Category: zerohedge

When Kim Jong Un’s sister, Kim Yo Jong – rumored to be even more brutal and ruthless a leader than her brother – started making threats against the South and the US, while declaring that President Trump would “never again” be allowed to use the country to score political points, we suspected something was afoot.

Less than two weeks after abruptly cutting off all communication with the South (including an emergency cross-border hotline), North Korea has taken the extreme and unprecedented step of blowing up a liaison office set up along the heavily militarized border between the two countries (which are still technically at war).

According to media reports and black and white surveillance footage shared by South Korea, a loud explosion was heard and smoke could be seen rising into the air as North Korea blew up the inter-Korean liaison office in Kaesong – the de facto embassy between the two restive neighbors – in a dramatic escalation of tensions with South Korea near the the demilitarized zone.

Here’s more from Reuters:

North Korea blew up an office set up to foster better ties with South Korea in its border town of Kaesong on Tuesday after it threatened to take action if North Korean defectors went ahead with a campaign to send propaganda leaflets into the North.

North Korea’s KCNA state news agency said the liaison office, which had been closed since January over fears of the novel coronavirus, was “tragically ruined with a terrific explosion.”

Black-and-white surveillance video released by South Korea’s Ministry of Defence showed a large explosion that appeared to bring down the four-storey structure. The blast also appeared to cause a partial collapse of a neighbouring 15-storey high-rise that had served as a residential facility for South Korean officials who staffed the liaison office.

North Korea started lashing out at its southern neighbor a few weeks ago, demanding that the Blue House stop South Korean activists sending propaganda pamphlets over the border to try and encourage defectors. The liaison office – described as a gleaming blue building amid a drab industrial backdrop – was recently renovated by the South. Officials became suspicious about an impending attack yesterday, and had been monitoring the liaison office.

KCNA said the office was blown up to force “human scum and those, who have sheltered the scum, to pay dearly for their crimes”. North Korea refers to defectors as “human scum.”

A South Korean military source told Reuters that there had been signs North Korea was going ahead with the demolition earlier in the day, and South Korean military officials watched live surveillance imagery as the building was blown up.

The first diplomatic mission of its kind, the inter-Korean liaison office was established in 2018 as part of a series of projects aimed at reducing tensions between the two Koreas.

The building had been originally used as offices for managing operations at the Kaesong Industrial Complex, a joint venture between the two Koreas that was suspended in 2016 amid disagreement over the North’s nuclear and missile programmes.

South Korea spent at least 9.78 billion won (US$8.6 million) in 2018 to renovate the building, which stood as a gleaming blue glass structure in the otherwise drab industrial city.

Kim’s sister Kim Yo Jong was quoted by state press over the weekend warning about the impending attack, calling on the military to “decisively carry out the next action,” and warning that “…before long, a tragic scene of the useless north-south joint liaison office completely collapsed would be seen.”

Eager to try and preserve relations, the South has asked activists to cease with the propaganda drops, which typically include flyers, $1 bills, mini radios and USB sticks containing South Korean dramas and news usually sent by balloon over the border or in bottles by river.

A rep for the South Korean military told Reuters that the South is “taking the situation seriously.”

Of course, the DMZ isn’t the only border hotspot to emerge on Tuesday. In other news, Chinese forces killed 3 Indian troops during a border confrontation – the first clash between the world’s two most populous countries along the border in nearly half a century.

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

We have been discussing the destruction of public art and history monuments by mobs who are often allowed to carry out such acts without police intervention, a problem that pre-existed the current protests (here and here and here).  It was particularly alarming to see statues defaced or destroyed in London, including bizarrely a statue of Abraham Lincoln.  The response in London and Paris is strikingly different but, in this tale of two cities, it is London that seems to be surrendering to the hysteria of the moment.

Protesters often faced no intervention in London as they defaced public art and later London Mayor Sadiq Khan announced that he would yield to demands to take down statues of imperialist figures and create a commission to “review and improve diversity.” In his statement, Khan said that he no longer wanted to see “statues, road names and public spaces reflect a bygone era.”  He declared “The Black Lives Matter protests have rightly brought this to the public’s attention, but it’s important that we take the right steps to work together to bring change and ensure that we can all be proud of our public landscape,”   To that end, he said that the city would replace historic statuary with black and Asian minority ethnic communities, as well as women, the LGBTQ community and disability groups.

