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A Website of Alternative Thinkers & Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

NOT TO WORRY, SAYS JUDGE, CA FIRES CAUSED BY UNINSULATED WIRES

NBC carried this story which Mr. G.L. spotted and passed along, and yes, the conclusion of the judge is as bad as this blog's headlines: U.S. District Court Judge William Alsup in San Franfreakshow, Nuttyfornia, has ruled that the single overriding cause of all those fires in Cali...er...Nuttyfornia were caused by uninsulated power wires, which, we're also told, started fires when powerlines blew into each other during high wind storms, and caused shorts and electrical sparks to fall on dry vegetation:

Judge says uninsulated power conductors caused California fires

Ok... that may be one possible source, but I doubt it's the only one, for I find it extremely curious that the article itself begins with a picture of a burned-to-the-gound home, while in the background trees and vegetation can clearly be seen, some burned, but most not. Moreover, most regular readers here have seen those strange pictures from California, showing burned out homes and businesses, surrounded by unburned vegetation. A few weeks ago, I even blogged about the latest theory being discussed in the alternative research field: electrical meters. Some readers may recall that one woman, mystified by the pattern evident in the fires, took pictures of some fire-damaged, but not totaled, houses where very clear indications were shown that fires started in or around the electrical meters. Other pictures and videos showed buckling, melting bridges, next to bushes and shrubs that were clearly unburned.

So what's going on? I have to wonder if the judge who issued this ruling isn't blind. Or, failing blindness, if he was even permitted to see the photographic and video evidence of the strange anomalous patterns of fire damage in these past fires. (That, too, wouldn't surprise me.)

Seriously, though, what's the purpose of the finding? Needless to say, my Suspicion Meter is in the red zone on this one, and it requires a bit of explaining on the end of the High Octane Speculation twig to show why. The purpose of the ruling, it seems to me, is to sustain the narrative that there's nothing anomalous about these fires; there is no reason to entertain any of the other theories out there, from electrical meters, to exotic energy technologies in space, nor even my own theory that perhaps the power grid is being deliberately used as a broadcast grid to create targeted fires, perhaps in conjunction with the other two major theories. By making it all about "uninsulated power lines" and "high winds" in a formal court ruling, the window is opened to make PG&E (Pacific Gas and Electric) the fall guy. No need to look anywhere else.

And of course, if one makes it all about uninsulated electrical power lines, that opens the door to tons of lawsuits, and closes the door (a bit) on any process of discovery in any litigation that might reveal other mechanisms and technologies in play.

And then, of course, there's the insurance angle...

Bottom line? While I've certainly crawled to the end of the speculation twig again, I cannot help but think that this is about sustaining the narrative: "nothing to see here, move along..."

See you on the flip side...

 

 

PRIVATIZING (CORPORATIZING) WARFARE

Mr. G.P. spotted this important story from Russia's RT site, and passed it on. As you might have guessed from the title of today's blog, it has my high octane speculation motor running in overdrive, for earlier this week I blogged about Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s interview with Fox Network personality Tucker Carlson on the legal immunities afforded to the vaccine industry/Big Pharma, speculating on the possibility that some of his remarks during that interview might indicate that some sort of quiet "mafia war" might be taking place in the mafia mobocracy that is Globaloneyism.

There's another indicator that such might be taking place, and it's this:

‘We are coming’: Chilling Blackwater ad triggers fears of Trump seeking to privatize Mideast wars

In a nutshell, the article speculates that the recent resignation of General Mattis from the Trump administration might not be quite the harbinger of a policy change in Syria that many think it to be. The policy may indeed have changed, according to the article, but not necessarily in such a fashion that the USA is getting out of Syria, but rather, turning over operations to a corporate proxy and actor:

The resurrection within the military contractors’ market of notorious Blackwater, which, after numerous scandals and several rebrandings, is now known as Academi, has analysts looking deeper into US intent to withdraw from the wars in the Middle East. The advertisement in Recoil, made public after Defense Secretary Jim Mattis announced his resignation, prompted concerns that president Donald Trump might be seeking to privatize ongoing American engagements in Afghanistan and Syria, following the declared troops' withdrawal from the region.

The main supporter of the idea of privatizing the US fighting in the Middle East has been Erik Prince, the former head of Blackwater. The longtime Republican sold the company in 2010 but has maintained communications with Trump, reportedly trying to lobby his inner circle to replace the US military presence in the region with mercenaries. Mattis, who served in the Persian Gulf War, Afghanistan and Iraq, firmly rejected the idea.

“With Mattis now gone it is conceivable that Trump now may reevaluate” Prince's proposal, Michael Maloof, former Pentagon security analyst, told RT.

But whether or not Mr. Trump eventually green lights Mr. Prince's proposal to "privatize" (and thus, in my opinion, to piratize) middle eastern conflict, I suspect the real story here is that we're getting a first major-media public glimpse at a trend that is bound to increase, regardless of what Mr. Trump may or may not decide to do. Mr. Globaloney has been preaching about the need to turn over global governance to corporations and big banks for a long, long time. Think only of vowel-less Zbgnw Brznsk's books The Technotronic Era and The Global Chessboard or David Rockefailure's Memoirs where he openly boasts about advocating treasonous views. Think, also, of Mad Madam Merkel's recent pronouncements about giving up national sovereignty, and ignoring the clear and express wishes of national citizenries, all to inaugurate the New World Order. Or, conversely, think only of Russian President Putin's remarks against the globaloneyist dogmas.

Any way one slices it, corporations and banks, if they're truly going to "run" things, will have to have militaries in order to enforce their will. Thus far, they have hidden behind national militaries. But indeed, with corporate (defense contractor) control of advanced technologies and the increased reliance of governments on such corporations for their communications, record-keeping, security and so on, there's really no reason to prevent corporations from announcing their de facto sovereignty by recruiting their own security and mercenary forces.  (And besides, if my speculation about the Middle Eastern wars being as much about acquiring and holding ancient records and technologies and archeological sites be true, privatizing the whole enterprise puts yet another veil of security around the operation). And there's another reason perhaps pressuring the move to military corporatization: what if corporation X is unsatisfied with the result, say, of a recent government contract bid, or, indeed, if a government contract has been awarded without any competition at all, to corporation Y? Corporation X feels it has been slighted, that the scales are deliberately tipped against it. How will it enforce its interests against corporation Y?

In other words, and to put it country simple, we might be looking at a future when wars are fought, not just between countries, but between counties like Russia (clearly not interested in being a player in Mr. Globaloney's vision of a tyrannical corporate future), and corporations, or for that matter, between corporations themselves.

And corporations, unlike countries, are not signatories to things like the Geneva convention or treaties outlawing the use of certain types of weapons. Their corporate charters do not enshrine, nor are they required to enshrine, any statements of recognition of human rights such as are enshrined in the Bill of Rights. They do not subscribe to "rules of engagement."

There is one thing that might stand in the way of such a grizzly future, besides Russian hypersonic thermonuclear cruise missiles, but I'll let you figure that one out for yourself...

