Geopolitics – TheBreakAway

NEWS AND VIEWS FROM THE NEFARIUM AUGUST 17 2017 – Dr. Farrell On Geopolitics, Europe, Germany, Washington, Russia, Economic War, & More

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell
August 17, 2017

Germany backs China’s and Russia’s “double freeze” plan:
http://theduran.com/korea-crisis-germ…

USS Fitzgerald The Victim Of An Electromagnetic Warfare Attack

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 7, 2017

If you’ve been following the developing theories about the USS Fitzgerald ramming in Japan, you’ll be interested in this article shared by Mr. D.F.(copy and paste into your browser:

Stealth Attack On USS Fitzgerald Proves US Navy No Longer Controls Seven Seas

The article reiterates many of the points I argued in my own previous comments on this incident, namely, that I find it difficult to rationalize a collision with a US Navy frigate due to simple incompetence for a variety of reasons. Ships just don’t “sneak up” on other ships. Collisions of ships do happen, of course, on occasion. And the results can be tragic (think only of the Andrea Doria). But in the main, a ship venturing into the “danger” zone of any nation’s warships would be hailed, warned off, quarters sounded, and evasive action taken.

But as far as I am able to tell, none of this apparently happened with the Fitzgerald, if the various internet reports, such as the above, are to be believed.

Assuming that they are, the report argues more or less as I did previously, that in the absence of clear explanations, we must assume that the steerage and other operational and communications systems of the vessel were not operational, for whatever reason. Why, for example, was the captain still apparently asleep? Under circumstances of a potential collision or threat to the ship, again, evasive action would have been ordered and the captain woken up and notified. This implies that it was not possible to move the ship nor wake the captain through the internal communication system.

But toward the end of this strange article – and again, I am not familiar with this website, nor its reliability. I am presenting it for your consideration, as I know many readers here are following this story – we have the following:

The first time the container ship approached the USS Fitzgerald, the Fitz was still fully functional.

An airplane or drone flying overhead was responsible for the energy pulse that killed all electricity on the warship. (the whole event took place in the wee hours of the morning from 1:30 to 2:20 AM)

The container ship was required to turn back toward the Fitzgerald to do its job as commanded by whoever EMPulsed the ship.

In turning back to do the “job” the container ship did not have great positioning to destroy the vessel and so ended up only disabling rather than sinking the thing.

Thus, the CIA-planned story (aka false flag attack) could not be used as many on board the Fitzgerald saw what really happened, and survived.

The CIA plot was probably an attack by Russia or China or NK. A contingency plan was then quickly implemented; one that they could feed to those present as a legitimate story.

The bottom line here is that this attack was quite likely a false flag operation in the tradition of the USS Maine (“Remember the Maine!”), the RMS Lusitania (World War I false flag), and the USS Maddox (aka the Gulf of Tonkin incident).

Conclusion

Either someone wants war. Or, someone else seeks to prevent war.

While this attack on the USS Fitzgerald appears to be a typical CIA-coordinated false flag attack designed to start a war, it appears to have been a real attack perpetrated to prevent one.

In other words, it was a conspiracy within a conspiracy, and/or a false flag within a false flag. Yes, it’s really that complicated. As it frequently when one camp is trying to start a war as aggressively as the other side is working to avert one.

To my knowledge, no one from government, or corporate controlled media, has yet even stated that this was an attack: the “attack” hypothesis seems to be largely concentrated – at present – in the free and independent media.

The scenario is, however, worth noting, because as the article itself avers, the incident could be seen as a part of a wider pattern of such electromagnetic interference with US forces, beginning with the now infamous Donald Cook incident, to the alleged Russian defeat of NATO communications systems in Syria shortly after that nation’s intervention there, to a repeat of the Donald Cook incident, involving the Donald Cook once again, this time, in the Baltic Sea with yet another Russian Sukhoi-22 fighter-bomber. While I have not seen corroboration of the allegation that there was an airplane overhead during the incident, there would not need to be, if indeed this was an electromagnetic attack, which for the reasons outlined above I believe it to be. Such an attack could have come from the container ship itself or other nearby vessels, and perhaps even from the shore.

For my two cents’ worth of high octane speculation, however, I have difficulty believing this was a CIA plot that was also, as the article states “an attack by Russia or China or (North Korea).” This would imply the CIA is in cahoots with those nations in an overly complicated plot to start a war. While I don’t put anything past the departments and agencies of the federal swamp and believe they’re pretty much capable of anything in spite of the many good people in government, I just find that one a bit too much to swallow.

What I don’t have difficult swallowing, however, is the possibility that those nations may have learned of a plot, or course of action. After all, the US Navy has recently deployed three carrier battle groups to that region, which is an enormous concentration of naval power usually presaging some sort of American action.

Then…

… the electronics system, and maybe even the steerage system, of an expensive frigate fails…

…completely.

And that translates into the message that the article begins with: “your navy may not be in as solid control of the sea lanes as you think it is.” And that means the same might go for (1) aircraft, and more importantly (2) space-based assets, if a similar electromagnetic platform exists in space, or on the ground capable of reaching space. And that means in turn, those “smart bombs” may not work too well, and it may be rather difficult moving troops and supplies to deal with “threats.”

Of course, for years, there have been rumors that the Russians have very advanced electronic warfare systems, rumors which the Russians from time to time have “stoked.” Shortly after the first incident with the Donald Cook, Russian television aired a one hour review of some of those systems – no doubt for the deliberate attention of analysts in the Pentagram – and the effect of that broadcast was that it gave the impression that this electronic warfare interference with missile systems would make them behave like wildly misfiring bottle rockets, going off crazily in all directions… everywhere, but on target.

It’s a very Russian sort of approach to such things. The American anti-missile system is, we’ve been told, one of the approach of hitting a bullet with a bullet. The Russian anti-missile system approach is simple to interfere with the flight path by whatever means, including scrambling the electronics and turning expensive American rockets into crazy bottlerockets.

In any case, messages are being sent, and it’s interesting to note that, for a brief moment, things quieted down after the Fitzgerald incident.

See you on the flip side…
Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Joseph P. Farrell has a doctorate in patristics from the University of Oxford, and pursues research in physics, alternative history and science, and “strange stuff”. His book The Giza DeathStar, for which the Giza Community is named, was published in the spring of 2002, and was his first venture into “alternative history and science”.

Germany Has Had It, Consider Sanctions Against USA

alternative news
Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 6, 2017

A few days ago I blogged about a suspicion I’ve long entertained, namely, that there appears to be some sort of covert war taking place between Washington and Berlin, and that this covert war has been going on for a while, most recently entering an “economic warfare” guise. I’ve also advanced the hypothesis that American “rebasing” efforts in Eastern Europe were part of a very old geopolitical game, first played by King Edward VII, then by Clemenceau, Chamberlain and Daladier. Edward, of course, helped engineer the Triple Entente, the alliance of France, Russia, and Britain that was, of course, directed against Germany and eventually “lay siege” to the Central Powers for four years during World War One. Edward’s ploy, of course, was also to prevent the “geopolitically unthinkable”: an alliance of Russia and Germany, long the bug-a-boo of geopolitical thinking. After World War One, the formal alliance system was replaced by the idea of the cordon sanitaire, the “buffer zone” of small states created from the nationalities within the old Russian Empire: Poland, Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania became the “sanitary cordon” between Russia and Germany to prevent an alliance.

Of course, the Treaty of Rapallo side-stepped all of this. Then came the strengthening of that idea with the military guarantees given by Daladier and Chamberlain to Poland…

… an idea that didn’t work out too well for Poland, France, the UK, or ultimately, Germany.

The most recent version of this game has been the “let’s launch a coup in the Ukraine, and, just to keep Merkel out of it, launch sanctions on Russia (for its aggression in the affair, of course), which sanctions will keep Germany and Russia from building all those pipelines and cementing other lucrative deals). Part and parcel of my hypothesis about this covert warfare also deals with the war of fines and sanctions against German banks (Deutsche Bank) and German auto manufacturers.

Well, it’s beginning to look more and more like this hypothesis might have some traction, for the gloves are increasingly coming off. The most recent round of anti-Russia sanctions, I wrote a few days ago, was as much directed against Germany as they were against Russia.

And now Kanzlerin Merkel is making no bones about it, and pulling no punches: Germany is considering economic sanctions on the USA, this time, against imports of American energy, according to this Sputnik article shared by Ms. K.M.:

The Final Straw: Germany Mulling Over Sanctions… This Time Against the US

There are some important considerations and paragraphs here to note:

In a joint statement, Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel and Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern slammed the decision by the US Senate to impose new sanctions on Moscow over its alleged interference in the US presidential election as well as the ongoing situations in Ukraine and Syria.