I have previously discussed my love for London and its rich history.  As a history nut, walking around London is an overwhelming and inspiring experience.  To see the response of Khan to his destruction and his plans to remove historical monuments is terribly distressing.  I have  long supported adding to historical monuments to bring greater context and diversity. This however seem like a pledge to remove history, literally, from the streets of London.

Over in Paris, the response has been very different from French President Emmanuel Macron who vowed to stand with history and resist efforts to  down statues of controversial or colonial-era figures. Macron showed incredible courage in refusing to rewrite the history of France and declared “the republic will not erase any trace, or any name, from its history … it will not take down any statue.”  Instead, he insisted that “We should look at all of our history together with lucidity.”

I would not only say lucidity but logic.  Paris and London are magnificent examples of the history of civilization, struggling with our best and worst motivations. The public art is a reminder of that history. We should work together to understand it, not rewrite it.  Yet as discussed today, we have professors and teachers leading the mob in tearing down monuments and public art.

I have been highly critical of Macron for his anti-free speech efforts.  However, he deserves praise for this principled stand, which must be very difficult for him in Paris where mobs have demanded the destruction of public art and monuments.

So there you have it.  Two cities and one profile of courage. As Charles Dickens wrote:

“It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

BP p.l.c. (BP) will write off up to $17.5 billion from the value of its assets after it slashed its long-term energy price forecasts, a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic that has crashed the global economy and significantly reduced oil demand. 

BP said in a press release on Monday that the virus-induced economic downturn has led to the review of its portfolio and its capital development plans as it must adapt to a post-corona world. It now expects “the pandemic having an enduring impact on the global economy, with the potential for weaker demand for energy for a sustained period.” 

Management expects the pandemic will “accelerate the pace of transition to a lower-carbon economy and energy system,” which means the company must reinvent itself, including a reduced focus on oil and gas and a more significant push towards renewables. 

BP lowered its long-term price assumptions for Brent crude prices to an average of $55 a barrel until 2050, down nearly 30% from previous estimates of $70. The reduction in long term price assumptions led to expectations of non-cash impairment charges and write-offs in second-quarter earnings, expected in August, of $13 billion to $17.5 billion. There was also mention that some oil and gas projects in the early exploration stages could be sidelined. 

“These difficult decisions — rooted in our net-zero ambition and reaffirmed by the pandemic — will better enable us to compete through the energy transition,’ BP’s Chief Executive Bernard Looney said. 

Looney told the Financial Times that COVID-19 might have ushered in “peak oil” demand.

“It’s not going to make oil more in demand. It’s gotten more likely [oil will] be less in demand,” he said. 

BP’s Brent crude price outlook is the lowest among Europe’s top oil majors (h/t Reuters): 

The substantial impairment is mainly on BP’s oil and gas exploration assets and will lower the company’s asset value by around 10%, pushing the equity to debt ratio to about 48%, RBC Capital Markets said in a note. This suggests the company could lower its dividend in the coming quarters.

Charlie Kronick, a senior climate adviser for Greenpeace UK, said BP’s revision of crude prices was “long overdue.”

“Accelerating the switch to renewable energy will be vital not only to the climate but to any oil company hoping to survive in a zero-carbon future,” Kronick added.

As of Monday morning, BP shares trading on the London Stock Exchange were down a little more than 4% on the news. 

When it comes to short to intermediate-term energy forecasts, Goldman Sachs’s analyst Damien Courvalin, who on May 1 turned bullish on oil, wrote a bearish note last week indicating Brent price could reach as low as $35 near term. 

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit News,

Police officers in the UK have been advised by their superiors to ‘take a knee’ in front of Black Lives Matter protesters and warned there’ll be drawbacks if they refused to do so.

Yes, really.

Following footage of officers doing precisely that at numerous BLM protests around the country, it has been confirmed that the suggestion came from above.

