous police vehicles.  Of course the issuance of a patent does not necessarily mean that it’s guaranteed to become reality, but given the stature of the company and Americans’ increasing penchant for giving up liberty for the promise of security, it should not be dismissed.

According to designs seen by Business Insider, the future cars could independently find hiding places, detect vehicles breaking the law, and chase down drivers.

The designers envision car-to-car technology which would let the patrol vehicle check whether a car was being driven manually or automatically, scan the driver’s licence, and, if need be, issue a ticket remotely.

The goal of the autonomous police car, Ford says, is not to replace human police officers, but to help them with “routine police tasks.”

The company said in its patent, which was first filed in July 2016: “Routine police tasks, such as issuing tickets for speeding or failure to stop at a stop sign, can be automated so that human police officers can perform tasks that cannot be automated.”

The graphics below show how they would work.

The car (labelled 110) would be equipped with sensors (115), such as cameras and a laser system, that would allow it to catch traffic offenders.

If the concept is ever finalized for production, we can expect a likely arrival time between 2021 and 2025 based on the company’s development goals for civilian autonomous vehicles.

It’s worth noting that the United States is increasingly embroiled in a debate over the spread of drones being used by police – in some cases even for routine police work. Meanwhile, standard policing also remains under fire for its misuse of license plate reader technology to track, trace, and database the completely innocent. With the arrival of even more automation, and a commitment to augment “routine” police functions, it appears that civil liberties advocates would do well to prepare for yet another front in the war on privacy.

Nicholas West writes for Activist Post. Support us at Patreon. Follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Steemit, and BitChute. Ready for solutions? Subscribe to our premium newsletter Counter Markets.

Top Image: Ford’s concept hybrid police car – credit Ford Motor Company

How to stage a fake bioterror attack

How to stage a fake bioterror attack

by Jon Rappoport

“Imagine this. A big-time doctor from the US Biological Warfare Group waddles into a meeting room, where a collection of Army, CIA, NSA, and DHS representatives sit quietly in their chairs. He says: ‘So I understand you boys want to put on a little domestic bioterror show, to keep the natives from becoming too restless. Well, the first thing you need to know is, germs don’t obey orders. Forget all that sci-fi nonsense. Germs work and they don’t work. It’s a crapshoot. You could have a big fat dud on your hands. I can tell you how to make it work, though, if you give up on your fancy high-tech wet dreams…” (The Underground, Jon Rappoport)

There are future scenarios which, with enough exposure before they’re staged, can be stopped—or at least analyzed correctly when they occur.

A calculated bioterror event is one of those.

The primary fact is: no matter what kind of germ you’re talking about or where it came from, releasing it intentionally does not guarantee predictable results. Far from it.

For instance, people whose immune systems operate at different levels of strength are going to react differently.

The perpetrators may find that less than 2% of people exposed get sick or die.

But there is another strategy that should be understood:

The use of a germ as a cover story for a chemical.

In other words, there is no germ attack. It’s called a germ attack, but that’s a lie. The perps bring in researchers to the affected area, who go on to claim they have isolated a germ that is the cause of death and illness. It’s a sham. What really happened was:

The spread of a toxic chemical that can’t be detected, unless you’re looking for it.

The chemical has severe, deadly, and predictable effects for a week or two. Then it disperses and loses potency and the “epidemic” is done.

In some town, a fairly isolated community, the word goes out that people are suddenly falling ill and dying. The CDC and the Army are called in to cordon off the area and quarantine all citizens. A peremptory announcement is made, early on, that this is a biowar attack.

Major media are allowed outside the periphery. Network news anchors set up on-location and do their wall to wall broadcasts “from the scene.”

The entire nation, the entire world, is riveted on the event, 24/7.

People inside the cordon fall ill and die. Reports emerge from the town:

The networks state that “heroic doctors are taking samples of blood and the blood is being analyzed to find the germ that is causing the epidemic.” The DOD confirms over and over that this is, indeed, a biowar attack.

Human interest stories pile up. This family lost three members, that family lost everybody. Tragedy and horror produce the desired empathic response from “the world community.”

It’s a soap opera, except real people are dying.

The medical cartel promotes fear of the germ.

All controlling entities obtain their piece of the terrorist pie.

Finally, the doctors announce they have isolated the germ causing death in the small town, and researchers are rushing to develop a vaccine (which they produce in record time).

Everyone everywhere must be vaccinated, now. No choice. Do it or be quarantined or jailed.

In this declared martial law situation, the doctors are the heroes. The doctors and the Army. And the government, and even the media.

Then, after a few weeks, when the potency of the secret chemical has dispersed, it’s over.

When you think about it, this scenario is a rough approximation of what happens every day, all over the world, in doctor’s offices. The doctors are prescribing chemicals (drugs) whose effects are far more dangerous than germs that may (or may not) be causing patients to be ill.

In other words, a chem-war attack is being leveled at people all over the world all the time.

See Dr. Barbara Starfield (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health), July 26, 2000, Journal of the American Medical Association, “Is US health really the best in the world?” 106,000 people in America are killed every year by FDA-approved medical drugs. That’s over a million people per decade.

In the wake of a staged “biowar” terror attack, new laws are enacted. The State clamps down harder on basic freedoms. The right to travel is curtailed. Criticizing the authorities is viewed as highly illegal. Freedom of assembly is limited.

