Abe's LDP Fears Trump GOP Nomination

Truth About Anti-Trump Chicago Riots

The Zika Virus Fraud

Another small head baby fraud.  Vince was poisoned with Atrazine as an infant

Jon Rappaport

The Zika virus, now being blamed for the birth of babies with very small heads and impaired brains, has been around for a long time—late 1940s, early 1950s—and suddenly, without warning or reason, after inducing, at best, mild illness, it’s producing horrendous damage? This is called a clue. A clue that scientific liars are lying. Furthermore, many of the women who are giving birth to deformed babies test negative for the presence of the Zika Virus. 

So, what is causing babies to be born with very small heads and brain damage? I conclude: don’t assume there is only one cause for illness. That can be very misleading. Various factors can combine to produce disease and death.

For example, in the case of this “Zika” phenomenon:

One: Pesticide use in Brazil:

Brazil, the center of the “Zika” crisis, uses more pesticides than any nation in the world. Some of these are banned in 22 other countries. And as for babies born with smaller heads, here is a study from Environmental Health Perspectives (July 1, 2011), “Urinary Biomarkers of Prenatal Atrazine Exposure…”:

“The presence versus absence of quantifiable levels of [the pesticide] atrazine or a specific atrazine metabolite was associated with fetal growth restriction… and small head circumference… Head circumference was also inversely associated with the presence of the herbicide metolachlor.” (emphasis added)

Atrazine and metolachlor are both used in Brazil. 

Two: The TdaP vaccine:

This is a case of suspicious correlation. A study posted in the US National Library of Medicine, “Pertussis in young infants: a severe vaccine-preventable disease,” spells it out:

“…in late 2014, the [Brazilian] Ministry of Health announced the introduction of the Tdap vaccine for all pregnant women in Brazil.” 

 

Obviously, pregnant women are the target group; they are giving birth to babies with smaller heads and brain damage, and the recommendation for them to take the vaccine was recent; 2014.

Barbara Loe Fisher, of the National Vaccine Information Center, writes: 

“Drug companies did not test the safety and effectiveness of giving influenza or Tdap vaccine to pregnant women before the vaccines were licensed in the U.S and there is almost no data on inflammatory or other biological responses to these vaccines that could affect pregnancy and birth outcomes…The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) lists influenza and Tdap vaccines as either Pregnancy Category B or C biologicals which means that adequate testing has not been done in humans to demonstrate safety for pregnant women and it is not known whether the vaccines can cause fetal harm or affect reproduction capacity. The manufacturers of influenza and Tdap vaccines state that human toxicity and fertility studies are inadequate and warn that the influenza and Tdap vaccines should ‘be given to a pregnant woman only if clearly needed.’” (emphasis added) 

Three: Genetically engineered mosquitoes that have already been released in Brazil to “combat” dengue fever—a project implemented by Oxitec, a company supplied with grant money from Bill Gates:

 

A town in Brazil has reported continuing elevated levels of dengue fever since the GE (genetically engineered) mosquitoes have been introduced to combat that disease.

The scientific hypothesis is: the trickster GE bugs (males) will impregnate natural females, but no actual next generation will occur beyond the larval stage. However, this plummeting birth rate in mosquitoes is the only “proof” that the grand experiment is safe. No long-term health studies have been done—this is a mirror of what happened when GMO crops were introduced: no science, just bland assurances.

Needless to say, without extensive lab testing, there is no way to tell what toxic elements these GE mosquitoes may actually be harboring, in addition to what researchers claim. That’s a major red flag.

Wherever these GE mosquitoes have been introduced, or are about to be introduced, the human populations have not been consulted for their permission. It’s all being done by government and corporate edict. It’s human experimentation on a grand scale.

Four: Pesticide manufacturing in Brazil:

 

Reuters, May 19, 2015, “Brazil prosecutors seek $16 million from pesticide makers”: 

“Brazilian prosecutors said on Monday they would seek at least 50 million reais ($16.6 million) from multinational pesticide manufacturers for alleged safety violations at a collection facility for used pesticide containers… Those manufacturers, prosecutors said, include the Brazilian units of BASF, DuPont, Monsanto, Nufarm, Syngenta, Adama, FMC and Nortox… The charges come as scientists, regulators, public health officials and consumers increasingly complain that Brazil’s ascent as an agricultural powerhouse has led to unsafe and excessive use of pesticides. Reuters reported in April that at least four foreign manufacturers sell pesticides in Brazil that they are not allowed to sell in their home markets.” (emphasis added)

How convenient for these corporate giants to evade blame for horrific birth effects—out of nowhere a virus is touted as the cause.

