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…

Bank Bailout In Italy & A Problem Looming Between The…

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 10, 2017

Mr J.K. sent this article about the bailout of Banco Monte dei Paschi di Sienna in Italy and some other banks, to the tune of a mere twenty-five and a half billion dollars, mere pocket change. But there’s something else looming in this article and it provokes some high octane speculation of the day. Here’s the article:

Italy swoops in to save another bank leaving taxpayers on the hook for over $25 billion

In my opinion, the central story here is not the bailout of troubled Venetian banks (some stories never change, do they?) but Italy’s, and Europe’s, and one of the world’s oldest, banks in continual operation since the Renaissance, the Banco Monte dei Paschi di Sienna, and one statement in particular caught my interest, and I suspect behind its careful “un-detailed” words lies a huge story which one might summarize with the word “cover-up”:

Finance Minister Pier Carlo Padoan announced late Tuesday that the government had received approval from the European Commission to pump 5.4 billion euros into Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena (BMPS) in exchange for the lender undertaking a major restructuring overhaul. (Emphasis added)

And, one paragraph away, there’s this:

Toxic assets are at the heart of the bank’s demise and its plan includes the intention to sell down 28.6 billion euros of gross non-performing loans (NPLs), of which 26.1 billion euros will be securitized (converted into marketable securities).

Toxic assets, non-performing loans, in a major western bank!?!?

So it isn’t so!

Then, later, we read this:

Indeed, there could also be an opportunity for brave investors, suggests Surry, if Italy follows the path trodden by Spain which has seen its banking sector shrink from around 70 lenders to closer to a dozen since the financial crisis.

“Potentially BMPS is a consolidation play because ultimately the bank will be clean and definitely there is consolidation to take place in Italy from the 400-plus institutions down to probably 150,” he offered.

So we have:

1) The bailout of Banco dei Paschi di Sienna;

2) Which received approval for a bailout in exchange for “restructuring” from the European Commission, which is now, apparently, in charge of what banks the Italian government gets to bail out, and the conditions under which it can do so;

3) Which restructuring presages a consolidation of lenders throughout the Italian banking system, resulting in fewer “lenders/banks”.

I don’t know about you, but gee, this pattern looks a little familiar.

There’s a great big huge elephant in the room, however, that the article is not talking about. In fact, one might say there’s not only an elephant, but a rhinoceros in the room. The elephant? Deutsche Bank and its relation to the Banco dei Paschi di Sienna, as covered in previous blogs on this site. And the rhinoceros? Italian prosecutions of the elephant.  Noteworthy here is the entire absence of any mention of either one throughout the entire article, and that raises my suspicion meter into the red zone, and with it, some unusual and very high octane speculations.

What disturbs me here is that any action by the European Commission in this matter should be viewed as a conflict of interest, since the EU is largely a Franco-German union, with everyone else along for the ride as Frau Merkel gets to play Charlemagne (or perhaps, Karlamagne, or Karlin or Kaiserin, or something), a role she clearly appears to be enjoying. But why would the European Commission have reason to step in? I suspect, strongly, that the real bank being protected here, and being bailed out, is Deutsche Bank and its own high exposure to “toxic assets”, some of them via its entanglement with the Banco dei Paschi, and that the “restructing” of the Banco dei Paschi di Sienna might, in reality, be an attempt to disguise things and prevent them from emerging into public light as Italy is openly debating leaving the European Union (Charlemagne, Inc., or perhaps better put, Charlemagne A.G.). If so, then a disturbing pattern is emerging here: using national banking crises, the European Commission is establishing the conditions to “restructure” national banking systems according to its own whims, and to make them subject to the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. In the process, more will be swept under the rug.

And that means the can is simply being kicked down the road, for they have no genuine solutions.

Let’s hope the Italians look at this whole thing much more closely.

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”.

Hobby Lobby Fined For Importing Stolen Artifacts

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
July 9, 2017

This week has been such an unusually fruitful week for articles being shared that, today, Saturday, I am still combing through them to decide on what to schedule for blogs this coming week! So I want to thank everyone once again for sharing so many good finds, making the choice of what to blog about more difficult and, in a way, more fun. Some of these articles I have in fact archived for next week, as I may yet blog about them.

