It took four calls to 911 and a little over 30 minutes before a Coral Springs, Fla., dispatcher sent police to a report of a shooting. Guadalupe Herrera reported that a bullet had pierced the back windshield of her car and struck her front windshield and almost hit her in the head. But the call was logged as a “suspicious incident,” not as a shooting, which would have been a high priority. When investigators pulled the data from the work station of the 911 supervisor who was on duty, they found a movie on Netflix had been playing for almost two hours when the call came in. The supervisor, Julie Vidaud, said she plays movies in the background, but that doesn’t mean she was watching one when the call came in. She is expected to receive a two-day suspension without pay.
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The number of shares, the price and date of the listing remain shrouded in mystery today, even after Saudi Aramco released its long-awaited IPO prospectus.
What the 658-page document does say is that Aramco will list just 0.5 percent of its total stock to individual investors, and that the listing will begin on November 17 and end on December 4. This should imply Aramco shares will start trading on the Tadawul exchange in early December. This is also when Aramco will make public the price per share and the number of shares it will offer up for sale.
Investors, the prospectus also said, have until November 28 to request shares.
The Saudi state oil company has been making strides in its preparation for going public after months of uncertainty and doubts whether it would list at all and if it does, which overseas exchange it will choose. For now, the listing will be on Tadawul only, with the international one planned for a few years later, according to comments from Riyadh officials.
The 0.5 percent Aramco will offer in early December as per its schedule is a small portion of the 5 percent it plans to list, meaning the bulk of the shares will target institutional investors. At one point, there was even talk of doubling this to 10 percent, possibly based on doubts about the $2-trillion valuation of the company that Crown Prince Mohammed is aiming for.
Calculations of Aramco’s value from various banks put it in a rather large range of between $1.2 trillion and $2.3 trillion.
Last month, Aramco reported a net profit of $68 billion for the first nine months of the year at the same time as it announced an intention to float on the local stock exchange. In the same statement, the company said it planned to distribute $75 billion in dividends next year.
The people participating in the march branded themselves as patriots (the word which in Poland still has positive overtones) paying tribute to the fallen heroes.
To the western media, these are Nazis, racists, anti-semites, and islamophobes. An abomination for the European Union.
About 50,000 people attended the annual march said local government officials, but the Independence March Association said the figures were likely 150,000.
The march began on Monday afternoon in central Warsaw with lead organizer Robert Bakiewicz telling attendees that “We have to return to our roots. Our world has abandoned God and Christianity. We will die as the nations of western Europe are dying.”
Poland shifted towards nationalism when Law and Justice (PiS) party came to power in 2015.
PiS has asked citizens to abandon Western liberalism for patriotism and Roman Catholic values.
Attendees lit flares and marched through the streets chanting more slogans: “Not Islamic or secular, but Catholic Poland,” “No to abortion,” and “Great Poland is our goal.”
A thirty-eight million nation in the heart of Europe (i.e., with a population approximately the size of Spain’s) has been revolting against the EU establishment and its view of European unity based on cultural and religious indifference and anti-nationalism.
Polish President Andrzej Duda asked citizens to unite under “one common homeland, beyond all divisions,” but acknowledged that “different ideologies and beliefs” are permitted in Poland.
While millions of radical Muslim refugees have poured into France, Germany, Sweden, UK, Italy, and Spain, creating social-economic chaos on the streets of those countries, Poles are attempting to revive their nation through patriotism and traditional Catholic values.
China has begun to build a parallel international order, centered on itself. If the European Union aids in its construction – even just by positioning itself on the fault line between China and the United States – it risks toppling key pillars of its own edifice and, eventually, collapsing altogether.
Two months ago, in his address to the United Nations General Assembly, UN Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his fear that a “Great Fracture” could split the international order into two “separate and competing worlds,” one dominated by the United States and the other by China. His fear is not only justified; the fissure he dreads has already formed, and it is getting wider.
After Deng Xiaoping launched his “reform and opening up” policy in 1978, the conventional wisdom in the West was that China’s integration into the global economy would naturally bring about domestic social and political change. The end of the Cold War – an apparent victory for the US-led liberal international order – reinforced this belief, and the West largely pursued a policy of engagement with China. After China became a member of the World Trade Organization in 2001, this process accelerated, with Western companies and investment pouring into the country, and cheap manufactured products flowing out of it.