“Hertfordshire Constabulary said those who chose not to make the solidarity gesture ‘may become the focus of the protesters’ attention’,” reports the Mail on Sunday.

“The advice was issued during a recent operational briefing and points out that, when officers kneel down – joining in the symbolic stance of the Black Lives Matter movement – it ‘has a very positive reaction on the protest groups’.”

The advice was given despite the fact that many BLM demonstrations have descended into anarchy and violent attacks on police officers.

“It’s absurd. Will officers be expected to make similarly appeasing gestures at political events – far-Right protests, for instance?” asked one senior detective.

Former Home Secretary David Blunkett also slammed the idea, saying that police are “there to ensure a safe demonstration, not to make political statements.”

“That Hertfordshire police want their officers to take the knee before protestors is a total surrender to anarchy, Marxism and an organisation that wants them abolished. Insanity mixed with cowardice,” remarked Nigel Farage.

The advice is stunning because it suggests that officers across the country are being ordered to cave to the mob and be lax in enforcing the law against rioters.

That Hertfordshire police want their officers to take the knee before protestors is a total surrender to anarchy, Marxism and an organisation that wants them abolished. Insanity mixed with cowardice. https://t.co/Cw6M7sPnDR

— Nigel Farage (@Nigel_Farage) June 14, 2020

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The pandemic has thrust the global economy into a crippling recession. It could take several years for the world to return to either its long-term linear or exponential growth trends, resulting in diminishing demand for certain commodities. 

According to research firm Czarnikow Group, the virus-induced economic downturn has led to the first year-on-year decline in global sugar consumption since 1980, when sugar prices hit a high of 45c/lb. 

The global closure of the travel and tourism industries has been one of the most significant contributing factors behind sliding demand for sugary food products. Czarnikow wrote lockdowns have led to reduced consumption out-of-home and at-home:

“There has been a reversal of this recent trend of 1% growth each year. Due to this fall, we have reduced our consumption estimates for locations that are still under lockdown by 5%. Under lockdown, there are associated reductions in at-home-consumption due to shortages in stockists, supply chain delays, and the closure of the entertainment industry.

“This final factor is particularly important when estimating consumption patterns. This is because we believe that out-of-home sugar consumption is likely to be even more reduced than in-home sugar consumption. When people can’t go to the shops, cinema, sports events, and bars, the amount of sugar – mostly in the form of sugary drinks, fast food, and treat foods – is also reduced. We can verify this by looking at soft drinks sales, which have been particularly affected by lockdowns and the reduction of social gatherings.” – Czarnikow 

“Consumption out of home is normally more than what you would now substitute and have at home,” Ben Seed, an analyst at Czarnikow in London, told Bloomberg. 

“If you go to the cinema, you would probably quite happily have a liter or maybe more of soda while you watch the film, whereas we just don’t think people would drink a whole liter of soda while watching Netflix,” Seed said. 

Coca-Cola’s sales volumes were down 25% during the month of April, and the company warned the economic downturn will weigh heavily in the second quarter. PepsiCo Inc was another that expects second-quarter revenue to slide.

Czarnikow said global sugar consumption will decline 1.2% to 169.9 million tons this year. 

ICE-US Sugar July contracts plunged from $15.9 to $9.05, or about 43% decline in 52 sessions, bottoming out in late April. Since the bottom, contracts have soared 35% into mid-June — have hit resistance just shy of the 50% Fibonacci retracement level ($12.47). 

John Stansfield, an analyst at trader Group Sopex, told Bloomberg that falling demand could result in large sugar surpluses this year and next. 

“The bigger picture of falling sugar consumption comes from sales data of Coke and Pepsi, which is terrible,” Stansfield said, adding that, “but what I fear more is falling global GDP. Unemployed people won’t be going to restaurants and bars. As GDP stalls, so will sugar consumption.”

To sum up, with no V-shaped recovery in the global economy this year — the road to recovery will be slow and long — suggesting the sugar industry is about to go bust.

If you’re wondering about the latest data on the type of recovery ahead, read our latest piece titled “OECD Warns Of Deepest Global Downturn In Century, Second Virus Wave.” 