See you on the flip side...

WORLD WAR ONE: THE ELEVENTH HOUR OF THE ELEVENTH DAY OF THE ELEVENTH ...

Yesterday, Sunday Nov. 11, 2018, was the 100th anniversary of the end of the First World War, when the guns on the Western Front finally fell silent, and the German armies de-mobilized back into Germany, into a shattered economy, food shortages, unemployment, and as the Allied armies, exhausted, breathed a collective sigh of relief as they had narrowly dodged a bullet. I was tempted, yesterday, to write about World War One, and the armistice, but I thought better of it; best to allow some quiet reflection.

My paternal grandfather had fought in World War One, and my maternal grandfather avoided doing so, only because he had already fought with General Pershing against Pancho Villa in Mexico. But it's a lesson in how quickly time flies: just two generations separated me from the unbelievable carnage of that war. Kaiser Wilhelm, who fled into exile into Holland at the end of the war, died in June of 1941, only 16 years before I was born. Though very small and young, two of my older sisters were alive when he was still alive.

It had indeed gone down "right to the wire," for after the surrender of Russia earlier that year in March 1918 to the Central Powers - the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Ottoman Empire - Russia, which as it would do in the Second World War, suffered enormous casualties, was plunged into the Bolshevik revolution and the terror which always comes with any form of radical socialism, and into civil war. The Central powers demanded, and got, a huge chunk of European Russia to occupy, creating puppet states in the Baltic States, and (here it comes), the Ukraine. Worse, for the beleaguered Western Allies Britain and France, which had born the brunt of the fighting on the Western Front, four years of fighting had gained them... nothing. Nothing but massive casualties after failed offensive after failed offensive. Think of Paschendale, the Somme, the Nivelle Offensive of 1917 which nearly broke the French armies and created mass mutinies within the French military.

1918 would be the decisive year; everyone knew it. America had entered the war, and as everyone also knew, by the end of 1918 American forces would arrive in force, and sheer numbers would tip the war to the Allies. The Germans would have to strike first, and hard, and fast.

They did. Operation Michael, the first major German offensive of 1918, began on March 21, 1918, after a horrendous artillery barrage. General Erich Ludendorff, virtual military dictator of Germany at the time, had chosen the place for the offensive himself, at the junction of the French and British armies along the Somme river. The British armies would bear the brunt of the attack, which came very close, but ultimately failed, to splitting the armies apart. War colleges have fought and re-fought that offensive - What if Ludendorff or von Hutier had done this? What if General Gough or Field Marshal Haig had done that? and so on - we won't do so here. The war had started with tactics that were modifications of Napoleonic tactics. Four short years later it had ended with the armies of World War One resembling more the armies of World War Two, than the armies with which it began: machine guns, tanks, long range artillery, aircraft... and the first weapons of mass destruction: poison gas. British, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, Americans, French, Italians, Greeks, Serbs, Hungarians, Austrians, Germans, Turks, Arabs, and Russians had died in the millions.

In September of 1914, after the war had begun, the German Chancellor, Theobald von Bettmann-Hollweg circulated a memorandum of German war aims, which were to create a European "common market" in central Europe, dominated by the Reichsmark, with France and the Low Countries in a special "most favored nation" trading status. (Sound familiar?) Britain, which by some revisionist lights had engineered the war during the machinations of Edward VII, fought to eliminate a powerful rival, not across the ocean of the Atlantic, but much closer to home across the North Sea. Serbia wanted "greater Serbia" at Austria-Hungary's expense, and was rewarded by being occupied by the Central Powers until "Yugoslavia"(whatever that was) was created by the Versailles system, only to crack up decades later. Romania wanted Transylvania from Hungary, was invaded and occupied in short order, until it too gained it in the post-war settlement, only to lose it to Hungary briefly again during World War Two. It managed to regain Transylvania, but as a rump state of Stalin's Soviet Empire.

The war which had been fought to break German power, failed to do so. That would take another war. And the result of that war was the European Union, with Germany firmly in the driver's seat, dictating disastrous refugee policies to the rest of Europe (Italy, France, Austria, the Netherlands... the list goes on and on). After the Versailles Treaty was signed, Germany immediately began secret rearmament, and Clemenceau's France, determined to "surround" Germany, created the cordon sanitaire with a system of alliances with Czechoslovakia (another Versailles creation like Yugoslavia), Poland, Romania, and so on. In recent years, the idea has revived as the USA is rebasing eastward into Poland and Romania, and has been instrumental in the installation of another puppet government in the Ukraine hearkening back to the Ukrainian Hetmanate, the puppet state created by the treaty of Brest-Litovsk in March of 1918 that ended the First World War on the Eastern Front. The current President of France says there's no such thing as French culture, while invoking the memory of Marshal Petain, hero of Verdun, and collaborationist of Vichy. Turkey fought to retain its crumbling empire and hold over Muslim holy sites; the British to dismantle it. And as a direct consequence of these machinations, the rise of the abominable (out)house of Saud...

So what have we learned?

Sadly, it seems to me we've learned exactly nothing.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

AMAIRIKUHN EDGYKAYSHUN: THANK YOU, STANDARDIZED TESTS

Mr. C.S. found this one, and it's more bad news for Amairkuhn edgykayshun: the latest ACT test scores are in for 2018, and the results are... well, disastrous, disappointing, and entirely to be expected:

Thanks, Common Core: ACT Scores for Class of 2018 Worst in Decades

There were two things that occurred to me as I read this latest in a long litany of bad edgykayshunal nooz. Here's what sparked my first observation:

The creators of the ACT test announced on Wednesday that scores for the class of 2018 are the worst reported in decades. Math scores, in fact, are in freefall among ACT-tested U.S. high school graduates, falling to their lowest mark in 14 years, according to The Condition of College and Career Readiness 2018, the ACT’s annual report.

The report includes ACT test results from all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

"The percentage of ACT-tested graduates who met or surpassed the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in math—suggesting they are ready to succeed in a first-year college algebra class—fell to its lowest level since 2004," the report declared, with only 40 percent of 2018 graduates meeting the benchmark, "down from a high of 46% in 2012." (Emphasis added)

"Wait a minute," I thought. Algebra?!?  In college? That one stunned me, because when I had algebra, I had it in the 8th grade, geometry in the 9th, algebra II and linear algebra in the 10th grade, and so on. And at the time, that program was more or less required of everyone. And that requirement was more or less common in the region of the country I came from. Now, of course, it is always erroneous to extrapolate general patterns from a "sample of one," especially when that sample is oneself, but I cannot help but do so, for if this is indicative of a general trend, it now means that what used to be done in junior high school, or middle school, is now pushed back into college, and our students are still not prepared for it. In short, not only has there been "grade inflation," but college is no longer genuinely college.

So what, then, are they doing in all that time leading up to college? Well, to get to that we have to take a short trip around Harvey's Barn.