As China’s role in global value chains grew, its problematic trade practices – from dumping excessively low-cost goods in Western markets to failing to protect intellectual-property rights – were increasingly distortionary. Yet few so much as batted an eye. No one, it seemed, wanted to jeopardize the profits brought by cheap Chinese manufacturing, or the promise of access to the massive Chinese market. In any case, the thinking went, the problems would resolve themselves, because economic engagement and growth would soon produce a flourishing Chinese middle class that would propel domestic liberalization.
This was, it is now clear, magical thinking. In fact, China has changed the international system much more than the system has changed China.
Today, the Communist Party of China is more powerful than ever, bolstered by a far-reaching artificial intelligence-driven surveillance apparatus and the enduring dominance of state-owned enterprises. President Xi Jinping is set for a protracted – even lifelong – tenure. And, as US President Donald Trump has learned during his ill-fated trade war, wringing concessions out of China is more difficult than ever.
Meanwhile, the rules-based international order limps along, without vitality or purpose. Emerging and developing economies are frustrated by the lack of effort to bring institutional arrangements in line with new economic realities. The advanced economies, for their part, are grappling with a backlash against globalization that has not only weakened their support for trade liberalization and international cooperation, but also shaken their democracies. The US has gradually withdrawn from global leadership.
As a result, international relations have become largely transactional, with ad hoc deals replacing holistic cooperative solutions. Institutions and agreements are becoming shallower and more informal. Values, rules, and norms are increasingly regarded as quaint and impractical.
This has produced a golden opportunity for China to begin constructing a parallel system, centered on itself. To that end, it has created institutions like the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank and the New Development Bank, both of which mimic existing international structures. And it has pursued the sprawling Belt and Road Initiative – an obvious attempt to position itself as a new Middle Kingdom.
Yet many, including in Europe, are not particularly concerned about the emergence of this parallel system. So long as it brings ready access to project finance, it’s fine with them. As Europe becomes increasingly alienated from the US, many Europeans also believe that they can improve their strategic position by situating themselves on the frontier between the two emerging worlds.
That strategy may offer some advantages, including opportunities for arbitrage. But as anyone who lives on a fault line knows, there are also formidable risks: friction between the two sides is bound to shake the foundations of whatever is positioned atop the boundary.
This is especially true for the European Union, which is built on a commitment to cooperation, shared values, and the rule of law. If the EU aids in building a parallel structure that contradicts its core values, particularly the centrality of individual rights, it risks severing its meta-political moorings – the beliefs to which its worldview is tethered. A Europe adrift will eventually sink.
The solution is not for Europe simply to take America’s “side,” and turn its back on China. (That, too, would run counter to European values.) Rather, the EU must heed Guterres’s call to “do everything possible to maintain a universal system” in which all actors, including China and the US, follow the same rules.
In this sense, the recent joint statement by Xi and French President Emmanuel Macron reaffirming their strong support for the Paris climate agreement is promising, as is Europe’s growing recognition that China is not only a partner or economic competitor, but also a “systemic rival.” But this is only a start. Europe needs a robust China strategy that recognizes the profound, often subtle challenges that the country’s rise poses, mitigates the associated risks, and seizes relevant opportunities.
Achieving this will require perspective and discipline, neither of which comes naturally to the EU. But there is no other choice. As soon as Europe stops defending the rule of law and democratic values, its identity – and its future – will begin to crumble.
Governments create problems. Then they complain about them.
“A public health crisis exists,” says Kentucky’s government, citing a report that found “a shortage of ambulance providers.”
Local TV stations report on “people waiting hours for medical transportation.”
“Six-year-old Kyler Truesdell fell off his motorcycle,” reported Channel 12 news. “The local hospital told (his mother) he should be transported to Cincinnati Children’s to check for internal injuries.” But there was no ambulance available. Kyler had to wait two hours.
Yet Kyler’s cousin, Hannah Howe, runs an ambulance service in Ohio, just a few minutes away. “We would’ve (taken him) for free,” she says in my new video. “But it would’ve been illegal.”