Five: Severe and endemic malnutrition, lack of basic sanitation, and grinding poverty:

These are major factors in all illness and death, in the areas where they are prevalent (e.g., major parts of Brazil). Suppression of the immune system is the result, and anything that then comes down the pipeline, germs or manmade toxic substances, become catastrophic to the body.

Six: anti-mosquito sprays:

The Guardian, January 26, 2015, “Brazil is ‘badly losing’ the battle against Zika virus, says health minister”:

Sprays are now being given out to 400,000 pregnant women in Brazil. Naturally, the sprays are toxic. What better way to multiply the attack on mothers and their unborn children? For example, widely used organophosphates in sprays can be highly disruptive to the nervous system.

Some or all of these six elements I’ve listed, in combination, form a sustained attack on human life.

And as I keep stressing, the virus becomes the formidable cover story that conceals the truth.

And don’t forget the Rio Olympic Games, coming up in August. There are multiple scenarios which could play out in front of a global television audience. Will Zika be pushed as some sort of worldwide pandemic? Will a Zika vaccine be magically “discovered” and rushed into production, in time to show (as an advertisement) lines of people dutifully trudging up to receive shots? 

Every fake epidemic is, in part, designed to create fear and induce blind compliance to medical and government dictates. The germ is positioned as the “tiny terrorist” in this stage play.

G 20 Talks Open In Turkey

The world leaders are convening in Turkey for the G20 summit. The Paris tragedy highlighted the pending problems inside the world community. In this context the world leaders are expected to step up border controls, aviation security, to curb migrant crisis and to combat ISIS. 

US Still Arming ISIS

An Iraqi official shows US weapons taken from ISIS

 Documents from the US Defense Department leaked through Anonymous via Julian Assange yesterday, show U.S. military aircraft have once again dropped weapons in areas held by the Islamic State.

Iraqi volunteers fighting against IS in the Yathrib and Balad districts in Iraq’s Salahuddin Province reported the air drops as well.  Iraq's parliament is voting later today whether Iraq will ask the Russian military to take over US military duties and ask the US to leave.

Iraq claims it is losing the upper hand in the battle to regain territory from the terrorist group due to "Continual US help of the very group we are fighting."

In September an airdrop of weapons were sent Islamic State fighters outside Kobani in Syria.

Also last month, Iraqi intelligence sources said the U.S. is actively supplying ISIS with weapons.   “The Iraqi intelligence sources reiterated that the US military planes have airdropped several aid cargoes for ISIL terrorists to help them resist the siege laid by the Iraqi army, security and popular forces,” a report stated.

“What is important is that the US sends these weapons to only those that cooperate with the Pentagon and this indicates that the US plays a role in arming the ISIS.”

The UK's MI6 previously reported in July that ISIS fighters are using “significant quantities” of arms including M16 assault rifles marked “property of the US government.”

In August, Aaron Klein, writing for WorldNetDaily, reported that members of ISIS were trained in 2012 by U.S. instructors working at a secret base in Jordan, according to informed Jordanian officials.

While the Obama administration does not admit arming and training ISIS terrorists, General Martin E. Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, admitted in testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee in July that United States’ Arab "allies" in the Middle East fund ISIS.

General Thomas McInerney told Fox News in September that the U.S. “helped build ISIS” as a result of the group obtaining weapons from the Benghazi consulate in Libya which was attacked by jihadists in September 2012.  “We backed I believe in some cases, some of the wrong people and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army and that’s a little confusing to people, so I’ve always maintained… that we were backing the wrong types,” McInerney said.

The U.S. claims it is arming “moderate” mercenaries in Syria to fight against ISIS and the al-Assad government in Damascus despite the fact there are no longer any moderate forces active.

The CIA has shipped weapons to al-Qaeda affiliated groups in Syria since at least 2012 and continues to do so today, a fact revealed by The New York Times.

The shipments included more than 160 military cargo flights by Jordanian, Saudi and Qatari military cargo planes landing at Esenboga Airport near Ankara and other Turkish and Jordanian airports. An effort to arm al-Nusra – now fully merged with ISIS – and other jihadist groups has been coordinated by American intelligence.

Dallas Brincrest

Defense Department Provided ISIS With Toyotas

Recently officials in Washington DC have asked where ISIS got their Toyotas.  This is odd because it has been known for over a year that the US State and Defense Departments provided ISIS the vehicles through a known ISIS front group the Free Syrian Army.   Both President Obama and Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter approved the plan in May 2014 with consultation of State Department Secretary John Kerry.

In June 2014 the US State Department resumed sending non-lethal aid to Syrian rebels, the delivery list included 43 Toyota trucks.