Authored by Marcus Holtkoetter viaAGWeb.com,

The European Commission has a plan to eliminate modern farming in Europe.

The details emerged last month, as part of a “European Green Deal” announced late last year that calls for the continent to become “climate neutral” by 2050.

The commission speaks of “turning climate and environmental challenges into opportunities.” It also talks about “making the transition just and inclusive for all.”

It should have added three words: “except for farmers.”

That’s because the EU Commission just released its “Farm to Fork” strategy, which is the agricultural portion of the European Green Deal. It announces a series of unrealistic goals: In the next decade, farmers like me are supposed to slash our use of crop-protection products by half, cut our application of fertilizer by 20 percent, and transform a quarter of total farmland into organic production.

None of this, of course, is supposed to disrupt anybody’s dinner.

Europeans are blessed to live in a well-fed society. We have stable governments, reliable infrastructure, and advanced economies. We also have some of the best farmland in the world, with good soil and strong yields, year after year. Through intensive farming, we achieve excellent results—and we don’t face the problems of hunger and malnutrition that plague less fortunate people in other societies.

What the European Commission now proposes, essentially, is smaller harvests. For consumers, this will lead directly to one thing: Higher prices. Food will cost more.

There’s also a deeper problem. How are farmers supposed to make a living when we’re growing fewer crops and selling less food? The commission fails to consider one of the most likely results of its misbegotten approach to agriculture: When farmers can’t turn a profit, they’ll quit farming.

If that happens, the smaller harvests will shrink even further.

This defies what the commission says is its major goal, which is to make “the EU’s economy sustainable.” It needs to understand that there is no such thing as economic sustainability without a sustainable economy.

It also raises the question of where our food will come from, if it doesn’t come from our own farms. We could always import more food from other places. Global trade already is an essential feature of food production. We should encourage more of it.

Yet the European Green Deal will lead to substandard farming in places with less productive farmland. This may help fill bellies in a Europe that has fewer farmers. It may even salve the consciences of activists and bureaucrats in Brussels. It certainly won’t help the climate.

Our goal should be to grow more food on less land. Yet the EU’s present approach, driven by ideology rather than science, will lead to growing less food on more land.

What’s “green” about that?

This is all supposed to happen, by the way, at a time of worldwide population growth. Demographers expect that an additional 2 billion people will inhabit our planet by 2050. We need to feed them, too. Figuring out how to do this over the next 30 years is farming’s major challenge—and the solution, if we find one, lies in the creative use of innovative technologies, products and strategies, especially in the developing world.

What we don’t need are the additional burden of restrictions that will make it harder for Europeans to feed themselves.

Worst of all, however, the European Green Deal seems to assume that farmers are the foes of conservation. It treats us as a problem to be solved rather than allies in a common cause.

We’re already working hard to be as “green” as possible. On my farm, we produce a portion of our electricity with solar panels. We use GPS and other technologies to reduce waste when we apply manure and fight weeds. We plant cover crops to protect soil erosion. We grow flower strips to attract pollinating insects and improve biodiversity.

As time and technology allow, we’ll do even more of this. The surest way to prevent positive innovation, however, is to threaten the ability of farmers to make a living.

For farmers – and everybody – the European Green Deal is a rotten deal.

Three NYPD officers were poisoned at a Shake Shack on Broadway in Manhattan Monday night, according to New York Benevolent Police Association (PBA) and confirmed by the Detectives’ Endowment Association.

“At some point during their meal period, the MOS discovered that a toxic substance, believed to be bleach, had been placed in their beverages,” reads a statement from PBA President Patrick Lynch, who added that the contamination was not discovered until the officers had already consumed some of their beverages.

#BREAKING When NYC police officers cannot even take meal without coming under attack, it is clear that environment in which we work has deteriorated to a critical level. We cannot afford to let our guard down for even a moment. pic.twitter.com/fbMMDOKqbV

— NYC PBA (@NYCPBA) June 16, 2020

The NYPD Detectives’ Endowment Association tweeted on Monday that three officers were “intentionally poisoned by one or more workers at the Shake Shack at 200 Broadway in Manhattan” are responsible, adding that none of the officers were seriously harmed. 