“Threatening German, Austrian and other European enterprises with penalties on the US market only because they take part in the gas supply projects such as the Nord Stream 2 together with Russia or finance them, is adding an absolutely new and highly negative aspect in relations between the US and Europe,” the joint statement reads.

For his part, the leader of Germany’s Social Democratic Party (SPD), Martin Schulz, lambasted US senators’ move and called upon German Chancellor Angela Merkel to oppose it.

“We have seen that the US is pursuing a course in energy policy that is dangerous and is directed against Germany,” Schulz told the Federal Association of German Industry (BDI). (Emphasis added)

Now, in my previous blog on this subject, I only suggested that the perception of the new sanctions regime would backfire and be seen as sanctions against Germany (which I also argued was the real additional, though hidden, target of the sanctions). Here, the leader of the opposition party in Germany, Herr Schulz, is now saying openly what only a few days ago was mere suspicion. To put it country simple: the situation is deteriorating quickly.

But there’s more:

Germany and Austria suspect that Senate’s anti-Russian bill is an attempt to “occupy” the European energy market on the part of US corporations.

“Germany and Austria went one step further, too — accusing the US of looking to promote the role of US LNG in Europe at the expense of Russian gas,” the S&P Global Platts writer underscored, adding that the US apparently wants to kill two birds with one stone by exerting sanctions on Nord Stream 2: to “punish” Moscow and promote US LNG supplies in Europe, “which would have the knock-on effect of supporting domestic US gas industry.”

In this context, Danilov wrote, it is most likely that potential anti-American sanctions would be aimed not at inflicting any economic damage on the US but at sabotaging Washington’s attempts to seize the European energy market.

“A ban on the import of American LNG into the EU countries could have become a very effective tool to prevent America’s attempts to influence the European market,” Danilov assumed adding that this measure could potentially attract wide public support. (Emphasis added)

This, too, is a new admission in the growing and widening gulf between Berlin and Washington, and like it or not, where Berlin goes on this issue, Europe goes. That means we are fast approaching the point when Europe will have to choose between the USA and Russia, a choice that has been delayed for some decades, but which, now, with the USSA playing “world cop,” crawling into bed with radical Islamic terrorist organizations, and interfering in the internal policies of several nations, in the long term, I suspect that the choice will not be favorable to Washington, regardless what Europe does in the short term.

The reason: Washington has proven its growing instability and psychopathy since 9/11. The last sentence of the article reminds us of this point: “It appears that the US political elite have completely forgotten that the interest of its European partners should be taken into account, Danilov concluded.”

Precisely, the unipolar paradigm reigns in Washington, in the dominant party, and the fake opposition party. And that unipolar paradigm has, since 9/11, seen the following things be accomplished: (1) Japanese rearmament, (2) Growing Russo-Japanese cooperation, (3) A fed-up Philippines, (4) more bi-lateral currency-trade deals bypassing the US dollar, (5) an insane, banana-republic political culture in Washington, (6) arms sales to the (out)House of Saud, a prime contributor to Islamic terrorism, (7) growing radicalism in Indonesia, and now, (8) the growing estrangement between Washington and our most powerful ally in Europe.

Washington has repeatedly asked its European “allies” to step up to the plate and do more for its own defense. But I have to wonder, if that happened, and Europe then demanded removal of ALL American bases in Europe because they’re sick and tired of being under Washington’s thumb, what the response would be.

I suspect we all know.

In any case, I suspect we’ll find out, after a few years of Japanese rearmament, when they once again ask us to get rid of our bases there.

So, if we want our allies to continue to be allies, then we need to stop treating them as vassals and satraps, and we’d better do so quickly. The trouble is, the idiots in Washington have not existed in a multi-polar world since the beginning of World War Two. They no longer know how.

They’re stupid.

And because they’re stupid, everyone is in trouble.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Is The (Out)House Of Saud On A March To A Civil War?

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 3, 2017

Mr. J.K. found this very important article from our friends at Zero Hedge and passed it along, and it’s worth some very careful consideration. The desert kingdom has certainly been busy lately, ever since President Trump’s “triumphal” visit, holding hands on a glowing globe of the world, with misplaced continents, a squeemish looking Saudi king, a big arms deal, and so on. Within mere days of the visit, we saw the sudden severing of diplomatic relations with Qatar over its support of terrorism, which is a bit like the terrorist calling the terrorist a terrorist (or in plainer English, the pot calling the kettle black).

Here’s the article:

Saudi Arabia’s March Towards Civil War

Besides noting that Turkey has sent troops to Qatar to offset Saudi pressure, the article zeros in on something in the opening paragraphs that are a geopolitical game-changer:

Has Saudi Arabia’s brinkmanship and heavy-handed policies of intervention in the Middle East come back to haunt the desert kingdom?

After decades of playing the role of middle man between foreign states and establishing itself as a regional power, Saudi Arabia’s policies of meddling in the affairs of neighbor states and support for terror appear to have finally exacerbated issues in the country which could threaten to plunge it into chaos. Growing anger over attempted austerity cutbacks, economic issues due to the fluctuating price of oil and tell tale signs of royal disagreement over the successor to King Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud mean that Saudi adventures abroad are preparing a perfect storm for civil conflict which could lead to further instability in the Middle East. The disruption comes as other states such as Iran and Turkey are positioning themselves as potential competitors to the de facto leader of the Arab world.

I. Saudi Arabia Is Experiencing Increasing Signs Of Instability

Saudi Arabia has experienced a number of issues which contribute to internal destabilization. In April 2017, Bloomberg reported that King Salman was forced to restore bonuses and allowances for state employees, reversing attempts to reform Saudi Arabia’s generous austerity programs. The Saudi government insisted that the move was due to “higher than expected revenue” despite the fact that observers were noting in March that Saudi Arabia’s foreign reserves were plunging as one third of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) of United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Qatar and Kuwait have seen their credit ratings slashed and have increasingly disagreed on common foreign policy towards Iran.

The kingdom’s increasing financial problems are due in part to the falling price of oil. In January 2016, The Independent noted that the dropping value of oil would put Saudi Arabia’s man spending programs in jeopardy and that a third of 15 to 24-year-olds in the country are out of work. The Journal of Petroleum Science and Engineering estimates that Saudi Arabia will experience a peak in its oil production by 2028, but this may be an incredible underestimation. The Middle East Eye has noted that experts in the United States who state that Saudi Arabia’s net oil exports began to decrease in 2006, continuing to drop annually by 1.4% each year from 2005 to 2015. Citigroup has estimated that the Kingdom may run out of oil to export entirely by 2030. The end of the Kingdom’s cash cow is likely to cause problems in a nation that The Atlantic has accused of running itself like a “sophisticated criminal enterprise.”

There have been a number of “interpretive positions” about the falling oil prices in the past few months. One interpretation has it that the Saudis, in cahoots with “The Powers That Be,” deliberately flooded the market with an oil glut to dismantle the then-booming American fracking industry. Indeed, a few years ago I blogged about the fact that this industry in effect had made the USA energy independent – at least as conventional fuels are concerned – and that the prior “vulnerability” needed to be restored. Then there was the “Russia was the target” version, which had the glut also targeting the always-to-be-mistrusted-they’re-behind-everything-Russians, to deprive the Russian energy-based economy of needed revenues. Of course, both are possible at the same time.

For the moment, and not taking into account those persisting rumors of alternative energy sources we hear about from time to time, or this or that breakthrough in the progress toward fusion, I point out something about those stories: none of them ever seem to come from the (out)House of Saud. Its one, and only, valuable contribution to the world is oil, and that, according to the above paragraphs, is declining, along with the revenues from falling prices, while the social commitments and programs do not diminish. (Perhaps this is why they were so quick to agree to that arms deal with Trump, part of which apparently includes the transfer of manufacturing capability… better learn how to make something, and fast.)

Over the long term, this is bad for Riyadh, and good for Bismarck, North Dakota, for Moscow, Tehran, and even for Tokyo and Beijing, because three of the capitals mentioned in this list, have the energy supplies, and the rest have the money to buy it. And this, plus Saudi bluster, is driving a sweeping geopolitical change in the region, and once again, it appears that Washington (and London), are backing the wrong horse.

There’s a player here to watch, if my hunch is true: in the long term, Saudi Arabia desperately needs to build things that people need, not just its people, but people everywhere. Chances are, most people don’t need to buy an American fighter jet or a German Leopard tank. Trading oil for American aircraft and German tanks is not a long term, stabilizing, economic strategy. For this reason, I suspect, we need to pay attention to how China reacts to the growing instability in the region, for they could approach the Saudis and say “you need to build your own cars and toys, and we can show you.” The oil’s running out, and with it, the Saudi share in the petro-dollar.