It would be illegal because of something called certificate of need (CON) laws.
Kentucky and three other states require businesses to get a CON certificate before they are allowed to run an ambulance service. Certificates go only to businesses that bureaucrats deem “necessary.”
CON laws are supposed to prevent “oversupply” of essential services like, well, ambulances. If there are “too many” ambulance companies, some might cut corners or go out of business. Then patients would suffer, say the bureaucrats.
Of course, Kentucky patients already suffer, waiting.
It raises the question: If there’s demand, then who are politicians to say that a business is unnecessary?
Phillip Truesdell, Hannah’s father, often takes patients to hospitals in Kentucky, “I drop them off (but) I can’t go back and get them!” he told me. “Who gives the big man the right to say, ‘You can’t work here’?!”
Government.
Phillip and Hannah applied for a CON certificate and waited 11 months for a response. Then they learned that their application was being protested by existing ambulance providers.
Of course it was. Businesses don’t like competition.
“We go to court, these three ambulance services showed up,” recounts Howe.
“They hammered her, treated her like she was a criminal,” says Truesdell. “Do you know what you’re going to do to this company?!…To this town?!”
“It wasn’t anything to do with us being physically able to do it. (They) just came through like the big dog not trying to let anybody else on the porch,” says Howe.
Three other ambulance companies also applied for permission to operate in Kentucky. They were rejected, too.
Truesdell and Howe were lucky to find the Pacific Legal Foundation, a law firm that fights for Americans’ right to earn a living.
Pacific Legal lawyer Anastasia Boden explains: “Traditionally we allow consumers to decide what’s necessary. Existing operators are never going to say more businesses are necessary.”
One Kentucky ambulance provider who opposed the new applications sent me a statement that says “saturating a community with more EMS agencies than it can…support (leads) all agencies to become watered down.”
Boden replies: “That’s just absurd. We now recognize that competition leads to efficient outcomes.”
It’s not just ambulance companies and people waiting for ambulances who are hurt by CON laws. Thirty-five states demand that businesses such as medical imaging companies, hospitals, and even moving companies get CON certificates before they are allowed to open.
Boden warns: “Once you get these laws on the books, it’s very hard to get them off. Monopolies like their monopoly. This started back in the ’70s with the federal government.”
But the feds, amazingly, wised up and repealed the mandate in 1987, saying things like, “CON laws raise considerable competitive concerns (and) consumers benefit from lower prices when provider markets are more competitive.”
Unfortunately, politicians in Kentucky and many other states haven’t wised up.
When Virginia tried to abolish its CON law, local hospitals spent $200,000 on ads claiming competition will force hospitals to close. Somehow, hospitals operate just fine in states without CON laws. But the Virginia scare campaign worked. The state still has a CON law.
In health care, and all fields, it’s better to see what competition can do rather than letting the government and its cronies decide what to allow.
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Governments create problems. Then they complain about them.
“A public health crisis exists,” says Kentucky’s government, citing a report that found “a shortage of ambulance providers.”
Local TV stations report on “people waiting hours for medical transportation.”
“Six-year-old Kyler Truesdell fell off his motorcycle,” reported Channel 12 news. “The local hospital told (his mother) he should be transported to Cincinnati Children’s to check for internal injuries.” But there was no ambulance available. Kyler had to wait two hours.
Yet Kyler’s cousin, Hannah Howe, runs an ambulance service in Ohio, just a few minutes away. “We would’ve (taken him) for free,” she says in my new video. “But it would’ve been illegal.”
It would be illegal because of something called certificate of need (CON) laws.
Kentucky and three other states require businesses to get a CON certificate before they are allowed to run an ambulance service. Certificates go only to businesses that bureaucrats deem “necessary.”
CON laws are supposed to prevent “oversupply” of essential services like, well, ambulances. If there are “too many” ambulance companies, some might cut corners or go out of business. Then patients would suffer, say the bureaucrats.
Of course, Kentucky patients already suffer, waiting.
It raises the question: If there’s demand, then who are politicians to say that a business is unnecessary?
Phillip Truesdell, Hannah’s father, often takes patients to hospitals in Kentucky, “I drop them off (but) I can’t go back and get them!” he told me. “Who gives the big man the right to say, ‘You can’t work here’?!”