The rest of the article is the usual lament about Common Core, the increasing "one size fits all" federalization of edgykayshun, and so on. We've all heard it before, so there's no need to rehearse it here. If you're interested in the ins and outs of federalization, including the link between standardized testing and the surveillance state, MK-Ultra mind control projects, and so on, see my book with co-author Gary Lawrence Rotten to the (Common) Core.

What were they doing? The answer is hinted at in the following three paragraphs:

"The percentage of ACT-tested graduates who met or surpassed the ACT College Readiness Benchmark in math—suggesting they are ready to succeed in a first-year college algebra class—fell to its lowest level since 2004," the report declared, with only 40 percent of 2018 graduates meeting the benchmark, "down from a high of 46% in 2012."

The average score on the ACT math test dropped to its lowest level in 20 years — 20.5 on a scale of 1 to 36. American students scored 21.1 in 2012 and 20.7 last year.

...

"Readiness in English has also been trending down over the past several years, dropping from 64% in 2015 to 60% this year, the lowest level since the benchmarks were introduced," according to the report." Readiness levels in reading (46%) and science (36%) were both down one percentage point from last year but are showing no long-term trends either upward or downward. Science remains the subject area in which students are least likely to be prepared for college coursework." (Emphasis added)

It's that "showing no long-term trends either upward or downward" that caught my attention, when considered in the context of the overall trend downward. One might indeed argue that there is no trend since the Common Core standards are relatively new.

But standardized tests are not new, and since their successful mass introduction after World War Two, the overall trend is downward. One need only look at the disjointed, fourth grade level thinking (if that), and the illegible scrawls (which might as well be Mandarin ideograms) in a modern Amairikuhn high school term paper - the inability to think, analyze, synthesize, and then write in an adult, coherent and reasoning way - and one sees the trend immediately. I know, I used to teach at the college level (and that was in the 1990s!), and it was obvious and evident. So the answer to the question "what were they doing all that time?" seems perfectly clear and self-evident to anyone with a modicum of common sense: teachers were forced to teach to the tests which, with but few exceptions, required no thought, analysis, synthesis, and writing and arguing a case. Teachers were being separated from their own students, and the disciplines they were expected to teach.

John Taylor Gatto recently died, but it's worth recalling what he said, and why after a lifetime of trying to teach in this system, he finally threw up his hands, and quit: the system is not fixable. No amount of money, of tinkering, or of "education" or "certification" courses will fix it. No amount of federal involvement will fix it. More administrators and standardized tests will fix it. It is irretrievably broken. As Mr. Lawrence and I pointed out in our book, there's a long list of people in western cultural history who never attended a modern Amairkuhn school, nor ever sat for a "standardized test"; they're familiar names: William Shakespeare, Virginia Wolfe, Jane Austin, Immanuel Kant, Thomas Jefferson, Albert Einstein, and so on.

This abominable system has, however, had one success: it has dumbed down most of the population.

Just like it was designed to do.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

 

US GOOBERNMENT LOSES VACCINE LAWSUIT

Robert Kennedy Jr., who helped win the recent lawsuit against Mon(ster)santo, has also won another landmark lawsuit, and this one is good news for those of you, who like me, have some major concerns about that industry and the safety of their products. This article was shared by Mr. V.T., and I'm passing it along because we'll soon be bombarded with the usual seasonal  "get your flu shot" campaigns. And if you're one of those who are perhaps unaware of the debate that has been occurring in recent years on the safety of vaccines, or of the possible autism-vaccine link, then I urge you to consider carefully the implications of this article:

Rebecca Campbell: US Government Loses Vaccine Lawsuit — Has Lied to the Public for Decades — Vaccines NOT Tested — Autism Will Drop If Parents Use This Case to Legally Challenge Mandated Vaccinations

The opening paragraph here says it all:

…Vaccine injury lawyer Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Del Bigtree, producer of the suppressed anti-vaccine documentary, Vaxxed and the Informed Consent Action Network (ICAN) are credited with this victory. They demanded the relevant government documents proving that all federally approved vaccines had been tested for quality over the past 32 years — and there were none. (Emphasis added)

Now, before I go on with this article, pause and ponder the implications just of this one paragraph, for their are three main possibilities: (1) there were no records ever kept, and the goobernment, and its agencies- the Food and Drug Administration, the National Institute of Health and so on - have been deliberately lying to the public; or (2) there were records, but they were all destroyed, either through incompetence of some sort, which doesn't speak very highly of any results that might have been obtained,; or (3) there were records, and they were all destroyed because they contained information contraindicating the publicly claimed safety of said vaccines. In turn, this means that the same corporate-goobernment "revolving door" that is so evident between the FDA and the GMO corporations like Mon(ster)santo is also in play in the case of vaccines, and possibly (and I think probably) pharmaceuticals at large. If that seems like a stretch(and I've pointed this out before), just recall all those "miracle drug" commercials on television which end by listing all the potential side effects: take this drug and you might go blind, or die of a heart attack, stroke, petrification, or terminal flatulence.

Ok, I exaggerate, but you get the idea.

But wait! There's more!

This means that vaccine makers have been fraudulently exempt from what all other pharmaceutical drug makers have been forced to do concerning biannual recertification for quality and effectiveness — meaning that that their vaccines have never been tested for quality and have had no proven safety or effectiveness for over 30 years;

o This case can now be legally cited by all parents fraudulently mandated by any government/organizational regulation/requirements that they must vaccinate their children for school or any other activity to stop
the forced vaccination of their children;

o This case can now be legally cited by all employees being mandated by their employers to be vaccinated in order to retain their jobs...

And that, of course, is good news. But the biggest implication - and it's a whopper doozie - is this:

This means that the US Department of Health and Human Services and all vaccine makers have been lying to the American people for over 30 years about the effectiveness and safety of vaccines; this may ultimately mean that continuing the existence — at least in their current form — of five US “healthcare” agencies are now in doubt: the CDC, the FDA, the IOM, the NIH and the “Health” part of DHHS itself; this may also threaten the existence of state medical boards and exclusive medical guilds like the AMA... (Emphasis added)

And it's high time, too. In effect, your tax dollars have been funding agencies which, thanks to Mr. Kennedy's vaccine win, have not just not been doing their jobs, but from all appearances, have been criminally complicit and negligent in the performance of their duties... and quite possibly in collusion with the vaccine manufacturers in so (not) doing.

Now, I'm not a lawyer like Mr. Kennedy, but I cannot resist tossing in my amateurish two cents of high octane (legal) speculation here: why not start serving writs of mandemus on those government and elected officials who have been either complicit or negligent in their duties, and do so at all levels, from cities, counties, states and all the way up the ladder to the federal level.  And of course, that would work for corporations too: serve writs that demand they quit saying their products are safe, since there's no corroborating evidence. That, I suspect, would get their attention (and get the attention of the corporate media which profits so much from their advertizing. Of course, the corporations might respond by serving up their "internal studies" on product safety.

But that didn't turn out too well for Mon(ster)santo...

Bayer beware.

See you on the flip side...