Watch the reminbi in the Middle East… it won’t happen over night; it will occur in incremental, slow, patiently Chinese steps, but I suspect it will occur, and the Saudis, probably, will wake up and realize it.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

How CNN Boss Jeff Zucker Helped Elect A US President & A Governor Of California

Source: NoMoreFakeNews.com | JonRappoport.wordpress.com
By: Jon Rappoport
July 1, 2017

One thing you have to understand about Mr. Zucker. What he does, he does for show. For ratings. If he could get away with claiming Trump met with Putin on the dark side of the moon to concoct a way to beat Hillary Clinton, he would run with it. If he could get away with claiming Arnold Schwarzenegger was the love child of Joseph Stalin and Greta Garbo, he would lead the evening newscast with it. He keeps selling the CNN Trump-Russia “investigation” because he’s (barely) getting away with it and he thinks it’ll keep drawing an audience.

In April, CNN boss Jeff Zucker told the New York Times, “The idea that politics is sport is undeniable, and we understood that and approached it that way.” The “it” was certainly the 2016 presidential campaign.

Zucker always has understood politics in this corrupt way—and in the process, he helped elect a US president and a California governor.

Who is Trump’s most consistent media enemy now? CNN is right up there.

But Jeff Zucker, CNN’s boss, was the man who launched The Apprentice, starring Donald Trump, at NBC, in 2004.

In other words, Zucker happened to play a major role in electing Donald Trump. There is no getting around it.

Washington Post, October 2, 2016: “Looking for someone specific to hold responsible for the improbable rise of Donald Trump?”

“Although there are many options, you could do worse than to take a hard look at Jeff Zucker, president of CNN Worldwide.”

“It was Zucker, after all, who as the new head of NBC Entertainment gave Trump his start in reality TV with ‘The Apprentice’ and then milked the real estate developer’s uncanny knack for success for all it was worth in ratings and profits.”

“And it succeeded wildly — boosting the network’s ratings, as well as Zucker’s [and Trump’s] meteoric career. In turn, under Zucker, the show gave rise to ‘Celebrity Apprentice,’ another Trump extravaganza. And, in turn, Zucker became the head of NBC overall.”

“The show [The Apprentice] was built as a virtually nonstop advertisement for the Trump empire and lifestyle,” according to the book ‘Trump Revealed,’ by Washington Post journalists Marc Fisher and Michael Kranish.”

“The executive [Jeff Zucker] rode the Trump steed hard. When the reality-TV star was preparing to marry Melania Knauss in 2005, Zucker wanted to broadcast the wedding live. (Trump, uncharacteristically, declined.)”

“But make no mistake: There would be no Trump-the-politician without Trump-the-TV-star. One begot the other.”

POLITICS IS TELEVISION, AND TELEVISION IS POLITICS.

If you’re looking for a person who embodies that fake version of reality most purely, you need look no further than Jeff Zucker.

Despite his network’s present hatred of Trump, Zucker would give Trump his own show right now if he wanted one.

For ratings and ad revenues.

Let’s go back in time and consider another event, one which I’ve analyzed in great detail. It took place on NBC in 2004, when Zucker was the head of the network’s entertainment division. Keep in mind that The Tonight Show, with Jeno Leno, was a prime piece of the entertainment division then. What Leno pulled off in 2004 had to have the OK from Zucker, because it was a highly unusual move, a distinctly unethical move.

What happened when an actor wanted to launch a political career and become a governor? The whole news division of a major network surrendered itself, for one ratings-busting night, to a talk show.

This is how Arnold Schwarzenegger won the California governor’s race. It all came down to his famous appearance on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, where he announced that he was going to run.

I obtained a copy of show, watched it many times, transcribed the dialogue, and noted the audience reactions.

Breaking down the segments revealed what happens when news and entertainment and PR and political advocacy all blur together in a single wave.

The show had been hyped as the moment when Arnold would announce whether he was going to run in the recall election against California Governor Gray Davis.

The public anticipation was sky-high. No one seemed concerned that NBC was turning over its news division, for one night, to its entertainment division. Jeff Zucker, head of NBC entertainment, was all in.

Turning over network news to network entertainment was precisely the subject of the best movie ever made about television, Paddy Chayefsky’s Network. That didn’t register with the national media.

If Arnold decided to run for governor, he wouldn’t be announcing it at a stale press conference at the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, after a brief introduction from The Snoozer, LA Mayor Richard Riordan. No, Arnold would obtain a rocket boost from Jay Leno.

Keep in mind that talk shows warm up and prep their studio audiences to act and respond with amphetamine-like enthusiasm.

And then that audience transmits its glow and howling racket to the wider television audience, thereby blowing an artificially enhanced event across the landscape.

On the night of August 6, 2003, Tonight Show host Jay Leno devoted two six-minute segments to The Arnold.

Of course, it was more than an interview. Jay had been touting this night as the occasion for a key revelation in the comic play called The California Recall Election.

Arnold would say yes or Arnold would say no. He would run for governor or he would decline.

Bigger than conventional news, Arnold strode out on to Jay’s stage. A Tonight Show camera picked him up from a grossly complimentary low angle, making him appear even larger and more physically imposing than he is. Jay was positioned standing behind him, applauding, lending an affirmative gloss to the entrance. Already, it looked and felt political.

This was not a beginning; the impression was of something already in motion, a train to catch up with.

As the man of the hour sat down next to Jay, he commented that there was a big audience in the house (“Can you believe all these people here?”) and, capping his first gambit, he stated that every one of them was running for governor of California. Ha-ha. (At one point, there were 135 gubernatorial candidates.)

Quickly, Jay gets down to business. The business of making the evening extra-special: “Now, I don’t think we’ve ever had this much press at The Tonight Show for any—[let’s look at] our press room—normally [the press] sit in the audience.”

Cut to a stark room, shot from above. About 40 reporters doing almost nothing at tables. Obviously, the room was set up for this event.

Jay cracks a couple of jokes about the press gaggle, lowers his voice and turns his full attention to Arnold: “…it’s been weeks…and people going back and forth…taken you awhile, and you said you would come here tonight and tell us your decision. So what is your decision?”

Arnold replies, “Well, Jay, after thinking for a long time, my decision is…”

The sound cuts off, and the TV screen displays an old PLEASE STAND BY notice. Thick white letters against a background of an ancient station test pattern from the 1950s. A mechanical tone plays for several seconds.

The audience laughs. There is applause, too.

Cut back to Jay and Arnold. Arnold says, “That’s why I decided that way.” Big audience laughter.

Jay, going along—as if Arnold had spilled the beans during a momentary technical malfunction—shouts, “Right, good, right! I tell you I am shocked! I can’t believe it! I can’t believe it!”

Jay then starts out from the bottom again. “[Whether you’re going to run has been] in my monologue…it’s been good for, like, a thousand jokes over the last couple of weeks…”

Once more, he gently poses the question. “What are you going to do?” It’s still too early for an answer, and Jay knows it.

Arnold wants another false start. He’s planned it.

“Well, my decision obviously is a very difficult decision to make, you know…it was the [most] difficult decision that I’ve made in my entire life, except the one in 1978 when I decided to get a bikini wax.”

Laughter, applause, whistles.

The studio audience warms to the fact that Arnold glimpses an absurdity about the whole proceeding.

“He’s our Arnie, laughing the way we laugh. Hell, all we’ve got are laughs in this life, and our boy isn’t going to go stuffed-shirt on us.”

Arnold then gives his rehearsed political speech.

He reflects that California was a grand land of opportunity when he arrived in 1968. It was the greatest state in the greatest nation.

However, now the atmosphere in California is “disastrous,” he says. There is a “disconnect” (thank you, pop psych 101) between the people and the politicians.

“The politicians are fiddling, fumbling, and failing.”

Very big applause follows. The audience is doing its job.

Close by, off camera, we hear Jay thumping his own personal hand claps. The host is pumping his studio crowd and giving his seal of approval to a remark whose veracity is supposed to be tested by the recall election itself.

And there is a phalanx of teen-age girls screaming at a very high pitch in the studio. They’re adding a major element of hysterical enthusiasm. Where did they come from? Are they a legitimate Arnold demographic? Were they pulled out of a Valley mall to paper the crowd? Do they migrate from talk show to talk show? From this point forward, they’ll play a huge role in every audience outburst.

Arnold gathers steam. He tells one and all that the people of California are doing their job.

They’re working hard.

Paying their taxes.

Raising their families.

But the politicians are not doing their job.

Now he executes a blend around the far turn: “And the man that is failing the people more than anyone is [Governor] Gray Davis!”