Government.
Phillip and Hannah applied for a CON certificate and waited 11 months for a response. Then they learned that their application was being protested by existing ambulance providers.
Of course it was. Businesses don’t like competition.
“We go to court, these three ambulance services showed up,” recounts Howe.
“They hammered her, treated her like she was a criminal,” says Truesdell. “Do you know what you’re going to do to this company?!…To this town?!”
“It wasn’t anything to do with us being physically able to do it. (They) just came through like the big dog not trying to let anybody else on the porch,” says Howe.
Three other ambulance companies also applied for permission to operate in Kentucky. They were rejected, too.
Truesdell and Howe were lucky to find the Pacific Legal Foundation, a law firm that fights for Americans’ right to earn a living.
Pacific Legal lawyer Anastasia Boden explains: “Traditionally we allow consumers to decide what’s necessary. Existing operators are never going to say more businesses are necessary.”
One Kentucky ambulance provider who opposed the new applications sent me a statement that says “saturating a community with more EMS agencies than it can…support (leads) all agencies to become watered down.”
Boden replies: “That’s just absurd. We now recognize that competition leads to efficient outcomes.”
It’s not just ambulance companies and people waiting for ambulances who are hurt by CON laws. Thirty-five states demand that businesses such as medical imaging companies, hospitals, and even moving companies get CON certificates before they are allowed to open.
Boden warns: “Once you get these laws on the books, it’s very hard to get them off. Monopolies like their monopoly. This started back in the ’70s with the federal government.”
But the feds, amazingly, wised up and repealed the mandate in 1987, saying things like, “CON laws raise considerable competitive concerns (and) consumers benefit from lower prices when provider markets are more competitive.”
Unfortunately, politicians in Kentucky and many other states haven’t wised up.
When Virginia tried to abolish its CON law, local hospitals spent $200,000 on ads claiming competition will force hospitals to close. Somehow, hospitals operate just fine in states without CON laws. But the Virginia scare campaign worked. The state still has a CON law.
In health care, and all fields, it’s better to see what competition can do rather than letting the government and its cronies decide what to allow.
COPYRIGHT 2019 BY JFS PRODUCTIONS INC. DISTRIBUTED BY CREATORS.COM
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I guess I should say at the outset that I do not favor torturing puppies and kittens. But there is a difference between opposing cruelty to animals, which is already illegal in all 50 states, and supporting a law that makes such conduct a federal felony.
That distinction seems to have eluded every member of Congress, which unanimously approved the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act, a bill that President Donald Trump is expected to sign soon. The PACT Act exemplifies the widely accepted but pernicious belief that Congress has free-ranging authority to address anything that bothers its members, regardless of whether it is already addressed by state law and regardless of whether it plausibly fits within their enumerated powers.
The bill, which the House passed by a voice vote last month and the Senate passed by unanimous consent last week, makes it a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison, “for any person to purposely engage in animal crushing in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce.” The PACT Act counterintuitively defines “animal crushing” to include not only crushing but also burning, drowning, suffocation, impalement, or any other action that causes “serious bodily injury.”
That puzzling nomenclature reflects the bill’s roots in the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act, a 2010 law that criminalized production and distribution of images that cater to a highly specific sexual fetish epitomized by the deployment of high-heeled shoes against small furry creatures. That law banned the trade in such videos, provided they qualify as “obscene,” but it did not address the acts they record.
Although critics who thought the 2010 law did not go far enough saw that omission as a glaring defect, there was a constitutional rationale for limiting the ban to images “distributed in, or using a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commerce.” In passing the ban, Congress was relying on its power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states.”
Under the PACT Act, by contrast, Congress is not simply regulating interstate commerce. It is purporting to prohibit any act of animal cruelty “affecting” interstate commerce, whatever that means. This understanding of the Commerce Clause converts it into the sort of general police power that the Constitution reserves to the states.
While the Supreme Court for many years has stretched the Commerce Clause to accommodate nearly everything Congress might want to do, there are still supposed to be some limits. In 1995, for instance, the Court struck down a federal law that made it a crime to possess a gun near a school, which the government defended based on the same sort of tenuous relationship to interstate commerce invoked by the PACT Act.