🚨URGENT SAFETY MESSAGE🚨
Tonight, three of our fellow officers were intentionally poisoned by one or more workers at the Shake Shack at 200 Broadway in Manhattan. Fortunately, they were not seriously harmed. Please see the safety alert⤵️ https://t.co/D8Lywivhdu

— Detectives’ Endowment Association (@NYCPDDEA) June 16, 2020

Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

“Revolutions are often seen as spontaneous. It looks like people just went into the street. But it’s the result of months or years of preparation. It is very boring until you reach a certain point, where you can organize mass demonstrations or strikes. If it is carefully planned, by the time they start, everything is over in a matter of weeks.” Foreign Policy Journal

Does anyone believe the nationwide riots and looting are a spontaneous reaction to the killing of George Floyd?

It’s all too coordinated, too widespread, and too much in-sync with the media narrative that applauds the “mainly peaceful protests” while ignoring the vast destruction to cities across the country. What’s that all about? Do the instigators of these demonstrations want to see our cities reduced to urban wastelands where street gangs and Antifa thugs impose their own harsh justice? That’s where this is headed, isn’t it?

Of course there are millions of protesters who honestly believe they’re fighting racial injustice and police brutality. And more power to them. But that certainly doesn’t mean there aren’t hidden agendas driving these outbursts. Quite the contrary. It seems to me that the protest movement is actually the perfect vehicle for affecting dramatic social changes that only serve the interests of elites. For example, who benefits from defunding the police? Not African Americans, that’s for sure. Black neighborhoods need more security not less. And yet, the New York Times lead editorial on Saturday proudly announces, “Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won’t happen.” Check it out:

“We can’t reform the police. The only way to diminish police violence is to reduce contact between the public and the police….There is not a single era in United States history in which the police were not a force of violence against black people. Policing in the South emerged from the slave patrols in the 1700 and 1800s that caught and returned runaway slaves. In the North, the first municipal police departments in the mid-1800s helped quash labor strikes and riots against the rich. Everywhere, they have suppressed marginalized populations to protect the status quo.

So when you see a police officer pressing his knee into a black man’s neck until he dies, that’s the logical result of policing in America. When a police officer brutalizes a black person, he is doing what he sees as his job…” (“Yes, We Mean Literally Abolish the Police–Because reform won’t happen”, New York Times)

So, according to the Times, the problem isn’t single parent families, or underfunded education or limited job opportunities or fractured neighborhoods, it’s the cops who have nothing to do with any of these problems. Are we supposed to take this seriously, because the editors of the Times certainly do. They’d like us to believe that there is groundswell support for this loony idea, but there isn’t. In a recent poll, more than 60% of those surveyed, oppose the idea of defunding the police. So why would such an unpopular, wacko idea wind up as the headline op-ed in the Saturday edition? Well, because the Times is doing what it always does, advancing the political agenda of the elites who hold the purse-strings and dictate which ideas are promoted and which end up on the cutting room floor. That’s how the system works. Check out this excerpt from an article by Paul Craig Roberts:

“The extraordinary destruction of white and Asian businesses in many instances wiping out a family’s lifetime work, the looting of national businesses whose dumbshit CEOs support the looters, the merciless gang beatings of whites and Asians who attempted to defend their persons and their property, the egging on of the violence by politicians in both parties and by the entirely of the media including many alternative media websites, shows a country undergoing collapse. This is why it is not shown in national media. Some local media show an indication of the violent destruction in their community, but it is not accumulated and presented to a national audience. Consequently, Americans think the looting and destruction is only a local occurance… I just checked CNN and the BBC and there is nothing about the extraordinary economic destruction and massive thefts.” (“The Real Racists”, Paul Craig Roberts, Unz Review)

Roberts makes a good point, and one that’s worth mulling over. Why has the media failed to show the vast destruction of businesses and private property? Why have they minimized the effects of vandalism, looting and arson? Why have they fanned the flames of social unrest from the very beginning, shrugging off the ruin and devastation while cheerleading the demonstrations as a heroic struggle for racial justice? Is this is the same media that supported every bloody war, every foreign intervention, and every color-revolution for the last 5 decades? Are we really expected to believe that they’ve changed their stripes and become an energized proponent of social justice?