Hiluxes were on the Free Syrian Army's (an ISIS affiliated group) wish list. Oubai Shahbander, a Washington-based security advisor, provided CNN, PRI, and Reuters the evidence in a September 2014 interview.

"Specific equipment like the Toyota Hiluxes are what we refer to as force enablers for the moderate opposition forces on the ground," he adds. Shahbander says the US-supplied pickups delivered troops and supplies into battle. Some of the fleet became battlefield weapons.  

Defense Department documents have shown the US Air Force made six weapons drops into Syria between June 10 and July 9, 2014.  Two drops show 20 and 23 Toyota Hiluxes were included respectively.  The other four drops were simply listed as "Needed tactical and conventional weapons."

"You can absolutely expect many of those trucks were mounted with crew-served machine guns or other type of equipment, military equipment, that the opposition forces have access to. I mean, that's one of the reasons why the Toyota Hilux is such an important force multiplier, because it could be used both for humanitarian purposes and for operational purposes as well."

Syria is only the latest war zone where the Hilux has been a vehicle of choice. The BBC's Kabul correspondent, David Loyn, saw the Hilux put through its paces by the Taliban in the 1990s, and credits the truck with having given Taliban forces a battlefield edge.

"They perfected very fast-moving maneuver warfare, and they did it with Hilux trucks," he says. "The Jane's Defense Weekly analysis of the seizure of Kabul in 1996 was that it was a textbook operation, from three sides, a coordinated piece of warfare using these Hilux trucks as very fast-moving troop-moving vehicles."

Loyn ranks the Hilux among the great game-changers of modern warfare. "You have seen in many wars in the past, a sort of symbolic weapon: the longbow at Agincourt, the Huey helicopter in Vietnam and, I think, the Hilux truck in Afghanistan in the hands of the Taliban was [as] significant and iconic a weapon as those."

PRI

UNESCO Adds Nanjing Massacre Documents

One of the added documents

 

 UNESCO on Saturday added Chinese documents on the "Nanjing Massacre" to the Memory of the World heritage, drawing an immediate protest from the Japanese government questioning whether the U.N. body was "neutral and fair" in registering them.

Beijing's dossier on the widespread killings of Chinese citizens and soldiers following the 1937 capture of Nanjing by the Japanese military is among dozens of new additions of documentary heritage, also including two sets of archives from Japan.

The Japanese materials cover the post-World War II internment and repatriation of Japanese by the Soviet Union and a Buddhist temple's extensive records of its activities from the medieval to pre-modern eras in Japan.

China had also nominated "comfort women" files. But this was not added in the biennial registration by UNESCO for the documentary version of the World Heritage and Intangible Cultural Heritage programs, which started in 1997.

The "Documents of the Nanjing Massacre" consists of court documents from the International Military Tribunal for the Far East that convicted several Japanese as war criminals and a Chinese military tribunal, among others. They also include photos of the killings said to have been taken by the Imperial Japanese Army and film footage taken by an American missionary.

The Japanese Foreign Ministry said in a press secretary's statement that "the nomination was made on the basis of unilateral arguments" and "it is extremely regrettable" that they were registered.

It "raises a question about the action of the international organization that ought to be neutral and fair" and "it is evident that there is a problem about the veracity" of the archives, it said.

Differences over history have complicated Japan's relations with China. Japanese officials may be concerned that UNESCO's registration of the documents could give Beijing ammunition against Tokyo in promoting its campaign to highlight what it calls "the crimes of Japanese militarism," including the "Nanjing Massacre", in which it claims more than 300,000 people were killed.

Japanese historians estimate the death toll at ranging between the tens of thousands to 200,000.

Last year China nominated the "Nanjing Massacre" files and the "comfort women" documents for UNESCO listing this year on the 70th anniversary of what Beijing calls its victory in a war of resistance against Japanese aggression and in the world war against fascism.

Tokyo argued that China was politicizing UNESCO and asked Beijing to withdraw the double nominations, which China refused to do, according to Japanese officials.

Japanese historian Masato Miyachi, a professor emeritus of the University of Tokyo, said, "By registering Nanjing Massacre materials as Memory of the World heritage, UNESCO is recognizing the authenticity of documents and their significance in the world."

He noted that there are other UNESCO-listed documents about dark episodes of history such as war and slavery. "If, however, the veracity of the documents submitted by China is questioned, that would undermine the credibility of the entire Memory of the World heritage," he said.

According to Japan's Foreign Ministry, the Memory of the World screening criteria concerns the necessity of the preservation and custody of documents and whether they represent historical truth is not considered.