The crowd goes wild. The girls scream as if they’re at a kiddie rock concert in the magic presence of four sixteen-year-old pretty boys. It’s eerie.

And now the audience is suddenly on edge.

They can handle the juice. The longed-for result.

Arnold senses it.

He lets the audience-hysteria roller coaster die down and then, taking it up to heaven, announces that, he, Arnold is…

Yes…

GOING TO RUN FOR GOVERNOR OF CALIFORNIA.

Boom. Bang. Pow. Zow.

The studio audience cracks the ceiling. Wilder than wild. The girls are shrieking walls of sound way above high C. Undoubtedly, the show is flashing applause signs.

Jay shakes his head and grins like a pro hypster who’s just witnessed a very, very good variation on bait and switch. As if Arnold was supposed to say no, but now he’s saying yes.

The Tonight Show band lays down some heavy chords.

Jay shouts, “There you go! There you go! That woke ‘em up! That woke ‘em up!” We cut to the press room, and sure enough, the reporters are now on phones, typing at their keyboards. The story is live and good to go. A global event is underway.

Amid the roar and the music, Jay, smiling broadly and wisely, shakes his finger at Arnold and says to him, “You know something?”

It seems Jay’s about to utter, “That’s the best damn switcheroo I ever saw!” But he doesn’t do it. Instead, as the noise abates, he says it’s a good time to go to a break.

The band plows into a funk riff, under the applause, and the show cuts to commercial.

The sea has parted. The consecration has been performed.

The ax felled the tree in the forest, and everyone heard it.

Marshall McLuhan rolled over in his grave, sat up, grinned, lit a cigar, and sipped a little brandy.

After the commercials, in the next six-minute segment, Jay and Arnold attain a few more highs of audience madness.

High one: Arnold mentions that 1.6 million Californians have signed the recall petition and are saying, “We are mad as hell and we are not going to take it anymore!” Wowee.

No one notices or remembers this line was made massively famous in Network, the bitter satire on news as entertainment.

Is it remotely possible Arnold recalls the 1976 Paddy Chayefsky film and its newsman, Howard Beale, who survives a ratings dive by delivering a delirious populist message on air, and becomes, for a short time, the most revered man in America?

Is it possible Arnold knows the TV network portrayed in the film gave its news division to its entertainment division—exactly what’s transpiring right there, for the moment, on The Tonight Show?

High two: Arnold clarifies his message to all politicians everywhere. “Do your job for the people and do it well, or otherwise you’re out. Hasta la vista, baby!” Zowee.

High three: After telling the crowd they all know Gray Davis can run a dirty campaign “better than anyone”—and that Davis has been selling off pieces of California to special interests—Arnold says with conviction and confidence, “I do not have to bow to any special interests; I have plenty of money; no one can pay me off; trust me, no one.” Audience hysteria. They love that he’s rich.

High four: Arnold says of Davis, “Everyone knows this man has to go!” Huge roar.

High five: Arnold plays a final pun card. “I will pump up Sacramento!” Yet another roar.

The band takes it out with more funk. Jay stands up and goes over and hugs Arnold, in profile, near his desk, and follows him closely toward an exit at stage left. Jay starts to whisper something in Arnold’s ear, but pulls back and smiles and, still on camera, applauds Arnold along with the audience.

It’s show biz in a bottle. Jay, Arnold, the crowd, the band, bouncing off one another and yielding the effect of absolute (synthetic) thrill.

The Tonight Show provided the moment for a globally famous actor to decide to run for office in the same state where the show originates. In the entertainment capital of the world. In front of the clear prime-cut admiration of the host.

And the studio audience, that specialized creature from whose maw instant credibility can be coaxed and birthed in seconds—was very, very ready to go. All along.

Imagine an advance man pre-selling this kind of PR stunt:

“I know a guy who can introduce your message to the softest, wildest, water-cooler crowd this side of paradise.”

“Oh yeah? How big a crowd?”

“Only a thousand or two. But they’re instantly hooked up to, say, ten million people in the target area. It’s as infectious as Ebola.”

“Come on.”

“And that’s not all. I’ve got a host for that softest, wildest audience, and he has the whole world in the palm of his hand. When he exposes your message—for the first time anywhere—and when his audience goes nuts with glee, nothing will stand in your way. Your opponents will go down like bowling pins.”

“Too good to be true.”

“Wrong. And let me point out what I’m saving you from. If you tried to launch your message at a shopping center or a press club or a hotel ballroom or construction site or on a movie-studio sound stage, you could get laughed right out of town. Really. Because, let’s face it, you do have a pretty vapid message when you boil it down. You need a unique venue, where the joke and the camp and the craziness are all folded into the event itself, and the shock and surprise and hoopla are integrated. You need an audience that celebrates bad and good jokes as all good, and the host has the ability to marry up every shred of this bizarre happening and take his crowd to orgasm.”

“And the contagion factor?”

“The audience in the television studio and the viewing audience at home are One. My boy, what stuns and delights the former incorporates itself into the living cells of the latter. The home audience is terrified of being left out. The host and his in-studio crowd give instant universal legitimacy to the moment. Believe me, it’s irresistible.”

“Like that McLuhan thing. The audience becomes the actor.”

“Precisely.”

That is how it happened. That is how Arnold Schwarzenegger obtained his billion-dollar ad on Jay Leno, on August 6, 2003, and that was when he won the recall election. There was no counter-strategy for it.

Governor Gray Davis was left out in the cold.

The announcement of Arnold’s candidacy was the end of the election.

In the aftermath, media pundits did not punch up this piece of mind control with any serious heat; nor did they immediately seek a heavy investigation of NBC’s ethics in allowing the Leno-Arnold event to take place.

The Tonight Show was a perfect killing ground: Arnold, the earnest and powerful and Germanically jolly and occasionally self-deprecating soul, aware of the comic-book component of his success; Jay, the jokester, who can work as a homer and straight man at the drop of a hat; and Jay’s audience, willingly propelled into the late-night nexus of “we’ll laugh so hard at any old damn thing we’ll make a cosmic celebration out of it.”

Something out of nothing.

GE (then the owner of NBC): “We bring good things to life.”

An election campaign message was passed, hand to hand, mind to mind, adrenal gland to adrenal gland, from a concocted, groomed, cultivated, prepackaged television studio audience to every voter-district in California, and out to the whole world.

When people show up in the studio to see Leno in person, they soon understand the game. They’re not just there as happy onlookers. They’re drawn into the process. They’re offered a trade-off.

If they become active shills for the show right there in the studio, they’ll become part of the story. They’ll attain new status. Their laughs and squeals and shrieks and rebound guffaws, their revved-up salvational applause, at those moments when a guest segment or a joke is falling flat, will provide key segue and filler and affirmation and speed candy for the larger audience at home. It’s a group collaboration.

Who cares—except when a fading movie action hero suddenly says he’s going to take over the reins of California?

In the television studio, and in millions of homes, the audience roared and helped Arnold go for his coronation. They experienced a reasonable facsimile of emotional torque and busted a move that showered sparks around Arnold’s head and pushed him through a porthole into an ozone that just might have been the closest thing they’d ever find to immortality.

On October 10, three days after Arnold scored number one in the recall vote count, The NY Times ran a piece by Bill Carter headlined, “NBC Supports the Politically Partisan Leno.”

But Carter’s story was merely about Jay, on the night of October 7, taking the stage in Los Angeles to introduce Arnold as the recall election winner.

THIS was the issue? This was the barrier that Leno had crossed? Carter mentioned nothing about those 12 minutes on August 6th, on The Tonight Show, when Arnold announced he was running and thereby sewed up the election.

Jeff Zucker, then the head of entertainment at NBC (NOW THE BOSS AT CNN), told Carter he was aware Jay was going to introduce Arnold at the victory celebration. “I did not and do not have a problem with it,” he said.

Zucker noted that Jay was a private citizen with all the accruing rights of same.

Not a word from Zucker either, about the propriety of Leno hosting Arnold’s campaign launch on August 6, on The Tonight Show.

The Studio Audience, on the night of August 6, 2003, fingered and chose and elected a governor of California.

Jay Leno has gone on to thousands of other jokes.

But he’ll never forget that one.

And neither will Zucker.

He helped elect Arnold. And he made Trump a global star of the first magnitude on The Apprentice, and thereby helped him win the presidency.

If you like interesting coincidences, both the Leno Moment and launch of The Apprentice happened in 2004. And when Donald Trump left The Apprentice in 2015, who took over as the host?

Arnold Schwarzenegger, of course.