 

 

JAPAN’S GLIDING GUIDED MISSILE PLANS

Over the years, ever since Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe successfully rid Japan of its constitutional restraints on defense spending, I've been arguing that Japan has fundamentally changed its geopolitical and defense posture and is a "country to watch" in the Pacific. Central to my thesis is the hypothesis that Japan's rearmament has been based on a long-term assessment that the US Empire is failing, and is thus motivated by a double agenda: (1) convincing the US that Japan is willing to bear its "fair share" of its own defense burden, while (2) realizing that the US is, as the Russians put it, "not agreement capable," and that reliance upon such an untrustworthy ally is in the long-term just plain folly. Under such circumstances, Japanese re-armament, or rather, expanded armament is in my opinion inevitably designed to cut all military cords with Washington, and to restore it to equal negotiating status.

This assessment appears to be corroborated by Mr. Abe's recent negotiating strategies, particularly as far as Russia is concerned. In an unprecedented step, Mr. Abe agreed to set aside Japanese postwar claims on the Kurile Islands to arrive at understandings with Mr. Putin about the creation of a kind of "free trade" zone in those islands, and for his part, Mr. Putin agreed to allow more Japanese settlement in the Russian-occupied islands provided that it is understood that they are subject to Russian, and not Japanese, law. As a result, Russia and Japan have also negotiated lucrative deals, and as I blogged recently, the Japanese have conducted tests on portions of Russia's Trans-Siberian railway. As I speculated at the time, these tests I suspect are to gain Japanese expertise and experience (not to mention capital) to transform the line into high speed rail. The Japanese after all have been building high speed rail longer than just about anyone else. Geopolitically, it makes sense for both nations, for a Russo-Japanese rapprochement gives Japan a source of energy much closer to Japan, and not subject either to Chinese or American interdiction (and lest we forget, it was American interdiction of those energy supplies in 1941 that let to the outbreak of the war between the USA and Japan), and it gives Russia a counter-balance to growing Chinese power in the region. As if to drive that point home, Japan recently indicated to Australia that if France has difficulty completing a submarine order for the Australian navy, Japan would be only too happy to do so.

With that background, consider this important find from Mr. J.T.:

Defense Ministry aims for FY2026 introduction of 'high-speed gliding missiles'

What's crucial here are the first two paragraphs:

TOKYO -- The Ministry of Defense has decided on a plan to introduce a new type of "high-speed gliding missiles" with small wings attached to the payload to guide it to its target by fiscal 2026 for use by the Ground Self-Defense Force (GSDF), an individual close to the matter has disclosed.

The development of the missiles will be divided into two stages, and the projectiles designated for use in protecting Japan's remote islands are expected to have a range of around 300 to 500 kilometers. However, this would mean an increase in the missile range of the Self-Defense Forces (SDF), and there is a possibility that the addition's compliance with Japan's policy of being exclusively defense-oriented will be questioned. (Emphasis added)

The fact that the article itself questions the rationale behind the development is an indicator of what is really happening. As Mr. J.T. put it in his email, it would appear that the real purpose here is to develop an operational and ultimately strategic offensive capability. Increasing ranges of missiles to 500 kilometers may not seem to be a big deal, except that when one adds the staging of missiles to employ guided gliding payloads to Japan's already-possessed heavy space payload launch capability, and what is in a few short years an operational offensive capability could become, in those same short years, a strategic offensive capability. China, Russia, USA (and Korea) take note (and I'm sure they already have).

Like it or not, all this means that Japan will increasingly become part of the geopolitical and military calculation of the Pacific rim, and it also means, I suspect, that my speculation that Japan's rearmament is about more than just doing its "fair share" in Pacific security. Even if that is all it is about, I strongly suspect that that "fair share" will only increase over time.

See you on the flip side...

THE FITZGERALD AND MCCAIN INCIDENTS, APPLE, GOOGLE, & CHINA

Before we get to today's blog topic, I want to extend some remarks of thanks to all of you who've been so patient as this never-ending saga of delays never ends. This has played havoc with my ability to schedule anything for almost a year and a half, and hence this month I have not yet scheduled any vidchats nor been able to schedule any interviews. Needless to say, this is not easy to deal with, and I truly appreciate everyone's patience. I am exhausted and dog tired from constantly getting things ready, and then having the schedule collapse once again. So thank you for understanding and for your patience.  This means, also, that blogs and News and Views are up in the air this week as well, but I will try to keep everyone apprised.  Some components have arrived, which now sit uselessly in big boxes in my living room.

In any case, by way of context to introduce today's blog, regular readers here will recall that when the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain had their respective collisions off the coasts of Japan and Singapore, I was suspicious. The US Navy wanted us, at the time, to write this all off to incompetence and poor training. Indeed, a few military or former military that I am familiar with, also tried to convince me that this was, indeed, the reason. I remain, however, skeptical of it. At the time, it seemed to me that perhaps some sort of exotic hacking - remote or otherwise - might have occurred, not only to the American ships, but also to the ships which collided with them. My suspicions fell on Russia, even though regular readers here know I'm not a "blame-Russia-for-everything" person. The reason for that was the two suspicious incidents involving Russian aircraft, and the shutdown of electrical systems on the USS Donald Cook, first in the Black Sea, then again in the Baltic. The Russians demonstrated similar electronic warfare capability when they first intervened in Syria, so it was a reasonable guess to make at the time.

But there is another story that has recently come to light that may have some bearing on all of this, and indeed, so many people sent versions of it that I was positively overwhelmed; almost the entire list of people - and then some - who share articles on a regular basis did so here. If I were to make a simple "guesstimate" of the percentage of that list who did so, I'd say it was easily around 80 percent. In any case, it was a record, and thank you to all of you who passed along various versions of the story.

The story is that the Chinese have been planting tiny microchips, in effect, hacking the hardware, and that this hardware has infected major American corporations such as Apple, Google, and even the Central Intelligence Agency. (Gee, go figure! Who would have thought the Chinese would do that after farming out the tech industry to them?) Here are two versions of the story:

The Big Hack: How China Used a Tiny Chip to Infiltrate U.S. Companies

Explosive Report Details Chinese Infiltration Of Apple, Amazon And The CIA

There's something in the Zero Hedge article that caught my eye, as it did the many people who passed it along:

One week ago, President Trump stood up at a meeting of the United Nations Security Council and accused China of attempting to tamper with US elections - mimicking some of the same allegations that had first been levied against Russia nearly two years prior. In his speech, Trump claimed that China was working to undermine Republicans, and even the president himself, warning that "it's not just Russia, it's China and Russia." While the media largely shrugged off this proclamation as more presidential bombast probably inspired by the burgeoning US-China trade beef, the administration continued to insist that it was taking a harder line against Chinese efforts to subvert American companies to aide the Communist Party's sprawling intelligence apparatus. As if to underline Trump's point, the FBI had arrested a Taiwanese national in Chicago the day before Trump's speech, accusing the 27-year-old suspect of trying to help China flip eight defense contractors who could have provided crucial intelligence on sensitive defense-related technology.