These and other documents were selected for registration by UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova following recommendations by an international advisory panel that met in Abu Dhabi from Sunday to Tuesday.

One of the two sets of documents listed from Japan is a collection of some 570 memoirs, drawings and other items composed by Japanese inmates of Siberian labor camps after World War II, and lists of those repatriated after the war to Maizuru port in Kyoto Prefecture.

Roughly 55,000 of the nearly 600,000 Japanese soldiers detained in labor camps in Siberia and Mongolia after the war died due to forced labor, the severe living conditions and malnutrition.

Before applying for the registration, the Maizuru city government investigated other documents with the help of its sister city Nakhodka, near Vladivostok, in eastern Russia. The Japanese government and Maizuru city applied to register those documents in March 2014.

The other collection is the archives at Toji Temple called the "Toji Hyakugo Monjo," or Toji Temple's 100 boxes of documents, comprised of some 25,000 documents from the years 763 to 1711. The collection -- records of the ancient temple system and social structures -- was designated a Japanese national treasure in 1997.

In the next registration phase in 2017, Japan will seek to list the records of diplomat Chiune Sugihara who issued visas to help some 6,000 Jews flee from Nazi persecution during WWII, as well as three ancient stone monuments and documents of Korean missions to Japan in the Edo period.

Kyodo

Abe - Putin Summit Will Change Little

Abe and Putin at UN Sept 28

Among the various disputes in East Asia that have garnered significant attention over the past two years, the Russia-Japanese dispute over the Kuril Islands ( or Northern Territories as they are known in Japan) has been treated as an almost afterthought. While the potential for conflict over this dispute is minimal, it has served to complicate Russia-Japan relations. Recent actions by Moscow have angered Tokyo and while both sides wish to reach a peaceful resolution, Moscow insists that the status of the islands is not up for debate. With Russian President Putin pursuing a more active foreign policy and nationalism growing in Japan under Prime Minister Abe, a resolution to this dispute does not seem likely in the short term.

Several islands in an island chain north of Hokkaido were developed by Japanese migrants from the 18^th century onward and in 1855, Russian and Japan signed the Treaty of Shimoda granting Japan the four southernmost islands in the chain. Japan maintained control of these islands until the end of World War II when they were occupied by Russia. In 1949, Russia deported all of the Japanese residents on them to Japan. Japan renounced “all right, title and claim to the Kuril Islands” in the 1951 San Francisco Peace Treaty though this was not signed by Russia nor did the Japanese recognize the southernmost four islands as part of the Kuril chain. Since then the dispute has remained unresolved and since Japan views Russia as an occupying force, neither countries have signed a peace treaty to end their World War II hostilities.

There have been numerous attempts at settling the dispute but they have always fallen far short of what Tokyo has sought and what Moscow was willing to concede. By 2013, relations between Japan and Russia were improving and the possibility of a resolution being realized was becoming more likely. The 2014 revolution in Ukraine ended this as Russia-Japan relations suddenly thawed. Since then, Russia has taken provocative military steps in the region and has signaled its intent to retain control of the islands.

This summer marked not only the 70th anniversary of the Soviet Union’s victory against Japan in World War II and the start of its occupation of the northern territories but also a worsening of the situation. In response to Abe’s June visit to Kiev, Ukraine, Moscow announced that the construction of military facilities in the Kurils would speed up. In August, Russian Prime Minister Medvedev in a widely publicized event visited the Kuril Islands on Russia’s state Flag Day. Tokyo immediately lodged a protest against this visit which was one of many made by senior Russian government officials over the summer.

Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Igor Morgulov commented during the World War II anniversary celebrations that the territorial issues between Russia and Japan had been solved 70 years ago. Japan immediately protested these comments with Foreign Minister Fumio Kishida calling them “unacceptable” and “unproductive and false”.  Later in September, Kishida travelled to Russia on a three-day visit to discuss the disputed islands.  Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov though stated that the only topic to be discussed is that of a peace deal, not the status of the territories. Lavrov said, “Moving forward on this issue is possible only after we see clearly Japan’s recognition of historic realities. The work is difficult and the difference in positions is vast”.

In the past there were indications that Russia might eventually hand over the disputed territories to Japan. Now that does not seem likely as Russia is unwilling to portray the issue as one where Japan has a legitimate claim; instead all Russia wants is to reach a peace deal without a change in territory. As far as Moscow is concerned, the islands belong to Russia and if a peace deal is to be reached, Japan must recognize them as part of Russia.