Read More At: JonRappoport.wordpress.com
_______________________________________________________________

Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29^th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here

More Russia Sanctions From The US = Deteriorating Relations With…

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 19, 2017

A few days ago I blogged (finally!) about my long-held suspicions that the USA was waging some sort of quiet economic warfare against Germany. It’s a suspicion I’ve had for some time, and even on occasion discussed it in private with various colleagues. Certainly there is something going on, given the strange “German” presence on the fringes of some well-known and tragic events. Consider only the presence of Andreas Strassmeir in the Oklahoma City Bombing, or the strange German connections in the 9/11 event(notice I’m carefully avoiding JFK). Since then, we’ve seen various fines levied against Germany’s, and Europe’s, largest bank, Deutsche Bank, in an almost steady stream, to the point one almost begins to ask “How much will Deutsche Bank be fined by the USA this week?” Then, of course, we’ve also seen various fines imposed against German automakers, and so on.

Then came the Ukrainian mess, the US-sponsored-and-led coup, the Russian reaction, and a strange set of behavior from Chancellorin Merkel, who seemed initially to be all for the Ukrainian adventure of the USA, until it became apparent that Germany wasn’t going to profit very much from the results. Then she “took charge” and attempted to negotiate directly with Mr. Putin, taking her vice-chancellor, Monsieur Hollande, in two to make it look all “trans-European” and “international”.

While all that was going on, Frau Merkel was publicly all aboard with the sanctions against Russia, notwithstanding it hurt Germany’s economy, and in the meantime, she continued to press ahead with energy pipelines with Russia, while German Laender politicians made their way to Moscow, defying Berlin, to reassure the Russians that they wanted to return to “normal”(meaning, no sanctions), and this was followed by similar assurances from German big business.

But more recently, things seem to be breaking out into the open in a much more blatant fashion, for Germany at least, seems unwilling to soft-peddle the matter anymore: Frau Merkel has come out recently and stated that the UK and USA are no longer “reliable allies” and, never one to let slip an opportunity to call for more “Europeanism”, has called for more effort on defense, not only from EU members (like her own country) but from the EU itself.

The US Senate last week passed a new bill, imposing more sanctions on Russia and hand-tying the Trump administration from relaxing any sanction without Senate approval; only senators Rand Paul(R-Kentucky) and Bernie Sanders (D-Vermont) voted against the measure.

But sanctions against Russia are also impositions on Germany, and something tells me that Germany will not act to impose similar measures as the U.S. Senate. The following article from Zero Hedge, shared by Mr. H.B., says why:

Germany, Austria Slam US Sanctions Against Russia, Warn Of Collapse In Relations

The first four paragraphs are worth pondering carefully:

Less than a day after the Senate overwhelmingly voted to impose new sanctions against the Kremlin, on Thursday Germany and Austria – two of Russia’s biggest energy clients in Europe – slammed the latest U.S. sanctions against Moscow, saying they could affect European businesses involved in piping in Russian natural gas.

Shortly after the Senate voted Wednesday to slap new sanctions on key sectors of Russia’s economy over “interference in the 2016 U.S. elections” and aggression in Syria and Ukraine, in a joint statement Austria’s Chancellor Christian Kern and Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel said it appeared that the Senate bill was aimed at securing US energy jobs and pushing out Russian gas deliveries to Europe.

Gabriel and Kern also accused the U.S. of having ulterior motives in seeking to enforce the energy blockade, which they said is trying to help American natural gas suppliers at the expense of their Russian rivals. And they warned the threat of fining European companies participating in the Nord Stream 2 project “introduces a completely new, very negative dimension into European-American relations.”

In their forceful appeal, the two officials urged the United States to back off from linking the situation in Ukraine to the question of who can sell gas to Europe. “Europe’s energy supply is a matter for Europe, and not for the United States of America,” Kern and Gabriel said. The reason why Europe is angry Some Eastern European countries, including Poland and Ukraine, fear the loss of transit revenue if Russian gas supplies don’t pass through their territory anymore once the new pipeline is built.

While the diplomats said that it was important for Europe and the US to form a united front on the issue of Ukraine, “we can’t accept the threat of illegal and extraterritorial sanctions against European companies,” the two officials warned citing a section of the bill that calls for the United States to continue to oppose the Nord Stream 2 pipeline that would pump Russian gas to Germany beneath the Baltic Sea.

Looked at from the context of my hypothesis that some sort of covert war has been taking place between the USA and Germany, the Senate measure is as much as a levying on sanctions on Germany as it is on Russia, and can be viewed – from a much longer historical perspective – as the continuation of British policy, first enunciated by Halford MacKinder, to prevent any alliance of German industry with Russian resources, the “nightmare scenario” of the late nineteenth early-twentieth century geopoliticians. Indeed, I am not the only one thinking and seeing things this way, for the Austrian Chancellor and German Foreign Minister have said as much when they stated “We can’t accept the threat of illegal and extraterritorial sanctions against European companies.”

In other words, Europe may have just signaled that the days of Washington imposing economic policies on everyone else are over.

Washington’s heavy-handedness with Russia, coupling the sanctions to the Ukraine, is having diametrically the opposite geopolitical effect than what is needed: it is driving Germany, and hence Europe, away, and this is geopolitical folly of a very high order: if the current BRICSA Bloc – India, China, Russia in particular – is a bloc we need to be cautious about, adding Germany and Europe to that mix is geopolitical and economic suicide, for it’s the creation of a unipolar bloc that the USA simply cannot oppose. Then, for good measure, add Japan to that mix, and one sees that current American foreign policy is living in a world of Brezinskian folly, which we may define as geopolitical make believe. We are driving our most powerful allies away, and replacing them with…

…well, no one.

On this one, the Trump Administration’s stance makes much more long term geopolitical sense; it’s time to quit demonizing Russia, because whether we like it or not, Russia is a key pivot point in the current geopolitical situation. We may never be friends, but to keep slamming the door in Russia’s face serves no one, and the Germans are well aware of it

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Thierry Meyssan On The Revolution Against Political Islam

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 17, 2017

Regular readers here know two things about my attitude toward Islam: (1) I am definitely not friendly to its doctrine, and (2) I definitely do not believe every last Muslim of the world’s billion-plus Muslims are out to “get” everyone else. From my viewpoint, the history of that ideology, especially in the twentieth century, has been one long frustration – usually by the imperial powers of the West, and particularly by Great Britain and Imperial (and later, Nazi) Germany – of the indigenous attempts of those within Islam to reform the religion and the culture. Indeed, for the German contribution to this sad story, one can read my The Third Way.

Which makes the following article by Thierry Meyssan, notwithstanding its glaring inaccuracies concerning early Christian history, all the more important, for as I mentioned in the previous week’s News and Views, Meyssan’s hypothesis is that Mr. Trump’s recent visit and arms deal with Saudi Arabia is about more than just continuing the same old pattern of support of a royal-clerical state. The deal, Meyssan contends, could not have been made without commitments from the Middle Eastern nations involved, and particularly Saudi Arabia, to move away from “political Islam” and support of radical groups like the Brotherhood:

A wind of secularism blows over the Muslim world

Behind the hypothesis, however, Meyssan is also implying that there is a fundamental break between London – which in his view continues to support “political Islam” – and the Trump Administration, which he contends is trying to lead an initiative to break from prior policy of tacit support and funding of such groups and the states that support them:

We know today that the « Arab Springs » were a British initiative aimed at putting the Muslim Brotherhood in power and thus reinforcing Anglo-Saxon domination over the « Greater Middle East ».

For 16 years, the Western powers have been rightfully accusing the Muslims of not cleaning up their own house, and of tolerating terrorists. However, it is clear today that these terrorists are supported by the same Western powers in order to enslave Muslims by means of « political Islam ». London, Washington and Paris have no problems with terrorism until it spills over from the « Greater Middle East », and they never criticise « political Islam », at least as far as the Sunnis are concerned.

By giving his speech in Riyadhh, on 21 May 2017, President Trump intended to put an end to the terrorism which is consuming the region, and is now spreading to the West. The words he spoke did indeed act as an electroshock. His speech was interpreted as an authorisation to finish with the system.

What resulted, according to Meyssan, was something akin to uncorking a bottle that had been living under pressure for centuries, and now, with the bottle uncorked, the result cannot be undone:

What had seemed unthinkable over the last few centuries suddenly took shape. Saudi Arabia agreed to cut off all contact with the Muslim Brotherhood, and raged against those who continue to pursue their collaboration with the British, and particularly against Qatar. Riyadh gave the signal for a cleansing which will sweep much frustration along with it. In a spirit of Bedouin vengeance, diplomatic relations have been interrupted, and an economic blockade was organised against the Qatari population – while in the Emirates, a sentence of 15 years of imprisonment was established by law for any individual who showed as much as a little compassion for the inhabitants of accursed Qatar.