“If we were to accept the Government’s arguments,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed in the majority opinion, “we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate.” The Court said the Commerce Clause extends only to “the use of the channels of interstate commerce,” regulation of “instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or person or things in interstate commerce,” and local commercial activity that has a “substantial relation” to interstate commerce.
Congress subsequently amended the Gun-Free School Zones Act, specifying that it applies only to a firearm “that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce.” According to several federal appeals courts, that tiny jurisdictional fig leaf was enough to save the law.
If those courts are right, the PACT Act may well be constitutional. But if merely alluding to interstate commerce is enough to justify congressional action that is not otherwise proscribed, “the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers,” as Justice Clarence Thomas warned in a 2005 Commerce Clause case.
Republican legislators who claim to defend the Constitution, including its limits on their own power, once viewed that prospect with alarm. The PACT Act shows that is no longer true.
I guess I should say at the outset that I do not favor torturing puppies and kittens. But there is a difference between opposing cruelty to animals, which is already illegal in all 50 states, and supporting a law that makes such conduct a federal felony.
That distinction seems to have eluded every member of Congress, which unanimously approved the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture (PACT) Act, a bill that President Donald Trump is expected to sign soon. The PACT Act exemplifies the widely accepted but pernicious belief that Congress has free-ranging authority to address anything that bothers its members, regardless of whether it is already addressed by state law and regardless of whether it plausibly fits within their enumerated powers.
The bill, which the House passed by a voice vote last month and the Senate passed by unanimous consent last week, makes it a crime, punishable by up to seven years in prison, “for any person to purposely engage in animal crushing in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce.” The PACT Act counterintuitively defines “animal crushing” to include not only crushing but also burning, drowning, suffocation, impalement, or any other action that causes “serious bodily injury.”
That puzzling nomenclature reflects the bill’s roots in the Animal Crush Video Prohibition Act, a 2010 law that criminalized production and distribution of images that cater to a highly specific sexual fetish epitomized by the deployment of high-heeled shoes against small furry creatures. That law banned the trade in such videos, provided they qualify as “obscene,” but it did not address the acts they record.
Although critics who thought the 2010 law did not go far enough saw that omission as a glaring defect, there was a constitutional rationale for limiting the ban to images “distributed in, or using a means or facility of, interstate or foreign commerce.” In passing the ban, Congress was relying on its power to “regulate commerce with foreign nations, and among the several states.”
Under the PACT Act, by contrast, Congress is not simply regulating interstate commerce. It is purporting to prohibit any act of animal cruelty “affecting” interstate commerce, whatever that means. This understanding of the Commerce Clause converts it into the sort of general police power that the Constitution reserves to the states.
While the Supreme Court for many years has stretched the Commerce Clause to accommodate nearly everything Congress might want to do, there are still supposed to be some limits. In 1995, for instance, the Court struck down a federal law that made it a crime to possess a gun near a school, which the government defended based on the same sort of tenuous relationship to interstate commerce invoked by the PACT Act.
“If we were to accept the Government’s arguments,” Chief Justice William Rehnquist observed in the majority opinion, “we are hard pressed to posit any activity by an individual that Congress is without power to regulate.” The Court said the Commerce Clause extends only to “the use of the channels of interstate commerce,” regulation of “instrumentalities of interstate commerce, or person or things in interstate commerce,” and local commercial activity that has a “substantial relation” to interstate commerce.
Congress subsequently amended the Gun-Free School Zones Act, specifying that it applies only to a firearm “that has moved in or that otherwise affects interstate or foreign commerce.” According to several federal appeals courts, that tiny jurisdictional fig leaf was enough to save the law.
If those courts are right, the PACT Act may well be constitutional. But if merely alluding to interstate commerce is enough to justify congressional action that is not otherwise proscribed, “the Federal Government is no longer one of limited and enumerated powers,” as Justice Clarence Thomas warned in a 2005 Commerce Clause case.
Republican legislators who claim to defend the Constitution, including its limits on their own power, once viewed that prospect with alarm. The PACT Act shows that is no longer true.