Nonsense. The media’s role in concealing the damage should only convince skeptics that the protests are just one part of a much larger operation. What we’re seeing play out in over 400 cities across the US, has more to do with toppling Trump and sowing racial division than it does with the killing of George Floyd. The scale and coordination alone suggests that elements in the deep state are probably involved. We know from evidence uncovered during the Russiagate probe, that the media works hand-in-glove with the Intel agencies and FBI while–at the same time– serving as a mouthpiece for elites. That hasn’t changed, in fact, it’s gotten even worse. The uniformity of the coverage suggests that that same perception management strategy is being employed here as well. Even at this late date, the determination to remove Trump from office is as strong as ever even though, in the present case, it has been combined with the broader political strategy of inciting fratricidal violence, obliterating urban areas, and spreading anarchy across the country. This isn’t about racial justice or police brutality, it’s about regime change, internal destabilization, and martial law. Take a look at this article at The Herland Report:

“What the Black Lives Matter movement does not understand is that they are being used by the billionaire white capitalists who are fighting to push the working class even lower and end the national sovereignty principles that president Trump stands for in America….

The rightful grievance over racism against blacks is now used to get Trump since Russia Gate, Impeachment, the corona scandal and nothing else has worked. The aim is to end democracy in the United States, control Congress and politics and assemble the power into the hands of the very few…

It is all about who will own the United States and have free access to its revenues: Either the American people under democracy or globalist billionaire individuals.” (“Politicized USA Gene Sharp riots is another attempted coup d’etat – New Left Tyranny” The Herland Report

That sounds about right to me. The protests are merely a fig leaf for a “color revolution” that bears a striking resemblance to the more than 50 CIA-backed coups launched on foreign governments in the last 70 years. Have the chickens have come home to roost? It certainly looks like it. Here’s more from the same article:

“Use a grievance that the local population has against the system, identify and support those who oppose the current government, infiltrate and strengthen opposition movements, fund them with millions of dollars, organize protests that seem legitimate and have paid political instigators dress up in regular clothes to blend in.”

So, yes, the grievances are real, but that doesn’t mean that someone else is not steering the action. And just as the media is shaping the narrative for its own purposes, so too, there are agents within the movement that are inciting the violence. All of this suggests the existence of some form of command-control that provides logistical support and assists in communications. Check out this excerpt from a post at Colonel Pat Lang’s website Sic Semper Tyrannis:

“The logistical capabilities of antifa+ are also impressive. They can move people around the country with ease, position pallet loads of new brick, 55 gallon new trash cans of frozen water bottles and other debris suitable for throwing on gridded patterns around cities in a well thought out distribution pattern. Who pays for this? Who plans this? Who coordinates these plans and gives “execute orders?”

Antifa+ can create massive propaganda campaigns that fit their agenda. These campaigns are fully supported by the MSM and by many in the Congressional Democratic Party. The present meme of “Defund the Police” is an example. This appeared miraculously, and simultaneously across the country. I am impressed. Yesterday the frat boy type who is mayor of Minneapolis was booed out of a mass meeting of radicals in that fair city because he refused to endorse abolishing the police force. Gutting the civil police forces has long been a major goal of the far left, but now, they have the ability to create mass hysteria over it when they have an excuse.” (“My take on the present situation”, Sic Semper Tyrannis)

Colonel Lang is not the only one to marvel at Antifa’s “logistical capabilities”. The United States has never experienced two weeks of sustained protests in hundreds of its cities at the same time. It’s beyond suspicious, it points to extensive coordination with groups across the country, a comprehensive media strategy (that probably preceded the killing of George Floyd), a sizable presence on social media (to put people on the street), and agents provocateur whose task is to incite violence, loot and create mayhem.