But this story had to be at the top of the list. Indeed, when I saw it, there was no doubt in my mind that it was at the top of the “final cuts” folder. So many people found various versions of it that I knew there was something in the aether and that this story would require some attention. So I present some of those various versions that people found for your consideration, before I get to my high octane speculation about the story, with a thank you to all of you who shared these articles and who are following the story:

Hobby Lobby to pay $3 million fine, forfeit smuggled ancient artifacts

Hobby Lobby will pay $3 million, forfeit ancient items smuggled from Iraq

Justice Department sues Hobby Lobby over thousands of looted Iraqi artifacts it bought

Let’s begin with the last of these articles, which indicates that Israel and the United Arab Emirates were involved in the deal. What is unclear, of course, is whether the individuals and organizations that functioned as components of the deal were simply located in these countries, or whether they were actually members of their governments. For reasons I’ll get to in the high octane speculation, I suspect the latter.

Turning to the second article, we see a picture of a cuneiform tablet from the New York Times, with the caption “Pictured is a cuneiform tablet, one of several artifacts smuggled from Iraq by owners of Hobby Lobby.” Then we read:

Prosecutors said in the complaint that Hobby Lobby, whose evangelical Christian owners have long maintained an interest in the biblical Middle East, began in 2009 to assemble a collection of cultural artifacts from the Fertile Crescent. The company went so far as to send its president and an antiquities consultant to the United Arab Emirates to inspect a large number of rare cuneiform tablets — traditional clay slabs with wedge-shaped writing that originated in Mesopotamia thousands of years ago.

In 2010, as a deal for the tablets was being struck, an expert on cultural property law who had been hired by Hobby Lobby warned company executives that the artifacts might have been looted from historical sites in Iraq and that a failing to determine their heritage could break the law.

Despite these words of caution, the prosecutors said, Hobby Lobby bought more than 5,500 artifacts — the tablets and clay talismans and so-called cylinder seals — from an unnamed dealer for $1.6 million in December 2010.

Now, this really captured my attention, not for what it is saying, but rather, for what it seems to be carefully avoiding saying, namely, that these cuneiform tablets and cylinder seals might be some of the missing loot from the Baghdad Museum Looting, about which I have written in my books and blogged about. I have always been suspicious of the whole events for several reasons, and it’s worth recalling those reasons: (1) People dressed in American uniforms were seen by others going into the museum and removing things. Whether they were actually American soldiers or merely people dressed in American uniforms is a moot point. I have suspected the latter, and that the looting was a false flag, because (2) the story of the looting and people dressed in American uniforms was broken – as far as I am aware – by Germany’s Der Spiegel magazine, a point which puts a rather funny light on the whole event, for as I have pointed out numerous times, the French and Germans had several archaeological teams in Iraq at the behest of Saddam Hussein’s government, digging up the Iraqi desert. These teams would have kept field catalogues of their discoveries, including brief notes about the contents of any cuneiform tablets they unearthed. Of course, when the US and UK and its “allies” went into Iraq during operation Desert Storm, the French and Germans were advised to remove their archaeological teams. The unwritten part of this story is that the German intelligence, the BND (Bundesnachrichtendienst) maintained a presence in the country, and hence, in my speculations previously advanced, would have been capable of mounting a looting of the Museum with personnel in American uniforms. (3) When the Museum looting was studied, experts came to the conclusion that it was an “inside job” since the looters apparently were interested in specific things and knew exactly where to go to get them, in spite of the fact that many items had not, apparently, been entered into the Museum catalogue.

(4) Then came the U.S.-led recovery operation led by Marine Colonel Bagdonovich, which, in terms of the art works recovered, was quite successful. But as I mentioned at the time, something disturbed me, and this was the fact that the missing cuneiform tablets had seemed to drop completely out of the story, while the world’s newspapers concentrated on supplying us with pictures of dazzling and beautiful ancient Mesopotamian art works that had been recovered. Faced with golden crowns and jewelry, thousands of dusty brown clay tablets really weren’t very sensational, and I suspected then, and still do now, that that was the whole point: the really important loot was the tablets, not the art works.

The tablets, in other words, had dropped right off the radar, until a few years later, several thousands apparently turned up in Spain, causing a rumpus between Madrid and Baghdad, because Madrid did not want to return them. I say apparently turned up in Spain, because, like so often in these stories, we are never presented with the chain of evidence concerning these tablets to document the claim that they were, indeed, recently looted.  And so it is here: we’re supposed to believe that Hobby Lobby was the final step in a chain of custody from Iraq, to Israel and the Emirates, to the USA. But in order to establish this, it would seem to me that one would have to have an itemized inventory of what was on the tablets, or a photo record of each one, and then establish that the specific tablets in question were in the possession of each of the alleged participants.   So the question remains open: were these tablets part of the original Baghdad Museum Looting haul (or any associated looting activity at that time?) and what is on said tablets that would make Hobby Lobby want to buy them (and then, sell some of them)?