A gigantic displacement of forces and alliances has begun. If this movement is to continue, the region will organise itself around a new fissure. The question of the struggle against imperialism will wither and give way to the struggle against clericalism.

And this has led to a corrresponding “outburst” of editorials:

In two weeks, the Arab Press, which until now had viewed the Muslim Brotherhood in a favourable light, as a powerful secret organisation, and jihadism as a legitimate engagement, has suddenly made an about-turn. Everywhere, everyone is publishing denunciations of the pretension of the Muslim Brotherhood who want to regulate people’s lives, and the cruel folly of jihadism.

This flood of commentaries, the centuries of frustration that they express, coupled with their violence, makes any back-pedalling impossible – which does not, however, mean that the alliance Iran-Qatar-Turkey-Hamas will go all the way. This revolutionary tsunami is happening in the middle of the month of Ramadan. Meetings between friends and families, which should be consensual celebrations, sometimes turn into arguments about what until now had been perceived as the basic truths of Islam.

As Meyssan goes on to observe, even Iran’s Revolutionary Guard harbors simmering resentments against the ayatollahs governing the country.

We then get a bit of complete nonsense regarding Christian history, which Meyssan assumes – like so many – was completely “clergy-less” in its early years:

Like original Christianity, which had no ministers (these only arrived in the 3rd century), original Islam and current Sunnism have none. Only Chiism has been structured like Catholicism and Orthodoxy. As a result, political Islam today is incarnated by the Muslim Brotherhood and the government of Sheikh Rohani (the title of Shiekh indicates that President Rohani is a member of the Chiite clergy).

If so, Christianity would be almost unique among world religions, especially from that part of the world, in not having any clergy; after all, it was an offspring of Judaism, and Judaism certainly had a clergy, and the rabbinate could be taken to be a kind of ministry in lieu of the ancient Hebrew priesthood. In any case, the Epistles of St. Ignatius of Antioch would certainly stand as a pre-third century witness to the fact that early Christianity was not the clergy-less paradise that so many think it was; it was, on the contrary, very hierarchical and very sacramental. Additionally, Meyssan makes more of Pope Paul VI’s dropping the use of the papal tiara – symbol of papal claims and authority – than should be: for while the symbol was dropped, the claims were not. Indeed, when one reads the documents of the Second Vatican Council, amid all the modern-sounding verbiage, those sections dealing with the papacy itself read very much like the “old fashioned” language of Innocent III, of Pius IX and Vatican One: there was no diminution of claims whatsoever. In short: the tiara could return tomorrow, because what it symbolizes – the claims themselves – are still there.

But enough of that, for beyond this, Meyssan’s view is worth pondering, for it carries some implications, some of which, Meyssan contends, are already happening:

Meanwhile, the whole region is buzzing – in Libya, the Muslim Brotherhood have left Tripoli, leaving a militia to liberate Saif el-Islam Kadhafi, and General Haftar to expand his influence. In Egypt, the General-President al-Sissi has asked his opposite numbers in the Gulf to draw up a list of terrorists. In Palestine, the political directors of Hamas have fled to Iran. In Syria, the jihadists have stopped fighting against the Republic and are awaiting orders. In Iraq, the army has redoubled its efforts against the Muslim Brotherhood and the Order of the Naqshbandis. In Saudi Arabia, the Muslim World League has excluded from its administrative council the Brotherhood’s star preacher, Sheikh Qaradawi. And Turkey and Pakistan have begun the transfer of tens of thousands of soldiers towards Qatar -which can now only feed itself with the help of Iran.

A new dawn seems to be rising over the region.

But assuming he is correct in his diagnosis, there are also some implications for the west, not the least is the cleavage between Washington and London, and this is where it could get interesting, for one implication of his analysis is that the Trump Administration has broken with prior British and American policy in a major way, and in so breaking, has broken with those factions within the American deep state that have been cooperating and to a certain extent leading and orchestrating the prior policy, including the tacit and very covert financial support of the same radical groups. We call them “neo-cons” or “neo-libs”, and they have been running American foreign policy since at least the Clinton Administration, with roots in that of the G.H.W. Bush administration. On this view, Mr. Trump has set the fox loose in the henhouse, and if it portends major changes in the Middle East, and a renewed commitment to American allies there such as Saudi Arabia, it also portends a major shuffling in the “deep state”. Time will tell if this effort will bear fruit.

And that means a long term effort will have to be sustained, for the nature of the change Mr. Meyssan is suggesting will be long term in nature, with bumps and fits along the way. What to look for? I suggest that if Mr. Meyssan’s analysis is correct, then the response of such nations like Indonesia, a predominantly secular Muslim state, will be crucial to watch, for that nation is undergoing its own internal struggles against “political Islam”. How such nations respond to this, how the Saudis respond to this, will be crucial in order for Mr. Trump’s initiative to work.

See you on the flip side…
Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

What’s Up With Qatar?

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 14, 2017

Last week one of the most significant stories was the sudden break, or rather, apparently sudden break, of diplomatic relations between Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, on the one hand, and Qatar on the other. In fact, Mr. J.D. and H.B. began what became a trend of people sharing the following articles with me:

Saudi Arabia, Egypt, UAE, & Bahrain Cut Diplomatic Ties, Shut All Borders With Qatar

Gulf plunged into diplomatic crisis as countries cut ties with Qatar

If one looks at the Guardian article for a moment, it would appear that at one level, Saudi Arabia is in fact trying to take steps to minimize and distance itself from its hitherto traditional support for Islamic terrorist groups, in this case, the usual cast of characters, the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, the Islamic state:

The small but very wealthy nation, the richest in the world per capita, was also expelled from a Saudi-led coalition fighting in Yemen.

The coordinated move dramatically escalates a dispute over Qatar’s support of Islamist movements, including the Muslim Brotherhood, and its perceived tolerance of Saudi Arabia’s arch-rival, Iran. The dispute is the worst to hit the Gulf since the formation of the Gulf Co-operation Council in 1981.

Qatar’s foreign affairs ministry said the measures were unjustified and based on false claims and assumptions. As the Qatari stock market tumbled and oil prices rose, it accused its fellow Gulf states of violating its sovereignty.

“The state of Qatar has been subjected to a campaign of lies that have reached the point of complete fabrication,” a statement said. “It reveals a hidden plan to undermine the state of Qatar.”

Saudi Arabia said it took the decision to cut diplomatic ties owing to Qatar’s “embrace of various terrorist and sectarian groups aimed at destabilising the region”, including the Muslim Brotherhood, al-Qaida, Islamic State and groups supported by Iran in Saudi Arabia’s restive eastern province of Qatif.

Of course, behind this, there is the usual and to-be-expected reference to Iran and Iranian state-supported terrorism and groups. Qatar, though a Suni state, has been more “tolerant” of Shia Iran than Saudi Arabia would like.

If one were to stop there, one would have the impression that this is the usual Suni-Shia split manifesting itself once again, which of course, in a way, it is. But there are deeper players and stories lurking behind the scenes, and many people, when this story broke, were kind enough to to go digging and share their results. For example, Ms. K.M. found this story in Russia’s Sputnik, and its implications, if one reads between the lines a bit, are stunning:

The Dead Sea to Strengthen China’s Geopolitical Presence in the Middle East

Note the following statement; the implications will immediately be apparent:

China is a footstep away from winning the tender for Phase 1 of the Middle Eastern ‘Red-Dead’ water project, launched by Israel, Jordan and the Palestinian Authority. Israeli and Chinese experts have commented to Sputnik on how it could help Beijing to strengthen its presence in the region.

China National Technical Import and Export Corp. has been shortlisted for Phase 1 of the “Red-Dead” water project launched by Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Authority. The other four finalists are Hong Kong’s Hutchison Water International Holdings, South Korean Korea Water Resources Corp., Japan-based Mitsubishi Corp. and France’s Suez International SAS. The results of the tender are to be announced by the end of June. (Emphasis in the original)

Some time ago I blogged about the fact that Middle Eastern stability was a necessary component for China’s various Silk Road Projects to work. Of course, China is not so stupid as to place all of its chips in the perpetually risky Middle East. It is pursuing other silk road projects through central Asia and, of course, through its ally, Russia, much further to the north.

What’s notable here is that China is dealing directly with two of the more stable nations in the region, Israel, and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, as well as the Palestinian Authority, for developing water resources. I am not, frankly, surprised that Jordan would court the Chinese. I am much more intrigued by Israel also apparently putting a Chinese firm on its short list for development, for a very simple reason: in the wake of the Paris summit, and last year’s Brexit vote, German Chancellor Angela Merkel voiced what may be the quiet whispers in other corridors of power: the USA and UK have become “unrealiable” allies, and hence, Germany and Europe must assume a much more independent course. Now it appears that Tel Aviv is voicing similar concerns, though not so much in words as in deeds.