But in a game-changing report published Thursday morning, Bloomberg Businessweek exposed a sprawling multi-year investigation into China's infiltration of US corporate and defense infrastructure.Most notably, it confirmed that, in addition to efforts designed to sway US elections, China's intelligence community orchestrated a pervasive infiltration of servers used to power everything from MRI machines to the drones used by the CIA and army. They accomplished this using a tiny microchip no bigger than a grain of rice.

BBG published the report just hours before Vice President Mike Pence was expected to "string together a narrative of Chinese aggression" during a speech at the Hudson Institute in Washington. According to excerpts leaked to the New York Times, his speech was expected to focus on examples of China's "aggressive moves against American warships, of predatory behavior against their neighbors, and of a sophisticated influence campaign to tilt the midterms and 2020 elections against President Trump". His speech is also expected to focus on how China leverages debt and its capital markets to force foreign governments to submit to its will (something that has happened in Bangladesh and the Czech Republic.  (Italicized emphasis added, boldface emphasis in the original)

Let that sink in for a moment: small computer chips hidden in hardware that is used by major American corporations, American intelligence, and military equipment from drones to warships, giving the Chinese the ability to monitor, and one may presume, alter or direct remotely the behavior of American equipment, from warships to voting machines.

Now, anyone with common sense could have predicted (and did predict) that this would be the result of farming out the American technical industry to China. The key here is that this story may be, and I suspect is, the real context for the rapid efforts being made to "reshore" American industry, and particularly its technical industry, to North America, and particular, to the region in and around Silicon Valley. That will not, of course, make American systems one hundred percent secure, but it will at least close a very open door and set of windows. What soldier, pilot, or warship skipper wants to go into battle thinking that at any moment his decisions and equipment can be overridden by Beijing? What broker or banker wants to place orders for trades, again, knowing that the systems which execute them could be overridden by Beijing? The temporary answer is to reshore, but even with reshoring however, the problem is not solved, because America has also been hollowing out its education while awarding "gender studies" degrees at home to create a cadre of truly useless idiots whose only talent seems to be that they can scream well. Reshoring only goes so far to address the problem. The other problem is stepping up information and engineering education, and making both it and the chip industry "native" once again. It is, in short, now a major national security issue. By sheer numbers, China can produce much more engineering and technology graduates than can the USA, and has been investing mightily in its human capital, while the USA has been... well, need I mention the screaming "gender studies" graduates again?

The bottom line here is that while everyone has been focused on Russia as "the big problem," the real "big problem" has been China. As the USA has been pushing ipads and cell phones and Apple trade and so on world wide to shore up the dollar's reserve status, China has been piggybacking on that effort, since the vast majority of those platforms is made in - you guessed it - China.

The story thus puts the USS Fitzgerald and USS John McCain incidents into stark relief, and gives a bit more credence to those of you out there who speculated that they were the result of faulty equipment and Chinese cyber-warfare capability.

But there's another implication here, and it's going to have the midnight oil burning not just in Washington, but in Moscow, Berlin, Rome, Paris, London, New Delhi and Madrid and any other major capital as well, because the implication of this story is that those nation's military equipment, trading markets, and intelligence communities are also infiltrated, and it means, like it or not, that they too will have to massively expand their own independent capability in computer chip production.

The world just changed, because this story has massive and seismic geopolitical implications. And in the long term, it does not benefit China, whom no one really trusts to begin with. The fallout from this story will be with us, and China, for years, if not decades.  And in the midterm, it benefits certain other countries who are a bit "higher" on the trust list...

... Japan, and South Korea, for example...

Already some nations are having second thoughts about China's "one belt, one road initiative," and this story is not going to help China, at least, not as currently configured under Emperor Xi Jinping. Everyone will now have to rethink everything, including China...

See you on the flip side...

 

POTHOLES IN THE NEW SILK ROAD PROJECT

So far, it has seemed like China's New Silk Road initiative has been progressing more or less uniformly. The first freight trains between London and China have already run (an eleven day journey), and all seems good.

Except...

...some potholes are beginning to emerge, and they are probably only going to get bigger. Mr. B.G. shared this story, plus his own high octane speculation which I'm going to pass along, and add to it my own:

Malaysia's Mahathir cancels China-backed rail, pipeline projects

You read that correctly, Malaysia has unilaterally cancelled its part of the Silk Road railroad pipeline project. And it's instructive to note why:

Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad said on Tuesday that the Chinese-funded $20 billion East Coast Rail Link (ECRL) project and a natural gas pipeline project in Sabah will be canceled for now, according to media reports.

Mahathir made the comments while addressing the media in Beijing during his five-day trip to China. He said the projects, would be canceled until such time as Malaysia can afford it.

The Prime Minister's office confirmed the comments Mahathir made to reporters in Beijing.

Prior to his China visit, Mahathir had vowed repeatedly to discuss what he called "unfair" Chinese infrastructure deals authorized by his predecessor Najib Razak, whose near-decade long rule ended in electoral defeat in May amid a massive financial scandal. (Emphasis added)

In other words, Malaysia wants a "better deal", and this comes in the wake of similar behavior from Pakistan, and I suspect there's a simple reason why, and that can be summed up in three words: "Donald Trump", and "tariffs". With America wanting to "level the playing field" with China, it was only a matter of time until others would as well. Whether or not this is a thought-out strategy against the Silk Road project or not matters little, for the result is the same: as more nations abandon their original deals with China, and re-negotiate them under better terms, this puts even more economic pressure on China as this will put a dent into the liquidity and investment capital that China can offer. In effect, the potholes are driving up the realization and maintenance costs, so to speak. This was the essence of Mr. B.G.'s speculation to me when he sent me this article, and I strongly suspect he is correct.

But we might extend that scenario a bit and assume that so many nations renegotiate their terms with China that extreme pressure is put on it. Does that mean the end of the Silk Road? Not necessarily, for Russia will continue its own version. Theoretically, even before China came along, it was already possible to travel from London all the way across Asia to Vladivostok via Russia's massive trans-Siberian railway. Mr. Putin will not abandon that aspect of the Silk Road, and has already signaled that he intends to expand the trans-Siberian lines and trunk lines in order to serve the expansion of Russian agriculture. Take China out of the Silk Road equation, and one is left with Russia. But how will Russia expand (and upgrade) existing lines without an influx of Chinese capital?

Three words: "Shinzo Abe", and "sanctions." Inevitably, Russia would have to turn to the West, and in particular the European powers, and Japan, for capital. One may predict that the former would only expand their capital investments and lift the sanctions in return for Russia capitulating to the West's, that is to say, to Washington's, demands, unless the unthinkable happens, and Europe grows a pair and and removes the whole sanctions regime from the table to begin with. Mr. Putin shows no signs of "capitulation" nor does Europe show any signs of entering puberty any time soon.