None of this has anything to do with racial justice or police brutality. America is being destabilized and sacked for other purposes altogether. This a destabilization campaign similar to the CIA’s color revolutions designed to topple the regime (Trump), install a puppet government (Biden), impose “shock therapy” on the economy pushing tens of millions of Americans into homelessness and destitution, and leave behind a broken, smoldering shell of a country easily controlled by Federal shock troops and wealthy globalist mandarins. Here’s a short excerpt from an article by Kurt Nimmo at his excellent blog “Another Day in the Empire”:

“The BLM represents the forefront of an effort to divide Americans along racial and political lines, thus keeping race and identity-based barbarians safely away from more critical issues of importance to the elite, most crucially a free hand to plunder and ransack natural resources, minerals, crude oil, and impoverish billions of people whom the ruling elite consider unproductive useless eaters and a hindrance to the drive to dominate, steal, and murder….

It is sad to say BLM serves the elite by ignoring or remaining ignorant of the main problem—boundless predation by a neoliberal criminal project that considers all—black, white, yellow, brown—as expliotable and dispensable serfs.” (“2 Million Arab Lives Don’t Matter“, Kurt Nimmo, Another Day in the Empire)

The protest movement is the mask that conceals the maneuvering of elites. The real target of this operation is the Constitutional Republic itself. Having succeeded in using the Lockdown to push the economy into severe recession, the globalists are now inciting a fratricidal war that will weaken the opposition and prepare the country for a new authoritarian order.

Police in various American cities especially on the East and West coasts have stood down while fanatical mobs of leftists unilaterally determine which public monuments and statues should be toppled, destroyed, and in some cases beheaded — as in the recent “beheading” of a Christopher Columbus statue at a public park in Boston.

It didn’t take long for the woke mobs to target statues of the founding fathers and American Constitutional framers in the past days.

In Portland over the weekend, a large bronze Thomas Jefferson statue that was a central feature of Jefferson High School campus was pulled down after Black Lives Matter protests there.

Like others across the nation, the Jefferson statue was further defaced with the words “slave owner” and “George Floyd” spray-painted across the base.

But given that increasingly even Abraham Lincoln statues are being targeted, it reveals that neither the Confederacy nor early colonial and American slaveholders are the targets, but all symbols of US history itself. 

As The Federalist astutely observes: 

They make no distinction between Confederate and Union, abolitionist and pro-slavery, 15th-century figures and 20th. They don’t care when a monument was erected, who built it, or why. They have not come to debate or persuade their fellow citizens to relocate these statues to museums or private property. They believe the debate is over and that they have won.

Their target is not the Confederacy. It is the United States. They mean to destroy symbols of American history writ large, because to them all of American history is racist and genocidal. Their goal is not to cleanse a nation they love of monuments to Confederate traitors who tried to secede, but to cleanse their consciences of ever having loved such an evil and irredeemably racist country in the first place.

Rioters in Philly deface a statue of Matthias Baldwin, an early abolitionist who fought against slavery 30 years before it ended. pic.twitter.com/1HKrDusPBh

— Ian Miles Cheong (@stillgray) June 11, 2020

Even leading abolitionist figures from history are targeted, astoundingly: 

That is why you see mobs defacing statues of abolitionists like Matthias Baldwin and Union war heroes like Adm. David Farragut and Gen. George Thomas. That is why the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier of the American Revolution in Philadelphia was vandalized this past weekend with the words “committed genocide.” That is why statues of Christopher Columbus were torn down or beheaded in three cities last week.

#BLM protestors vandalised the Shaw memorial – that commemorates the all-black battalion that fought for abolition in the American Civil War pic.twitter.com/BszVzRksNe

— JamesHeartfield (@JamesHeartfield) June 12, 2020

Simply put, it now appears any white male historical figure is now “tainted” with a “racist” and “genocidal” legacy, no matter the historical record. 

As another case in point from this past weekend: 

BLM protestors vandalized a statue of John Greenleaf in Whittier, CA

A prominent Quaker abolitionist

Known for his anti-slavery writings pic.twitter.com/ULtvsDCAol

— ELIJAH SCHAFFER (@ElijahSchaffer) June 14, 2020

A “peaceful” protest took place at Central Park in Whittier on Sunday, or so we are told. It appears that initially the statue was safe, but by the end of it the Quaker abolitionist considered key in the 19th century movement for equal rights wasn’t spared by the ‘woke’ mob.