All this brings me to my high octane speculation of the day, for in the first article we read that this may not have been a “simple mistake” on Hobby Lobby’s part:

Ancient cuneiform tablets and clay bullae from modern-day Iraq were smuggled into the United States through the United Arab Emirates and Israel, JOD officials said. With Hobby Lobby’s consent they were falsely labeled as “ceramics” and “samples” and illegally shipped to Hobby Lobby stores and two corporate offices, according to the DOJ.

Cuneiform is an ancient system of writing on clay tablets that was used in Mesopotamia, according to the DOJ, and clay bullae are balls of clay on which seals have been imprinted.

“In 2009, Hobby Lobby began acquiring a variety of historical Bibles and other artifacts. Developing a collection of historically and religiously important books and artifacts about the Bible is consistent with the company’s mission and passion for the Bible,” said a Hobby Lobby statement. (Emphasis added)

We are told that the haul was not simply cuneiform tablets, but cylinder seals and so on, and that all this interest was because of Hobby Lobby’s interest in the bible. Cylinder seals were used in Mesopotamia as a way of sealing documents; they would be equivalent to today’s corporate seals, or monarchial or hierarchical seals of a king, nobleman, or bishop, and thus they are rather important from a legal point of view. They could, potentially, be seals that once belonged to Mesopotamian dynasties (and I’ll let the reader run wild with speculation on that possibility… I don’t think I need to say any more). What interests me rather is the allegation that these items were intentionally mislabeled, and therefore that the intention was to smuggle them into this country. That implies, to my speculative mind, a further intention to possibly remove more “intriguing” or perhaps even “offending” tablets from public view and scrutiny, while benefiting a narrow circle of insiders studying the contents of these objects. And what better way to do it than through corporate cutouts. I’ve even entertained the notion that the real reason Saddam Hussein was hung was that he may already have been briefed on the possible “sensational contents” of some of the things being dug up in his country’s deserts, and that he simply had to be permanently silenced. After all, it was he who invited those archaeological teams to Iraq in the first place.

And, as always, we’re still waiting for these media to report on the contents of these tablets, or at least, direct us to links where we may view each and every one, and to sites where – if any translations have been made – we can read what’s on them. I suspect if that were to happen, we’d be reading a lot of ordinary business transactions, a bit like reading someone’s checkbook register. The “juicy” stuff has probably been carefully removed from public view… and perhaps found its way into a corporate vault somewhere between Baghdad and here.

The sad bottom line is, that the looting of antiquities from Iraq is a story that just keeps on giving.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
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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

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

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”.

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

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”.

Nazism 2.0: Germany Moves To Ban Free Speech Online

Source: TheDuran.com
Adam Garrie
June 30, 2017

The German Bundestag (parliament) has voted to implement a law which would impose a fine of €50million to social media companies who failed to remove so-called “hate speech” and so-called “fake news”.

According to the law, social media companies would have just 24 hours to comply with the German government’s edict before the monumental fine would be issued.

This legislation is not only poorly conceived, almost impossible to enforce and excessive in its punitive stance towards private enterprise, but it is just plain wrong.

Laws which predate the invention of the internet make it so that issuing a criminal threat is illegal. This goes for threats written on poster-board, graffiti, obscene art exhibitions, digital statements or oral pronouncements.

This is as far as any such law needs to go. Hate is not a threat, it is merely the expression of a feeling or viewpoint. It is legal to dislike things, it is legal to hate things, it is legal to feel such hatred without having to intellectually justify it.

But these basic principles of modern law in the civilised world seem to be lost on an increasingly tyrannical German regime.

Even if one felt that expressing hatred or ‘fake news’ was a some sort of crime, the law does not define such things. Is it acceptable to hate Russia but not hate the EU? Would a pro-Russian Brexit supporter living in Germany (and yes, there are many such people) therefore be engaged in ‘hate speech’?

Is it acceptable to hate Palestine but not Israel? Is it acceptable to hate veterinarian food but not hate ham sandwiches? Is it acceptable to hate ugly people but not to hate people who have had plastic surgery?

Are Donald Trump’s statements which infuriate liberals now hate speech for which Twitter can be fined millions of Euros?

What about people who find it hateful that images of heterodox sexual propaganda are spread by major western corporations and governments to corrupt the minds of the young? Will their definition of hate speech be taken into account?

None of these questions are answered by the Germany lawmakers.

Also in respect of ‘fake news’ covered by the law, whose fake news? Should social media owners be fined when people post CNN stories about ‘Russiagate’ because this is by CNN workers own admission fake news?