But then there's Mr. Abe, who has already shown a certain "independence" from the West with the deals he has already concluded with Mr. Putin. It may seem counter-intuitive, but it is a fact that Mr. Abe's Japan had quietly wished for a more vigorous American response to Mr. Putin's re-occupation of the Crimea in the wake of the referendum in that province to return to Russia. America's response was perceived as weak in Japan, and was met with more Japanese defense spending, and the extension of diplomatic feelers to Russia. The logic is simple: if the USA would not stand up to Mr. Putin in the Crimea, how could Japan rely on it in case of a conflict with China? Those deals already inked between Tokyo and Moscow run into the billions, and one can expect more of the same.

The lesson of all of this is that China's glorious project is showing more and more signs of potholes, and with it, the geopolitical order predicted as a result of the Silk Road project just a decade ago is changing already. And the key emerging player is Japan...

See you on the flip side...

RFK JR: THE CDC IS A VACCINE COMPANY

This story is so important that, when I saw it and read it after Mr. G.F. passed it along to me, I knew I had to blog about it. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., son of the murdered Senator from New York, has, as most readers here are aware, raised concerns about the safety of vaccines. Indeed, at one point it was rumored that President Trump was thinking about appointing him to some position to oversee a study of vaccines. (See https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-to-meet-with-proponent-of-debunked-tie-between-vaccines-and-autism/2017/01/10/4a5d03c0-d752-11e6-9f9f-5cdb4b7f8dd7_story.html?noredirect=on). Kennedy has continued to be outspoken on the subject, and this article on his most recent claim is well worth your consideration, especially if you're concerned about vaccine safety and good old-fashioned "conflicts of interest":

Robert Kennedy Jr.: CDC Is A Privately Owned Vaccine Company

The essence of Mr. Kennedy's claim is simple:

According to RFK Jr., the CDC is not an independent government agency but is actually a subsidiary of Big Pharma.

Greenmedinfo.com reports: Mr. Kennedy told EcoWatch, “The CDC is a subsidiary of the pharmaceutical industry. The agency owns more than 20 vaccine patents and purchases and sells $4.1 billion in vaccines annually.”  Again, no source.

Of course, if that is true, then the CDC is involved in a massive conflict of interest. So the article's author went looking to find if Mr. Kennedy's claims could be substantiated, which they were, and in spades:

I am fortunate to have, as one of my partners in advocacy, fellow autism parent Mark Blaxill, an Intellectual Property expert who has been employed by billion dollar corporations to manage their patents.  Blaxill was the man who found out that HHS, through NIH, owns patents on all HPV vaccines, and receives a percentage of the profits for each dose of Gardasil and Cervarix administered anywhere in the world.  He published the stunning revelation in a detailed three part expose entitled, “A License to Kill? Part 1: How A Public-Private Partnership Made the Government Merck’s Gardasil Partner.”

When I contacted Blaxill to ask how to run a patent search, he was kind enough to do it for me.  He found 57 granted US patents with the CDC listed as an assignee.  You can see the search results here.

Upon cursory review of the patents, I found that one did not seem applicable to vaccination, but merely referenced an article on vaccination.  That leaves us with 56 CDC patents to scrutinize.

I don't know about you, but that seems like a clear conflict of interest, and if one's been paying attention, the same type of pattern that one encounters when examining the whole GMO issue and the revolving door of personnel from the agribusiness industry and federal "regulatory" agencies which more often than not have simply exhibited the same pattern of co--option by the very corporations they are supposed to regulate.

The article reaches this conclusion:

Nowhere on the CDC’s web site can I find the disclosure that the agency is a profit partner with the vaccine makers for whom it is supposed to be providing safety oversight.

Mr. Kennedy is in very safe territory by reporting that the CDC has over 20 patents that create vast, undisclosed conflicts of interests in vaccine safety. He is understating the problem by more than half.

This brief look at current patents held by the CDC deserves an in-depth review to determine exactly what current financial relationships with vaccine makers now exist and what the current impact those revenue streams are likely having on vaccine safety positions. Furthermore, one must closely look at the financial relationships between the CDC and vaccine makers it is currently courting, to include the potential exploitation of new patents for financial gain. These are merely a few lines of inquiry, among hundreds, needing to be examined and why the potential RFK commission on vaccine safety must be impaneled.

No wonder the vaccine industry (and let’s not kid ourselves, CDC IS the vaccine industry) and their media outlets are fighting with such a fury to prevent the #RFKcommission from being formed.

Fortunately, Mr. Kennedy has already said he will fight this corruption against our children until his last breath, and we seem to have a new president who doesn’t care what Pharma and the mainstream media throw at him. There is more than 20 years’ worth of documented abuse and corruption in the vaccine program that, if properly examined, would at the very least force reforms that would drastically reduce the profits of the industry.

Well, count me in on that with a hearty "hear hear." Enough is enough. It's time to impanel a commission to oversee the whole issue, and while we're at it, we might entertain the idea of expanding its brief to the whole GMO issue, and I don't know about you but as far as I'm concerned, Mr. Kennedy should be the one to lead it.  "We must continue to press the Trump administration," the article concludes, "for comprehensive vaccine safety review and reform, including the universal right to forgo any and all vaccines without coercion."

No need for high octane speculation here. All I can say is "hear hear," and the sooner the better. Mr. Trump has reached out to Mr. Kennedy before on this issue, and it's time to do so again.

And as far as the CDC and a bit of high octane speculation goes, perhaps Mr. Kennedy has uncovered the reason for the mysterious death of Dr. Timothy Cunningham.

See you on the flip side...

RUSSIA, PIPELINES, AND KOREAN UNIFICATION

During our last quarterly wrap-up, Catherine Austin Fitts and I briefly discussed the Korean situation, and I advanced the hypothesis that what we were watching unfold was a complete remaking of the geopolitics and financial politics of northeastern Asia and Siberia. I advanced the idea that North Korea would advance along this agenda in fits and starts, two steps forward, one back. Nor could one expect otherwise. I also argued that a non-nuclear North was a win-win situation for everyone.

Moreover, central to my speculations were two key factors: South Korea, and Japan, both of which shoulder enormous industrial plants, and have virtually no internal energy sources that are not nuclear in nature. And for both countries in the wake of the Fukushima disaster, conventional fission energy technologies in the earthquake prone region do not look as "inviting" as they once did. China, too, faces a similar dilemma, for although it does have large rivers and hydrodynamic energy sources available, these will simply not meet its energy needs for its growing industrial plant. And Iran - one of China's close allies - is currently unstable as popular resistance grows to its Islamist regime. (And frankly, I don't think for a moment that Russia or China would be sorry to see that regime go, save only if it was replaced by an American puppet, and given their influence in the region, that may be somewhat, though not entirely, unlikely).

But back to Korea: both Korea's need energy, China needs energy, Japan needs energy. And there's one country, close by to all, that has energy - and lots of it - and it needs trade, markets for that energy and other products, and money: Russia. Oddly enough, China, South Korea, and Japan have lots of money, too. On this basis, I advanced the hypothesis for Ms. Fitts' Solari quarterly wrap- up that what we may be witnessing is the creation of a special kind of "neutral zone", where the Korea's would reunify under strict conditions. In a way, I suspect, given the realities of this situation, that there is little any American administration could do to prevent this from happening in the long run, short of a military intervention in the North. That intervention, given the confluence of interests by the other major powers in the region, could damage American relationships with them for the long term, and drive South Korea and Japan further away.