John Greenleaf, whose statue now sits damaged and vandalized, including with the spray-painted letters “BLM”, was among the most prominent literary voices leading the fight to end slavery even decades before Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation in 1863.

If even memorials to famous abolitionists won’t be spared, what will? 

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Many commentators have noticed that the statue-destroying leftist mobs in both the US and UK have something in common with a certain Mideast terror group…

Before and after: the 6th century Bamiyan Buddhas of Afghanistan were destroyed by the Taliban using dynamite in 2001.

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

You are being controlled. You are being manipulated. You are being brainwashed. If you are still stuck believing that your vote counts and choosing sides is “moral”  in a system set up against you from day one, the propaganda has worked.

In this video, we look at the ideas of Edward Bernays, nephew of Sigmund Freud, and a pioneering mind behind the field of public relations and modern propaganda – particularly his ideas on how group psychology, and the illusion of choice, can be used to manipulate the masses.

This is all about dividing and conquering. While we argue about which political puppet is less evil than the other, they wreak havoc on us and destroy everything in their path for power, fame, and wealth.

If you want to make the best change, reject the system, the entire system, and refuse to vote. The task of any control system, therefore, is to maintain the facade of political choice and central to this is “the people’s right to vote,” writes Ben O’Hanlon for Medium.

The easiest way to divide people is through political theater. This is going to be a tough red pill for people to swallow…

It literally doesn’t matter who you vote for. If your vote actually mattered, it would have already been made illegal.

 “Let us control the money of a nation, and we care not who makes its laws.”

– A “maxim” of the House of Rothschilds.

This isn’t an astonishing or groundbreaking statement.  On some visceral level, we all understand this.  So why then, is it so easy to divide people into political groups so a small handful of other people can rule over them? Basically, propaganda – the illusion of choice keeps people stuck believing they are free to decide when it really doesn’t matter much anyway. You don’t get to vote for the people behind the scenes that make all the decisions anyway, only the puppet whose face will be attached to those decisions.

Voting provides a corrupt system with legitimacy, regardless of who you vote for. It implies that you consent to the outcome because you participated even if you wanted the other guy to win.  The use of dividing people into political parties is not new, but the desire to break free from them and the ruling class. in general, is.

There is something being concocted in the dens of power, far beyond the public eye, and it doesn’t bode well for the future of this country.

Anytime you have an entire nation so mesmerized by political theater and public spectacle that they are oblivious to all else, you’d better beware. –John W. Whitehead

Voting is nothing more than an illusion of choice. It’s akin to slave putting a piece of paper in a box that asks the master to be free. It doesn’t work that way. Figure out the difference between right and wrong, and one of the first things that happen is a refusal to vote for the lesser of two evils…which is still evil, by the way. Because any master who thinks they own anyone else is evil and all politicians think they own you to some degree.

Besides, how do you know who won? The mainstream media tells you, right? And they are so honest, just, and trustworthy, and would NEVER do what they are told…oh, wait. Yeah, it’s that insane.

Trump bent immediately to the will of the deep state. Like a twig in the wind.

It’s time to be honest about that. The people never had a champion in the ring.

Let us talk no more of “democracy,” or of “voting”. Of course, that is hard to accept and acknowledge, because it is so devastating to the delusions that hold individuals together from day to day.

Many people may not even be capable of holding the thought or notion that they might oppose or stop it. Most Americans are now literally numb to the actions of its own government, the lives it is destroying and the lies it is working for.

The candidates and the creatures of the state who have willingly lied and deceived the people while looking them in the eye (and pretending to have good reasons) are recklessly and wantonly jeopardizing the world in a way that that hasn’t been seen since the cold war. –SHTFPlan, April 13, 2017

“None are more hopelessly enslaved than those who falsely believe they are free.”

– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

If you are being honest with yourself, you would surely know by now that you don’t require a ruler, a master, or an authoritarian to make decisions for you. It’s time we begin to own ourselves and reject the power-hungry politicians will to rule over us all. People seem to be getting increasingly angry at those who are trying to wake them up and free them from the mental chains they’ve put on themselves. I see this as a sign that the system’s propaganda has worked, but only on those easy to control from the start.