There has been a lot of talk the past year about a civil war in the US, so much so that even the mainstream media is pushing the concept lately. A poll from Rasmussen in 2018 claimed that 31% of US voters believed that America would see a second civil war within the next five years. A more recent poll from The Institute Of Politics And Public Service shows that 7 out of 10 voters believe the US is two-thirds of the way towards civil war.
New talk of “impeachment” over the Ukraine issue has stirred the soup even further as some conservatives argue that if Trump is removed from office a war will erupt.
I want to be absolutely clear and state that I remain highly skeptical that the impeachment circus is anything more than another distraction for the public, and I believe that it will go nowhere (just like Russiagate). That said I do think there is a marginal chance of a 4th Gen play here by the globalists. A civil war, if directed and manipulated in the right way, could benefit the elites greatly as long as it’s combined with a few other ingredients.
First, we have to understand what the real situation here is, though. As my readers are well aware, I predicted well before the 2016 election that Trump as president would be the perfect scapegoat for the implosion of the ‘Everything Bubble’. That implosion is happening in nearly all fundamental economic indicators right now, as I outlined in my last article. There are two questions to consider at this point: Will stock markets follow fundamentals down before the 2020 election? And, if stocks remain high, will it even matter with the rest of the system tumbling into recession?
In January of 2016 at during his election campaign, Donald Trump said that the US economy was ‘In a bubble he feared would burst and he did not want to deal with a financial collapse if he was elected to the White House.’ He called on the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and stop propping up the fake markets.
In 2019, Trump has attached his administration completely to the performance of markets with endless Twitter comments, taking full credit for the financial bubble that he once criticized. He has also now called for the Fed to bring interest rates down to zero to artificially support the economy once again (Obviously we have to ask the big question – If this is the “greatest US economy ever”, then why would Trump want the Fed to introduce more stimulus to prop it up?). I believe this bizarre behavior is entirely deliberate on Trump’s part and that he intends to take the blame for the ongoing crash. If stocks fall along with the rest of the economy by the end of 2020, it is unlikely that the globalists plan to keep him around for a second term. His job acting as a scapegoat for the crisis the central banks created will be accomplished.
Second, my readers are also aware that I have outlined the connections between Trump and the globalists, including how a large part of his fortune and his image was saved by a bailout from the Rothschild family during the 1990’s. Wilber Ross, the Rothchild agent who arranged the deal, is now Trump’s Commerce Secretary. Ross’ presence in Trump’s cabinet along with numerous other elites, such as Pompeo, Mnuchin, Lightheizer, Kudlow and a host of other Council on Foreign Relations members indicates that Trump is and probably always has been controlled opposition. When one elite cycles out of Trump’s cabinet, another one just takes his place.
I hear the argument often that the supposed impeachment proceedings are “proof” that the globalists are trying to destroy Trump. This is clearly nonsense, as Trump continues to work closely with such elites on a daily basis. The more likely explanation is that, like Russiagate, the impeachment itself is a farce designed to keep the American public sharply divided and ready to go to war at a moment’s notice. In fact, the chances of the Ukraine debacle blowing back on Joe Biden and his campaign in the Democratic Primaries are high.
Biden is obviously NOT the candidate that the elites intend to run on the Democrat side, and the Ukraine theater creates a rationale for him to bow out while also conjuring ever more anger on both sides of the political canyon. But does this mean that Trump will not be impeached? Not necessarily…
Trump is in the position he is in for a reason. Trump is a useful pawn in a number of ways as long as his influence over conservatives remains strong and his position can be exploited to maximum effect. For example, in my most likely scenario, a market crash swiftly follows the current plunge in fundamentals before the 2020 election. This essentially ensures Trump’s defeat in November, while his conservative supporters and conservative principles in general take the blame for the disaster. However, what if the elites are seeking to add even more chaos to the cauldron?
An impeachment leading into the election, whether successful or not, could be used to enrage conservatives and trigger a violent reaction against the Democrats specifically. If Trump loses the election or never makes it to the election due to impeachment, a host of outcomes will occur that are beneficial to the globalists even though Trump is one of their puppets:
1) The impeachment scenario will make rabid leftists feel vindicated in their insane behavior the past few years. It will reward them and inspire them to act even crazier.