With that in mind, Mr. E.O. sent along this article, which basically is arguing the same thing:

EurasiaHeadline News South Korea ready for ‘unification’ with North through Russian pipeline

I suspect, however, that there's more high octane speculation to be had here, than my original "read" of the geopolitical situation. Much has been made of Mr. Trump's visit to the Forbidden City in Beijing, the first western head of state (supposedly) accorded the privilege and honor. According to some internet analysts, Mr. Trump there secretly met with Mr. Kim and, with Mr. Xi's cooperation, Mr. Trump arranged the current deal subsequently revealed in Singapore. The upshot of these analyses is that Mr. Trump is a genius deal-broker and that Mr. Xi and the other players in the area were just along for the ride. Indeed, he may be a genius deal-maker.

But given that coalescence of geopolitical interests between China, Russia, Japan, and the two Korea's, I have to wonder if, rather, Mr. Trump was simply presented with a fait accompli.

The truth probably lies somewhere between "genius" and fait accompli, but what that truth is we have yet to see, but my wager is that it involves the upcoming summit with Mr. Putin, and how Russia, China, and the USA are going to deal with the situation in Iran...

...just a guess, pure speculation, but as always, time will tell...

...see you on the flip side...

NEVER FEAR! MACRON HAS A PLAN TO “FIX” THE EU…

Well, no sooner said than done, it appears.

In the latest Solari quarterly wrap up with Catherine Austin Fitts, we had a bit of a discussion about Mad Madam Merkel, her lap poodle Emanuel Macron, and their plans to "fix" the E.U. Catherine drove over, and we talked a bit about this on Friday night and then again on Saturday during the recording session. We both had the impression that the European powers-that-be were a bit "anxious" and in a hurry to "fix" things. We all know who those powers really are; they're certain banking families and dynasties that are looking at the EU fall apart (due to their own disastrous policies), while the world moves on and Mr. Abe, Mr. Xi, Mr. Putin, and Mr. Trump are reordering the geopolitical-financial world. Meanwhile, the world's biggest market - Europe - is beset with disunity and lots of problems. And Italy, home to some of those "old families" has suddenly gone off script and isn't playing ball for the same team any more.

Catherine and I discussed the idea that the EU was going to have to restructure itself. The Common Market was one thing, the common currency is quite another, and it's playing havoc in the southern tier countries. Greece we know about. But Italy and now Spain are where the action is now, and accordingly we advanced the idea that the EU may stay the same on the outside, but that it will look very different on the inside. I've been of the opinion, for some time, that some sort of revival of the old "Exchange Rate Mechanism" would perhaps eventually be restored, centering again on currency pegs to the Deutschmark, i.e., to Germany, with the smaller nations of northern and central Europe - oh gee, look, there's Bettmann-Hollweg's Mitteleuropa again! - becoming part of that, with perhaps some similar arrangement in southern Europe, with France left in the middle.

And in the midst of all that speculative prognostication, I advanced the idea for a new "Euro-prize." Currently, Europe has the annual "Charlemagne Prize" to the European leader who advances the idea of European Union. Needless to say, Frau Merkel has worn the imperial crown many times, and more recently, M. Macron has had the pleasure. I advanced the idea that what Europe needs is a "Richelieu Prize", for the European leader who most successfully stands up to Berlin and Brussels. We might envision a "Bonaparte Prize" for the European leader who most effectively - but without any foresight but a continental-sized ego - plays into the hands of Germany for a German hegemon in Europe.

But I digress, because the following article, shared by many people, indicates that perhaps our speculations and prognostications may be coming true faster than we imagined, and that the Richelieu Prize currently has several strong contenders:

12 European States Revolt Against Merkel, Macron Plan To Reform Europe

The plan, as one can gather, is to "fix" the problem by having a common European budget, which effectively means that Madrid, Rome, Vienna, Prague, Budapest, Warsaw, The Hague, Copenhagen, and just about everyone else, now have to kowtow even more to Brussels, meaning in reality, to Paris and Berlin, meaning in even deeper reality, to Berlin, and yet deeper, to Frankfurt. To the growing demands in the rest of Europe for policies that represent the genuine will of the people of those countries, including in Germany and France, the Eurocrats have shown once again their profound deafness, and called for even more centralization in an already unresponsive bureaucratic mess:

We did not have to wait long for confirmation, because just two days later, Europe's two self-proclaimed leaders were facing an unexpected backlash from most other European governments against the German and French plans for a common eurozone budget, dealing a blow to the two countries’ ambitions for a big overhaul of the single currency area.

As the FT reports, the rest of Europe's "core", including the Netherlands, Austria and Finland are among 12 governments questioning the need for any joint eurozone “fiscal capacity”, challenging a central tenet of French President Emmanuel Macron’s vision for the eurozone that he has successfully pressed Berlin to endorse.

As we reported on Wednesday, increasingly unpopular French president Macron and the politically embattled Merkel tried to restart their close collaboration this week ahead of a wider summit of EU leaders. They agreed that a new common pot of eurozone money could be funded by a mixture of national contributions and new EU levies, such as a financial transactions tax.

Ironically, while their agreement supposedly forms part of a broader deal between Paris and Berlin on how to strengthen the currency bloc, the rest of Europe generally disagreed, which incidentally is also the reason why any attempt at "Federalizing" Europe is doomed to failure: Europeans tend to frown upon self-declared "master states" who tends to decide for everyone else, even if these states end up paying for much of the outlays (largely thanks to the presence of the EUR and the absence of the DEM).

As a result, EU diplomats said Merkel’s concession to Macron - as a reminder, having found herself isolated at home, Merkel has been forced to see support abroad - had emboldened other countries to resist the blueprint, out of concern that it would leave their taxpayers too exposed to problems in crisis-hit member states.  And, as the FT writes, the splits were observable at a meeting of EU finance ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday, with increasing signs that governments have formed competing camps with distinct visions on the direction of further integration.

Now, it's that last paragraph that's the key, for what it is saying is that the Eurocrats will continue to flood Europe with refugees, Merkel and Macron will continue to support open borders, Italy and Spain will continue to be flooded, and Spanish, Italian, German, French, Dutch, Austrian, Czech, Finnish, Danish et al. taxpayers will continue to foot the bill. Presumably, M. Macron's "plan" simply means the Brusselscrats will simply decide who gets to foot most of the bill, and given the French and German "weight", it's fairly easy to guess that the bill will fall the heaviest on everyone else. The revolt against this nonsense has named itself...well, I'll let you read it for yourself:

According to a letter seen by the Financial Times, Dutch finance minister Wopke Hoekstra has written to Mário Centeno, the president of the eurogroup, to underline that there is “wide divergence” on the need for any budget, with a number of countries concerned about “moral hazard risks” and questions of “fiscal neutrality” posed by the plan.