When state-run British broadcaster BBC posts bogus stories about the Syrian government, will this incur a fake news fine?

While Facebook has condemned Germany’s move, this is merely a matter of Facebook’s self-interest in knowing that they could be fined for failing to censor something which goes against the wishes of Germany’s political narrative. Facebook already takes it upon itself to censor people whose sense of humour does not correspond with Facebook’s own ultra-liberal narrative.

As with most things in life, one man’s fake news is another man’s truth, one man’s idea of hate is another one’s idea of joy. If the German regime is to be the final arbiter of truth and taste, social media won’t really be social media at all, it will simply be statements that the German regime deems to be good and healthy according to its own very narrow narrative, one that the majority of the planet finds both hateful and fake.

Read More At: TheDuran.com

Germany Begins Raiding Homes For “Freedom”

Source: ActivistPost.com
Dawn Luger
June 21, 2017

In the ever increasing global creep toward totalitarianism, some nations are stepping up punishments for their civilians caught using social media for free speech. Now Germany is in the headlines for raiding the homes of those who the government declared had posted “offensive” content on social media.

It hit the fan when it comes to free speech in Germany. Wasn’t this the country that had to fight tooth and nail to free themselves from the grip of Adolf Hitler’s censorship? It’s like some lessons are never learned. In a coordinated campaign across 14 states, the German police raided the homes of 36 people accused of hateful postings over social media, including “threats,” “coercion,” and “incitement to racism.” The goal of these raids was the confiscation of the “hate posters” Internet connection devices, according to a press release from the German federal police (BKA). 

In the most ironic statement of the century, Holger Münch, president of the Federal Criminal Police Office, said “The still high incidence of punishable hate posting shows a need for police action. Our free society must not allow a climate of fear, threat, criminal violence, and violence either on the street or on the internet.” So in Germany, a free society means “don’t say things the government doesn’t like, or your home will be raided.”

The raids come as German politicians are debating the draft of a new social media law aimed at cracking down on hate speech, a measure that an array of experts said was unconstitutional at a parliamentary hearing on Monday. The law simply dictates what one is allowed to say or not say on social media. That’s, without a doubt, a free speech violation. Of course, the German government is selling it in the name of “freedom.”

Under German law, social media users are subject to a range of punishments for posting illegal material, including a prison sentence of up to five years for inciting racial hatred. Under the draft statute, networks must offer a readily available complaint process for posts that may amount to threats, hate speech, defamation, or incitement to commit a crime, among other offenses.Social media outlets would have 24 hours to delete “obviously criminal content” and a week to decide on more ambiguous cases. The law, approved by Germany’s cabinet in April, would be enforced with fines of up to $53 million.

But even human rights organizations understand that all speech, even that which is disliked, is considered free speech, and any law against it is a human rights violation.

Human rights, including free expression, aren’t just essential to functioning democracies, but to safe and secure societies. While controversial, protecting the expression of even the most disfavored views is how we ensure that free speech is protected for all, including the most marginalized groups. –Human Rights First

Some of the posts were cruel in nature, but still free speech. According to Abendzeitung, police arrived at one man’s house in Munich at 6 am and confiscated two of his cell phones. The 23-year-old was accused of commenting that gays should hang themselves underneath a Facebook photo of two men kissing. Others were accused of making “anti-government” statements.

It looks like Germany will have to relearn all the lessons they have failed. It wasn’t so long ago that they allowed the government enough power that it exterminated millions of people. But relearning these lessons will be costly at best and disastrous at worst.

Read More At: ActivistPost.com
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…Oh, And By The Way, It’s Not Just Germany That Is Upset…

Source: GizaDeathStar.com
Dr. Joseph P. Farrell Ph.D.
June 20, 2017

Sometimes I feel like I’m living in some sort of geopolitical time warp, or a teacup carnival ride, based not on whirling teacups, but whirling countries, all spinning around on an out of control machine called Brzezinski’s Folly. Brzezinski’s folly is a machine that runs on the assumption that, America being the “sole remaining superpower”, it can and should attempt to run the rest of the world, no matter what the cost…

…even if the cost means pushing powerful allies like Germany and Japan away.

Case in point: yesterday, you’ll recall, I blogged about my long-held, seldom-voiced suspicion that some sort of covert warfare has been going on between the USA and Germany for quite some time. I finally have been talking more openly about that suspicion, since it seems to be being confirmed by various German and European leaders, not the least of whom is Chancellorin Merkel herself.

But in sifting through this week’s emails, the other shoe dropped, in this article shared by Mr. J.C.; and as you read this, when was the last time you saw the Chinese Premier shaking hands with the Japanese Premier, and both men were smiling?