2) Conservatives could be pushed over the edge into direct action, but unfortunately, if this direct action is aimed haphazardly at the political left and democrats, conservatives will have been conned. The globalists WANT us fighting over a meaningless puppet like Trump. They WANT us to direct our anger at the Democrats instead of at them.
3) If we are stupid enough to fight a war over Trump, this will lead to some detrimental results. Conservatives, though feeling justified in their actions, will look like villains, fighting to protect a leader that destroyed the US economy causing untold public suffering, as well as a leader that most of the world will see as personally corrupt. Trump is not a resilient long term inspiration for a rebellion, he’s not even a good short term inspiration.
4) Rebellions need focus and a set of strong principles and virtues in order to stay alive. If they are freedom fighters, then the establishment will seek to make them look like they are not freedom fighters, but self serving terrorists or agents of a foreign power. This process has already been started by the elites. Trump is the tool for co-option of the liberty movement. Impeachment could be a trigger for luring the movement to rebel under false pretenses and attack the wrong people (the leftists are only a symptom of the disease, the globalists ARE the disease).
5) A civil war that does not seek to target the globalists as the root problem could be easily molded by the globalists into a scapegoat for whatever calamity they desire. An economic crash under Trump would attach a lot of peripheral blame to conservatives. But, an economic crash and a civil war over Trump’s impeachment would attach ALL the blame to conservatives. Conservatives become the bad guys of the age, the people that almost ended the world, the people that future generations will be taught to despise as examples of the “evils of nationalism and populism”.
6) A war fought in the name of faulty principles and a failed leader would provide a reason for the globalists to pursue an international response to the crisis. And again, this would not look like an invasion of American sovereignty, but a global attempt to “keep the peace”.
So what is the solution? Is this a Catch-22 that conservatives cannot escape from? I’ve long held that a war between liberty activists and the globalists is inevitable, if not long overdue. The globalists know that this war is coming, as well. 4th Generation Warfare tactics dictate that the globalists will try to trick liberty activists into fighting this war on their terms. That is to say, the globalists will seek to turn us (their opponents) into unwitting allies. The Trump impeachment strategy could very well provide them with that kind of psychological leverage.
It would be seen by many conservatives as a Democratic party coup and a violation of the constitution. With leftist activists so viciously cult-like and so far beyond all logic or reason, the political left and political right might end up shooting at each other anyway. The issue is the narrative under which this occurs.
If liberty activists stay focused on the primary objective (removing the globalists from power), instead of being lured into focusing all their energy on the Democrats, then the scenario changes. If conservatives remain skeptical and critical of Trump’s associations and activities, this makes it difficult for the elites to paint us as “Trump’s brownshirts”. Certain people within the liberty movement have not been helpful in this regard; blindly defending Trump at every turn no matter how many elites he brings into his cabinet or how many times he takes credit for the economic bubble. Some of these people have indeed called for a civil war in the name of stopping a Trump impeachment. They have become useful idiots for the globalist agenda.
If a war is fought, it must be over a concrete set of contentions. If a Democrat enters the White House after the 2020 election and attempts to institute major gun control and gun confiscation measures, then this is a perfectly solid reason to fight. If they try to enforce carbon restrictions that would destroy what’s left of our economy and cause suffering among the public, then this is another good reason to fight. If they try to legislate even more socialist programs, usurping constitutional parameters and taxing the populace into perpetual poverty, then yes, we should fight. But Trump? No, Trump is a pied piper, not a leader or a rationale for civil war.
Now, I realize that the above scenario I describe is extreme, but I do see it as a possibility, so it’s important to recognize that it is there waiting to be used by the establishment against us. That said, there are other more likely outcomes.
The impeachment could rally conservatives to vote in larger numbers in 2020, and if the markets hold out through the year, then Trump is probably slated for a second term. A second term would indicate that the elites need Trump for another event (perhaps a regional war) on top of the market crash, which would take place directly after Trump’s reelection.
The Ukraine issue might merely be designed to undermine Joe Biden’s candidacy, paving the way for either Bernie Sanders or Elizabeth Warren (I don’t see another serious run by Hillary Clinton in the cards, Bloomberg is a joke even among many Democrats and I still predict Elizabeth Warren will be the Dem candidate in 2020). If the markets crash, or if the currently crashing fundamentals hit main street hard enough, then Trump will be ousted and the Dems will take over, blaming him and conservatives for every financial mess for the next four years (or more).