The letter insisted that the lack of the agreement on the budget be clearly communicated to leaders at next week’s summit.

"There was clearly no consensus on starting to explore options" at Thursday’s meeting of finance ministers, the Dutch finance minister said in the letter, adding there was also no agreement to start exploring the use of a financial transactions tax to finance it.

And the punchline: the letter was written by the Dutch finance minister on behalf of Belgium, Luxembourg, Austria, Sweden, Denmark, Finland, Latvia, Lithuania, Estonia, Ireland and Malta.

The simple math: 2 vs 12, and it is safe to say that the rest of the eurozone is not aligned with France and Germany either.

It gets better: according to the FT, the 12 countries expands a coalition called the “Hanseatic League” (a reference to the commercial and defensive confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in Northwestern and Central Europe, which in the late 1100s, grew from a few North German towns to dominate Baltic maritime trade for three centuries along the coast of Northern Europe), an initial group of eight smaller fiscally conservative countries, which have insisted on more national responsibility to solve economic problems in the eurozone.

The Hanseatic League? Really? National responsibility? Horrors! Fie the outrage!

Yes, really... and it's that name that invites my high octane speculation today, for that league obviously included the port cities of - here it comes - northern Germany. So what do I suspect? What's my speculation? With Mad Madam Merkel's government near collapse, there is every possibility that German businessmen and state and local politicians are also quietly (very quietly) in contact with the "new Hanseatic League". We've already seen the "revolt of the ministers" with Herr Seehofer openly defying his own chancellor, and coordinating ministerial policy with Austria and Italy.

In short, that "new Hanseatic League" looks a lot like that "restructuring" of the EU around a "northern zone" headed by Germany, and a "southern zone"... and like the old Hanseatic league, the new one is saying no to more centralization in Brussels.

And that puts the pressure on France. And that in turn means M. Macron's government is far weaker than it appears, for no matter which way he jumps - north with Germany or south with Italy and Spain - he's going to upset someone, and if he sticks to the current course, people are already upset, and his plan will no go through. And if he returns to the "unthinkable", i.e., a policy that is good for France, no one will believe him. (And look, who's that smiling up there in the Pas de Calais? Why, it's Marine le Pen. Bon chance M. Macron. Je ne voudrais vraiment pas être à votre place.)

So, sorry M. Macron, you won't be receiving this years Richelieu Prize. In fact, you're not even on the list, because so many others now are. (And, being part French myself, I had so hoped that someone from France would be the first winner.)

See you on the flip side...

 

 

 

A PUTIN-TRUMP SUMMIT IS IN THE WORKS…

Well, it's official: a Putin-Trump summit meeting is in the works. The real question is, what are they going to talk about? So many people sent me this article I have to comment about it, but again, what are they going to talk about? Some things are, of course, obvious:

1) Sanctions

2) The Ukraine (and with it, possibly, the Crimea)

3) Space militarization and commercialization.

With respect to the latter point, Russia has recently issued yet another caution about the militarization of space. This is predictable, since Russia has nowhere near the West's private space corporations. In fact, to my knowledge, it has none at all, and as we have noted elsewhere on this site, Mr. Putin recently curtailed Russian defense spending to focus on building up Russia's domestic infrastructure, particularly in Siberia. Such a step is necessary with the dramatic expansion of Russian agriculture, which demands a dramatic expansion of Russia's rail and road transportation infrastructure.

So what's the story? This article, as noted, was shared by many people:

Britain in panic as Trump-Putin summit looms

From one point of view, Britain's alarm over the approaching summit is perfectly understandable, for it has long been a goal of British geopolitics to contain Russia, and to prevent "the two unthinkable nightmares", i.e., (1) a Russo-German understanding or alliance, and (2) a Russo-American understanding or alliance. The latter possibility was starkly dramatized during the American War Between the States, when France and Britain were both considering an intervention on the side of the Confederacy. British officers, for example, were present with General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia at the Battle of Gettysburg as observers. The failure of that campaign, plus the Russian Tsar Alexander II, who sent his fleet to Union ports, made the message clear; France and Britian backed off, and the American Civil War remained an American affair.

The article makes it clear that the summit could upend NATO plans to "deter Russian aggression":

Mr Trump called for Russia to be readmitted to the G8 this month, wrecking Mrs May’s efforts to further isolate Mr Putin after the Salisbury poisonings. Mr Trump then linked US funding of Nato to the trade dispute with the EU, singling out Germany for special criticism.

The prospect of a meeting between Mr Trump and Mr Putin appals British officials. “It’s unclear if this meeting is after or before Nato and the UK visit,” a Whitehall official said. “Obviously after would be better for us. It adds another dynamic to an already colourful week.”….

A senior western diplomatic source said that a Trump-Putin meeting before the Nato summit would cause “dismay and alarm”, adding: “It would be a highly negative thing to do.”

Nato is due to discuss an escalation of measures to deter Russian aggression. “Everyone is perturbed by what is going on and is fearing for the future of the alliance,” a Whitehall source said.

From the Trump Administration's perspective, however, little is to be gained by listening to the weak and indecisive May Government. And on the continent of Europe, Mad Madam Merkel's government is in an even more precarious state.

But I suspect there is one more item on the Putin-Trump summit agenda, and it has nothing to do with NATO, Europe, or the two Mad Madams of Europe, Merkel and May. In last Thursday's News and Views from the Nefarium, I advanced two hypotheses about the recent Kim-Trump summit, namely, that the memorandum of understanding that was signed was really either the product of a three power pressure working behind the scenes, coming from Russia, the USA, and Japan, or it was the result of four power pressure, with China being added to the list. Mr. Xi is in a weaker position than most may think, for China does not want a trade war at this time with the USA. I advanced the idea in that News and Views, and also at greater length in the forthcoming Solari quarterly wrap-up with Catherine Fitts, that what we may be seeing are the first steps in the creation of a Korean "neutral zone", with all for powers creating an economic trade zone where their interests are spelled out and protected. Behind this there lurks the recent North Korean discovery of a bonanza of Rare Earth Elements that, with Russian, American, Japanese (and possibly Chinese) money, could develop the country. If such a neutral trade zone is in the works, then none of the four powers will want the destabilizing presence of nuclear weapons in the hands of the North Koreans.

So I strongly suspect as my high octane speculation of the day that the most important item on the Trump-Putin summit agenda will be some frank and perhaps prolonged discussions of the Korean situation, and the ironing out of the details of such a venture. Let me be clear: the USA probably cannot completely lock Russian or Chinese influence out of North Korea. That influence is there now. What needs to be gained is a foothold of American influence in Pyongyang. Time, of course, will tell if either of my two hypotheses have any merit at all. If they do, then there will be the usual two steps forward one step back dance along the way; the pattern, if any, confirming either of those two hypotheses will only emerge over the next few years.

But... if we hear that Mr. Putin and Mr. Trump did discuss Korea, then that's an indicator that the cat, while not wholly out of the bag, may at least be partially so.

See you on the flip side...