So how does this relate to the recent diplomatic developments with Qatar?

For one thing, I have no doubts the initiative originated in Riyadh. The real question is why?

Answer: it seems that, beyond Qatar’s more open attitude toward Iran, there is something else in play, according to this article spooted by Mr. B:

Note, Mr. G. informed me in the accompanying email, the following:

Russia says 386 agreements for around 2 trillion rubles ($35.32 billion) were signed at a recent economic forum.

Representatives of business, international organizations and experts from more than 143 countries attended the gathering, Presidential adviser Anton Kobyakov said at a press conference on the results of the SPIEF-2017.

SPIEF is an annual Kremlin-run, high-profile gathering of business and political figures.

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi attended the event this year with India being the “guest country” of SPIEF-2017. Qatar announced its intention to be the guest country next year.
(Emphasis added)

In other words, Qatar was making moves to become associated with the BRICSA bloc, and therefore, a participant at some stage in the Silk Road Project, and this, of course, would have expanded Iran’s influence in the region.

What might come of this? The Saudis, again, may have stepped into a bear trap from which they cannot disentangle themselves, for all it will take, at this juncture, to compound their difficulties, is for China and/or Russia to extend humanitarian aide to that tiny country, and perhaps some “military advisors”, in return for a seat at the table. That, of course, would be a risky venture, but seemingly no less risky than the new Riyadh unipolarism that seems to be emerging. And in this light, one has to wonder whether or not the whole Qatar venture was even floated – much less green-lighted – in Washington or London. There are of course many reasons to assume and argue that it was, for the action gives a context for the recent Trump-Saudi arms deal. Time will tell, of course, whether that supposition is true. But I cannot help but entertain the notion or hypothesis that it might not have been. London’s and Washington’s foreknowledge of such a break is not the same thing as green-lighting or even discussing it. And if indeed the Saudis initiated the action on their own, then they might have just been sucker-punched. I cannot, even while entertaining that high octane speculation, imagine that either London or Washington view the alternative – growing Chinese and Iranian influence in the region – with anything but a jaundiced eye.

But note, for the record, that the really odd man out in all these goings on, is Tel Aviv, and they, not Riyadh, will ultimately set the tone.

And notably, they’re talking to, rather than confronting, the Chinese.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Is There A Quiet War Going On Between USA & Germany? [Part 1]

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 8, 2017

I’ve had this suspicion for some time that some sort of quiet war, punctuated – or perhaps better put, underscored – at times by apparent “new depths of cooperation” between Germany and the USA. And, for “Germany” here one might also say, to some extent, continental Europe.

Now, before I go any further, I need to remind people of some fundamental truths: (1) since 1871, and for the foreseeable future, Germany has been and will continue to be the economic and industrial locomotive of Europe, and that can be (and has been) translated at times into military power (q.v. World War One, and World War Two); (2) German war aims in both World Wars was the creation of a European federation under German dominance (that one seems to have worked out), and, coincidentally, the USA had a similar war aim in World War Two, and became a backer for the creation of the Common Market that led to today’s European Union; (3) Germans are not Nazis and not interested in conquering the world; (4) the current American political class, beginning ca. 1988 and continuing to now, is equally as irrational, kooky, and insane as the German political class, which remains irrational, kooky, and insane(q.v., Angela Merkel).

With that out of the way, we can return to my suspicion of some sort of quiet war being waged between the USA and Germany. It began as a suspicion in the aftermath of the Oklahoma City Bombing, with the appearance of Andreas Strassmeir in the circle of acquaintances of convicted alleged bomber Timothy McVeigh. (I saw “convicted alleged” because if you believe in the ANFO bomb theory, then you probably also believe in the magic bullet and unicorns). Strassmeir had been “security chief” to an American white supremacist militia group, who was under FBI suspicion for a role in the bombing, who disappeared, and later turned up in Berlin, where he gave a brief statement to the press at the home of his father, Gunther Strassmeir, who just happened to be then-Chancellor Kohl’s minister-without-portfolio for German reunification. Strassmeir, in other words, was “connected.” Oh, by the way, he was also a graduate of the Hannover military academy and a captain in the German army. Some believe he was in this country in some role as a member of German intelligence, perhaps on loan to the FBI. In support of that allegation, it is believed that Strassmeir was assisted in leaving the USA – during the height of a nation-wide manhunt for him – by the elite German commando and counter-terrorism team, the GSG-9.

Then of course, there are the well known – and very strange – shorts and puts on the US stock markets in the days immediately prior to 9/11, many of them made through – you guessed it – Deutsche Bank-affiliated corporation Alex Brown. Deutsche Bank itself suffered strange cyber infiltration just seconds before the Twin Towers were struck. And, as I’ve pointed out in my book Hidden Finance, Rogue Networks, and Secret Sorcery, there is a strange and little known connection of Mohammad Atta, alleged “chief hijacker” of 9/11, to various German connections, his stay in Hamburg, and even a connection between the Bin Ladens, and Deutsche Bank, by a notorious and allegedly pro-Nazi Swiss banker.

Since 9/11, there have been strange actions on the part of the US government, not the least of which was President – then candidate – Obama’s speech in Berlin to wild ovations. This was followed, during his administration, by fines and lawsuits against Deutsche Bank, fines and allegations for environmental violations on the part of German automakers, and, most recently, charges against and fines Deutsche Bank for money laundering. Of course, none of this is connected in the reporting of the stories as being connected to Oklahoma City or to 9/11, but I suspect they are. (See this Reuters article shared by Mr. S.D. Fed fines Deutsche Bank for anti-money laundering failures.)

Now, I don’t know about you, but this seems to me to be a little “selective”, for I have difficulty believing that Deutsche Bank is the only major banking multinational engaged in money laundering. I suspect many big American banking giants are equally complicit, and the same would hold true for major banks in France, the UK, Italy, Japan, and so on. But no, for some reason, Deutsche Bank seems to be at the top of the list.

But now, it seems to have escalated to a war of words between the German Chancellorin, Angela Merkel, and US President Donald Trump. And Merkel is making her, and Germany’s, and Europe’s, position very clear (this article shared by Ms. B.Z.):

Merkel warns US, Britain no longer reliable partners

(For a more “anti-German” and prejudicial analysis, see Germany’s Merkel Says Europe Can’t Rely Upon Great Britain and American Anymore This article was noticed and shared by Mr.H.B.)

The language here is extraordinarily strong, and, indeed (take note) a first for post-war German chancellors:

Europe “must take its fate into its own hands” faced with a western alliance divided by Brexit and Donald Trump’s presidency, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said Sunday.

“The times in which we could completely depend on others are on the way out. I’ve experienced that in the last few days,” Merkel told a crowd at an election rally in Munich, southern Germany.

“We Europeans truly have to take our fate into our own hands,” she added.

Let us back up and recall something I’ve been maintaining for about seven years: the USA has been quietly playing a dangerous geopolitical game in Eastern Europe and the Ukraine, by basing American troops progressively more eastward, in Romania, Poland, and the Baltic states, positioning them between Germany and Russia. Thus, while most analysts have been viewing these moves as “anti-Russian”, I view them as equally “anti-German” in that these movements and deployments were and are meant in my opinion to keep Berlin and Moscow apart, and to make economic coordination between the two European powers – the two most powerful European powers – more difficult if not impossible. It also not only puts pressure on Russia in the Ukraine, it equally denies a more “muscular” German influence in the Ukraine by breaking the direct land link through Eastern Europe.

Merkel’s response to this was to bring her vice chancellor(as Marine Le Pen liked to call him), Francois Hollande with her to try to negotiate an end to the Ukrainian mess directly with Mr. Putin. Equally, after those moves, we also recall then Foreign Minister Steinmeir’s address in Berlin to German businessmen that Germany’s foreign policy was going to have to become much more independent and military, and I suspected then, and continue to suspect now, that the backdrop for his remarks were precisely these American moves in eastern Europe.

The bottom line: Bundeskanzlerin Merkel is not simply “reacting” to Mr. Trump. The geopolitical and economic reality is that Germany was turning east long before the recent G-7 meeting or Mr. Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris accords.

To put this as plainly as possible: the Merkel government was handed a crisis of opportunity, and Frau Merkel is playing it for all it is worth, setting very long term policy goals into place because of it.

Just what all this may mean will have to wait for tomorrow…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

About Dr. Joseph P. Farrell

Why Did Pope Benedict XVI Resign?