At this point in the game, it’s hard to say which option the globalists will use. It is vital, though, that we remember that the impeachment is a farce in more ways than one. The target is not Trump, the target is us.
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Beijing Slams US ‘Hypocrisy’ Over Soaring HK Violence As Students Launch Arrows At Police
In Beijing’s own condemnation of ‘moderate rebels’ moment, the Chinese foreign ministry on Tuesdayslammed the United States and Britain for rank hypocrisy for their failure to condemn the serious escalation in protest violence this week, after a pro-mainland man was set on fire and after a police officer shot a protester in separate incidents. And overnight Tuesday students at the city’s main public university were filmed attacking police with bows and arrows.
Describing prior events on Monday as deeply disturbing – foreign ministry spokesman Geng Shuang said“their lip service to justice has shown their double standards and ill intentions”.
Still frame of Sky News footage showing protesters using bows and arrows against police.
This after the State Department merely expressed “grave concern” and condemned the violence on “all sides” on a day in which a gruesome viral video showed a pro-mainland man being doused in combustible liquid, then set on fire as he argued with demonstrators over their attempting to shut down a nearby train station.
After one of the most horrifying scenes of violence by a mob of Hong Kong pro-independence protesters to have played out after months of unrest, Beijing is outraged that the US and Britain again managed to turn the spotlight back on China.
Up in the mainland, videos like this from #HongKong are spreading quickly online. It’s like a parallel world to the police violence clips. Not a lot of context or background on this clip (which was already edited on a pro-Beijing wechat channel) – but really nasty stuff pic.twitter.com/ctKgoMqBXb
State Department spokeswoman Morgan Ortagus said, “We urge Beijing to honor the commitments it made in the Sino-British Joint Declaration,” which includes protecting “the freedoms of expression and peaceful assembly – core values that we share with Hong Kong,” according to the official statement.
This week has witnessed large sectors of the city gridlocked and essentially shut down due demonstrators attacking public transportation and blocking roads.
A regular feature of the HK anti-China protests has been attacks on public transport. Image via CNN.
Many observers have noticed violence and clashes with police have gotten so fierce, that Hong Kong riots appear to have entered an “end game” of sorts, given Monday marked one of the most violent episodes to take place in weeks, amid continued disruptions of the morning commute as HK’s MTR public transit shut down several stations.
And through Tuesday evening severe clashes with police raged in and around the Chinese University of Hong Kong (CUHK) campus, which involved students raiding sports facilities to obtain weapons such as javelins and bows & arrows, reportedly being used against police.
Image via The Times: “Protesters raided a sport equipment warehouse to find new weapons for their battles with police.”
Students armed with javelins and bows and arrows fought police at the Chinese University of Hong Kong today amid official warnings that the territory was “on the brink of total breakdown”.
The scenes, mirrored at other campuses in the city, marked a drastic escalation in the protests, which began in June. Yesterday police shot a protester at close range and a man was doused with petrol and set on fire by demonstrators.
Upset that police had encroached on their campuses yesterday, university students set up barricades early today.
And elsewhere anti-Beijing social media accounts also circulated images of students raiding a campus warehouse and staging bows, arrows, and javelins to use against invading security forces.
No need to read dystopian novels anymore. Chinese University students fight the invading riot police with high jump cross bars, bows and arrows. #2A#Hongkongpic.twitter.com/felJHlRRUK
“Over the past two days, our society has been pushed to the brink of a total breakdown as rioters went on a rampage,” Kong Wing-cheung, a senior police superintendent, said in a press conference.
The same day Hong Kong leader Carrie Lam condemned the anti-Beijing protesters as the “enemy of the people”.
Indeed as newly published aerial footage showing the chaotic situation at CUHK campus confirms, parts of the city are becoming a war zone, as protesters and police increasingly lack restraint and are now deploying deadly weapons.
Things are about to get even uglier at the Chinese University HK campus, and we don’t have to wonder for a moment what police in America would do if bows and arrows were launched at them. It appears the gloves are fast coming off.