Even Japan Is Now Considering Joining China’s One Belt, One Road

I cannot get out of my head what a monumental symbol this picture is, notwithstanding the contents of the article itself. We cannot approximate the earthquake it signals, especially in the Orient. There is bad blood between China and Japan… the Rape of Nanking, the Japanese invasion and occupation of Manchuria and the establishment of a Japanese puppet state there under the de facto control of Field Marshal Terauchi. Then the plundering under Operation Golden Lilly. Nor was it all one-sided: the Chinese entry into the Korean war – Korea being a former Japanese colony – Mao’s bluster and threats…

For this to happen is a major event. But as readers of this website know, it has been a long time coming, and was about to happen a few years ago. There was talk of a state visit of Emperor Akihito to Beijing, then… Fukushima happened. I do not need to recount the more-than-suspicious chain of events, because readers of this website are well aware of them.

Shinzo Abe has, in his tenure as Japanese Premier, accomplished some truly amazing feats of diplomacy. He has managed, with his counterpart Mr. Putin, to side-step the thorny issue of the legal status of the Kuril  islands, to begin actual economic development of them, jointly with Russia. That was a major hatchet, not only to bury, but to turn into something economically beneficial.

Now there is China, and its Silk Road project:

I want to focus on some paragraphs in this article, for I tend to see things very differently than does Mina Pollman, author of the article:

Japan would, of course, prefer a U.S.-based regional order and has thus been leery of OBOR. But after watching the United States retreat under President Donald Trump – most dramatically by pulling the U.S. out of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) – it is understandable that Japan is considering alternative options, such as limited cooperation with China.

Abe specifically stated that one of the conditions that would have to be met for Japanese participation in OBOR is “harmony with a free and fair Trans-Pacific economic zone,” in reference to the requirements, including labor and environmental regulations, painstakingly negotiated in the 12-country TPP deal.

Abe also noted that it is “critical for infrastructure to be open to use by all, and to be developed through procurement that is transparent and fair. … I furthermore consider it essential for projects to be economically viable and to be financed by debt that can be repaid, and not to harm the soundness of the debtor nation’s finances.”

Japan’s concerns about OBOR’s lack of transparency mirror its criticisms of the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) – which Japan is also considering joining, after resisting it for so long. With rumors that the United States might join, Japan may find the idea more attractive. (Emphasis added)

While the article makes it sound as if Japan’s turn to China is a result largely of the recent administration’s policies, I suspect – strongly – that this turn has been considered by (if Ii may so put it) the mandarins in Tokyo for some time. The instability that the USA has fostered in recent decades as a result of Brzezinski’s Folly, along with an economy that can only export GMOs and war has caused a “rethink” of relations from Tokyo to Berlin. The Trump administration and the TPP are the excuse and crisis of opportunity that were seized to do what they had long been thinking. Again, in this respect, it is crucial to recall that Japan was attempting to make these overtures before the Abe government took power.

Mr. Abe’s two-step here has been carefully conceived. Unlike the previous Japanese government, Mr. Abe decided to rearm, and to change the part of the Japanese constitution that put an upper limit based on percentage of GDP to defense spending. This, publicly, was done to reassure Washington that Japan was going to “do its part” for Pacific rim security. But Mr. Abe’s unstated goal, I contend, was to send messages to North Korea and China, particularly the latter. While a symbolic gesture, the message is clear: we can rearm, if we want to… now, let’s talk… Japan’s rearmament, in other words, was as much about perceived growing weakness and instability in Washington, as it was about helping Washington.

Me. Abe’s position is further enhanced by his agreements with Russia, not just with the Kuril islands, but more importantly, by the extension to Russia, by Japan, of the use of its financial clearing agency in the Pacific, widely used in the region. This, readers of the website may recall, happened a couple of years ago, in the aftermath of the imposition of sanctions on Russia. In other words, Japan did not “play ball” with Washington, and put into place a major component of an independent financial clearing system with Russia.

It’s that financial clearing aspect of the story that, I suggest in today’s high octane speculation, is behind this story, and Japan’s need for more “transparency” in the “One belt one road” project: for “transparency” read “Japanese participation” in whatever financial clearing arrangements the Chinese have in mind as an alternative to the West’s “SWIFT” system. Additionally, “transparency” also means in other space-related matters and ventures, because China has made it abundantly clear that the “One road one Belt” is not simply confined to planet Earth.

See you on the flip side…

Read More At: GizaDeathStar.com
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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”.

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
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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”.

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

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”.