“Citizens must cooperate. We’re all in this together.”

A new federal law mandating the CDC schedule of vaccines for every child and adult—no exceptions permitted—is rushed through the Congress and signed by the President.

It’s all based on a lie…in the same way that the disease theory of the medical cartel is based on a lie: the strength of an individual’s immune system is the basic determinant of health or illness, not germs considered in a vacuum.

There are people who are determined to inflate the dangers of germs. They trumpet every “new” germ as the end of humankind on the planet. They especially sound the alarm when researchers claim a germ may have mutated or jumped from animals to humans.

“This is it! We’re done for!”

However, if you check into actual confirmed cases of death from recent so-called epidemics, such as West Nile, SARS, bird flu, Swine Flu, and Ebola, the numbers of deaths are incredibly low.

If political criminals, behind the scenes, wanted to stage a confined “biowar” event, they would choose a chemical, not a germ, and they would leverage such an event to curtail freedom.

Understand: researchers behind sealed doors in labs can claim, with unassailable ease, that they’ve found a germ that causes an outbreak. Almost no one challenges such an assertion.

This was the case, for example, with the vaunted SARS epidemic (a dud), in 2003, when 10 World Health Organization (WHO) labs, walled off from view, in communication with each other via closed circuit, announced they’d isolated a coronavirus as the culprit.

Later, in Canada, a WHO microbiologist, Frank Plummer, wandered off the reservation and told reporters he was puzzled by the fact that fewer and fewer SARS patients “had the coronavirus.” This was tantamount to confessing that the whole research effort had been a failure and a sham—but after a day or so of coverage, the press fell silent.

SARS was a nonsensical farce. Diagnosed patients had ordinary seasonal flu or a collection of familiar symptoms that could result from many different causes.

But the propaganda effort was a stunning success. Populations were frightened. The need for vaccines, in the public mind, was exacerbated.

Several years ago, I spoke with a biologist about the fake bioterror scenario I’ve sketched out above. His comment was: “Do you think any mainstream scientist would dare go into that cordoned-off town and actually check the area for a highly toxic chemical? He’d be blackballed, exiled, and discredited in a minute. The authorities would call him crazy. And that’s if he were lucky.”

Such is “science,” these days. A researcher can discover anything he wants to, if it’s approved. Otherwise, the door is closed.

After 30 years of covering and reporting on deep science fraud, I can tell you that most scientists know, without instructions from above, the dimensions of their “permitted territory.” They can sniff out career danger from a mile away.

GMOs? Roundup? Other toxic pesticides? Climate change? Vaccines? Medical drugs? Diagnostic medical tests? Actual environmental pollution? Mercury? Chemicals in food? Radiation? Nuclear power plants? Fracking? Fluorides? On these and a whole host of other issues, government is centrally involved as a ruling force. And there are armies of compliant scientists ready and willing to carry out preferred government (and corporate) dictates. These scientists already know the answers before the questions are even asked.

Meanwhile, propaganda rivers flow, extolling the glories of science.

It’s a dream situation, for the terminally corrupt.

A huge number of scientists, who don’t actually participate in research fraud, stand back and watch it happen and say nothing. They see the handwriting on the wall in very large letters.

In 1988, while writing my first book, AIDS INC., I interviewed a highly respected virologist at a US university. I mentioned that several molecular biologists were challenging the HIV-causation hypothesis of AIDS. He told me that he and a number of his colleagues were aware that “a serious problem” existed concerning evidence for the hypothesis, but they were all going to “let this one go.” It was too political, he said.

Yes, well, an enormous amount of science turns out to be political.

Keeping one’s head down and letting things go by may not be part of a PhD curriculum, but soon after school is out, researchers enter a different kind of training.

A main theme then pops up: do you want a career, or do you want to live in the middle of nowhere, in exile?

As it so happens, building a broad scientific consensus resting on sand is a straightforward job. It takes time and money, but the work requires no brilliance.

You just flash signs at scientists. The signs say: money; job security; status; advancement; promotion; grants; prestige; reputation; pension; exposure; censure; discrediting; exile; isolation; death.

They get the idea right away.

They would get the idea when a fake bio-attack (that was actually a chemical) occurred. Stay quiet, agree with the authorities.

“Sure, I knew it was a chemical, but I have house payments to make, and my kids are applying to expensive universities…”

Progressive: Joe Kennedy III, picked for Dem response to SOTU, voted to allow the DEA to arrest and prosecute medical cannabis patients, voted three times against improving veteran access to medical cannabis, and even voted against kids using non-psychoac

On Tuesday night, Congressman Joe Kennedy III of Massachusetts will deliver the official Democratic response to President Trump’s State of the Union address. Some observers see the young Kennedy, 37, as a rising political star. But he is starkly out of step with his party — and a majority of U.S. voters — on a key issue now emerging at the forefront of mainstream American politics: Marijuana.

Flaws in Gas Station Software Let Hackers Change Prices, Steal Fuel, Erase Evidence

Two security researchers discovered vulnerabilities in an automated gas management that allowed them to shut down fuel pumps, hijack credit card payments, and steal card numbers.

Now even YouTube serves ads with CPU-draining cryptocurrency miners

YouTube was recently caught displaying ads that covertly leach off visitors" CPUs and electricity to generate digital currency on behalf of anonymous attackers, it was widely reported.