Banksters
Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 4, 2017

That question has been hovering in the background of European geopolitics ever since he did it, and one Italian geopolitician and strategist, Germano Dottori, thinks he has an answer, according to this article shared this week by Mr. G.P.:

https://onepeterfive.com/italian-geo-strategist-fuels-debate-over-pope-benedicts-resignation/

The essence of Signor Dottori’s argument is this:

The conflicts between the Church and the United States did not become less, even with the passing of John Paul II. They instead continued during the pontificate of Pope Ratzinger, in the course of which, what exacerbated them was not only the [policy and strategic] investment made by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the political Islam of the Muslim Brotherhood during the so-called Arab Spring, but also the firm desire of Benedict XVI to achieve an historic reconciliation with the Patriarchate of Moscow [under Patriarch Kirill], the true and proper religious coronation of a geopolitical project of Euro-Russian integration, which were in his intentions strongly supported by Germany and also by Silvio Berlusconi’s Italy – but not by that more American-friendly one [Italy], which is to be recognized in Giorgio Napolitano [Italian President, 2006-2015].

How it has come to an end is well-known to everyone. The Italian and papal governments were simultaneously hit by a scandalous, coordinated, and unusually violent and unprecedented campaign, even involving more or less opaque maneuvers in the financial field, with the final effect coming to a head in November 2011 with Berlusconi’s departure from the Palazzo Chigi and, on February 10 [sic – 11], 2013, the abdication of Ratzinger. At the height of the crisis, Italy progressively saw its access to international financial markets closed, while the Institute for Religious Works (IOR) [the Vatican Bank] was temporarily cut out of the Swift 4 circuit.

Note the implied claims:

(1) the Vatican, with Germany’s blessing (Ratzinger was, after all, the first German pope in about six hundred years), was pursuing a closer relationship with Eastern Orthodoxy, principally through Patriarch Kiril III;

(2) This was apparently being done in conjunction to create a “Eurasian integration”, which apparently was emphasizing the cultural basis of that integration in a common Catholic heritage;

(3) the Vatican and Italy were both hit by “a scandalous, coordinated, and unusually violent and unprecedented campaign,” which we may assume is “code” for the pedophilia scandals rocking Ratzinger’s pontificate. Dottori is clearly suggesting this emanated from the circles of western power. (At this juncture, one has to pause, and mention another possibility: with the pedophilia scandals erupting around western leaders, and the arrests in this country and others associated with it, that possibility emerges from the fact that, a few years ago, when one said “pedophilia rings” one thought of the Vatican, and, to a lesser extent, other churches. Now, however, there has been an interesting shift of perception, for when one says “pedophilia rings” one thinks of corrupt, and largely secular, western politicians. This may indicate a covert counter-operation emanating from the Vatican.)

(4) This campaign was also coordinated with a campaign to strip the Vatican of its access to international financial markets.

We can recall much corroboration of these suggestions, in that shortly after the beginning of his pontificate, Jorge Cardinal Bergolio (Francis I) began to attempt to clean up (yet again) the operations of the Vatican Bank, even going so far as to appoint the same auditor for it as for the Bank of International Settlements and, reportedly, Lloyd’s of London. In short, Bergolio’s efforts appear to cave to the pressures being exerted by the West and the USA.

It’s that first point, however, that seems to have been much more important than meets the eye:

Here an Italian expert in geo-strategic studies thus claims that both the Italian government under Berlusconi and the papacy of Benedict XVI were toppled due to financial maneuvers that put both states in jeopardy. Alessandro Rico published, on 17 May, an article entitled “Ratzinger costretto ad abdicare dal ricatto di Obama” (“Ratzinger Forced to Abdicate Due to Obama’s Blackmail”) in the Italian newspaper La Verità – a publication which has no inclination toward traditional Catholicism at all, but, rather, sharply rebukes traditional and conservative Catholics in that same 17 May issue (as Giuseppe Nardi points out). Rico himself puts the Dottori statement in context with the 20 January 2017 Open Letter to President Trump, published by the traditional Catholic newspaper The Remnant, which called for an investigation into a possible U.S. intervention against Pope Benedict XVI. As Rico points out, Pope Benedict at the time stood in opposition to President Obama’s collaboration with the Muslim Brotherhood, especially with the pope’s Regensburg address in which he criticized Islamist fundamentalism. The U.S., as Rico along with Dottori explains, was not in favor of a papal rapprochement with the Patriarch of Moscow which could further support a European rapprochement with Russia. A partial basis for this desired rapprochement could also be a rejection of the moral relativism of the West.

When speaking about the financial pressure that was, in 2013, put on the Vatican by excluding the Papal State from the SWIFT system – which interrupted the credit card payments in the Vatican City, and thus in the Vatican museums – Rico also recalls: “Strangely, this [SWIFT] function was re-established immediately after the resignation of Benedict XVI.” (Bold-italics emphasis added)

In other words, American policy was deliberately attempting to forestall the formation of what can only be called a “Christian bloc.” If this seems farfetched, one should recall that Russia, prior to the Soviet era, played precisely this role in European and world geopolitics, as the protector of Orthodox Christians. The Vatican exercised this role through proxy states, most recently through Austria-Hungary, Italy, and various other Catholic regional powers.

“OK, so what?” one might think. “Where’s the high octane speculation?”

Well, brace yourselves, because it’s a whopper: note that the actions taken against the Vatican were (1) a pedophilia scandal and (2) a severing of access to international financial clearing in response to Ratzinger’s statements about fundamentalist Islam. (And at this juncture, please recall that Francis I has indicated that Christians do have the right of self-defense against Islamic terrorism, a point often lost in the shuffle). This suggests, as the Russians were similarly affected by threats of exclusion from SWIFT, to the point of developing their own domestic, and ultimately parallel system of international financial clearing, that the Vatican may have been attempting to do an end run around the Western Financial blackmail (denial of service, effectively, to SWIFT), and to gain access to the system(s) being built out by and in Russia. In short, this means the Vatican was attempting to gain access also to the space assets that make international clearing possible.

If this reading of the covert warfare taking place against the Vatican by Mr. Globaloney (and vice versa, if my reading of the pedophilia scandal having moved from the Vatican to western politicians is true), then what one is witnessing is a long-term strategy and goal of the Vatican, which, for the moment may be summarized in the following high octane speculation:

(1) Intermediate goal: Gain access to other systems of financial clearing that are independent of that of the West. For the moment, this means the systems being put into place by Russia and China and, to a lesser extent, existing Japanese capabilities in the Pacific (and for a historical note, do not forget that connection between Japan and the Vatican, via Emperor Hirohito who deposited some of the Golden Lily loot in the Vatican bank, according to Peggy and Sterling Seagraves in Gold Warriors);

(2) Longer term goal: use contacts thus gained to utilize (and perhaps finance) their space launch capacity to launch Vatican-owned communications satellites;

(3) Ultimate goal: build out an independent system of financial clearing by and for the Vatican and any allied churches.

If that high octane speculation is correct, then the USA and the Vatican are engaged in a covert war, just as are the USA and China and the rest of the BRICSA bloc, for those independent financial clearing systems, more than anything else, are a direct challenge to the US dollar reserve currency status.

(And as for the religious “rapprochement”, Orthodoxy’s position has always been clear, because conceptual/doctrinal content defines Orthodoxy, not institutional boundaries or adherence to supreme authorities claiming infallibility: if there is to be such an arrangement beyond mere ecumenical cooperation, then there must be a full return of Roman Catholicism to that conceptual content, and a jettisoning of all those doctrines added to Orthodoxy on the basis of papal authority alone. While this is not the place to elaborate on this, it is to be noted that the recent statements of Francis I and Kiril III focused, not on doctrinal differences and the departure of the Papacy from that tradition, but rather on areas of common cultural concern. This would seem to indicate that both churches perceive a very serious existential threat, perhaps exhibited by Benedict XVI’s remarks about Islamic fundamentalism which led, according to Dottori, to his resignation.)

There’s one more implication here: if indeed Ratzinger was forced to resign, i.e., resigned under duress, then a case might be made that the resignation is null and void… and that, of course, would be a scenario that would throw the papal church into a position it has not been in since the middle ages, and it may thus be the “high trump card” the plotters of the coup are holding over Bergolio.

Whatever one makes of these high octane speculations, this is definitely one to watch, because we have not heard the last of this story.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
________________________________________________

	13 Great Reasons To… on Book Review: A Different Kind…
	13 Great Reasons To… on How A Generation Lost Its Comm…
	13 Great Reasons To… on The Catastrophic Decline Of Pu…
	Richard Dolan – A Br… on Richard Dolan – A Breaka…
	A Breakaway Civiliza… on Richard Dolan – A Breaka…