High-level talks will restart October 12 in Moscow for the first time since last January. It is uncertain though what these talks will produce given Russia’s new position on the issue. Furthermore, Russia cannot afford to suddenly backtrack since such a move would be seen as weakness at a time when Moscow is actively involved in Ukraine and Syria. Japan though will not back down either as Tokyo has nothing to lose. For these reasons, this dispute will continue to live on for years to come.

Stephen Brooker

Tsipras Chooses To Betray Greek Electorate

Merkel and Tsipras prepare to announce deal

An historic betrayal has consumed Greece. Having set aside the mandate of the Greek electorate, the Syriza government has willfully ignored last week’s landslide “No” vote and secretly agreed a raft of repressive, impoverishing measures in return for a “bailout” that means sinister foreign control and a warning to the world.

Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras has pushed through parliament a proposal to cut at least 13 billion euros from the public purse – 4 billion euros more than the “austerity” figure rejected overwhelmingly by the majority of the Greek population in a referendum on 5 July.

These reportedly include a 50 per cent increase in the cost of healthcare for pensioners, almost 40 per cent of whom live in poverty; deep cuts in public sector wages; the complete privatization of public facilities such as airports and ports; a rise in value added tax to 23 per cent, now applied to the Greek islands where people struggle to eke out a living. There is more to come.

“Anti-austerity party sweeps to stunning victory”, declared a Guardian headline on January 25. “Radical leftists” the paper called Tsipras and his impressively-educated comrades.  They wore open neck shirts, and the finance minister rode a motorbike and was described as a “rock star of economics”. It was a façade. They were not radical in any sense of that cliched label, neither were they “anti austerity”.

For six months Tsipras and the recently discarded finance minister, Yanis Varoufakis, shuttled between Athens and Brussels, Berlin and the other centres of European money power. Instead of social justice for Greece, they achieved a new indebtedness, a deeper impoverishment that would merely replace a systemic rottenness based on the theft of tax revenue by the Greek super-wealthy – in accordance with European “neo-liberal” values — and cheap, highly profitable loans from those now seeking Greece’s scalp.

Greece’s debt, reports an audit by the Greek parliament, “is illegal, illegitimate and odious”. Proportionally, it is less than 30 per cent that of the debit of Germany, its major creditor. It is less than the debt of European banks whose “bailout” in 2007-8 was barely controversial and unpunished.

For a small country such as Greece, the euro is a colonial currency: a tether to a capitalist ideology so extreme that even the Pope pronounces it “intolerable” and “the dung of the devil”. The euro is to Greece what the US dollar is to remote territories in the Pacific, whose poverty and servility is guaranteed by their dependency.

In their travels to the court of the mighty in Brussels and Berlin, Tsipras and Varoufakis presented themselves neither as radicals nor “leftists” nor even honest social democrats, but as two slightly upstart supplicants in their pleas and demands. Without underestimating the hostility they faced, it is fair to say they displayed no political courage. More than once, the Greek people found out about their “secret austerity plans” in leaks to the media: such as a 30 June letter published in the Financial Times, in which Tsipras promised the heads of the EU, the European Central Bank and the IMF to accept their basic, most vicious demands – which he has now accepted.

When the Greek electorate voted “no” on 5 July to this very kind of rotten deal, Tsipras said, “Come Monday and the Greek government will be at the negotiating table after the referendum with better terms for the Greek people”. Greeks had not voted for “better terms”. They had voted for justice and for sovereignty, as they had done on January 25.

The day after the January election a truly democratic and, yes, radical government would have stopped every euro leaving the country, repudiated the “illegal and odious” debt – as Argentina did successfully — and expedited a plan to leave the crippling Eurozone. But there was no plan. There was only a willingness to be “at the table” seeking “better terms”.

The true nature of Syriza has been seldom examined and explained. To the foreign media it is no more than “leftist” or “far left” or “hardline” – the usual misleading spray. Some of Syriza’s international supporters have reached, at times, levels of cheer leading reminiscent of the rise of Barack Obama. Few have asked: Who are these “radicals”? What do they believe in?

In 2013, Yanis Varoufakis wrote: “Should we welcome this crisis of European capitalism as an opportunity to replace it with a better system? Or should we be so worried about it as to embark upon a campaign for stabilising capitalism? To me, the answer is clear. Europe’s crisis is far less likely to give birth to a better alternative to capitalism …

“I bow to the criticism that I have campaigned on an agenda founded on the assumption that the left was, and remains, squarely defeated …. Yes, I would love to put forward [a] radical agenda. But, no, I am not prepared to commit the [error of the British Labour Party following Thatcher’s victory].

“What good did we achieve in Britain in the early 1980s by promoting an agenda of socialist change that British society scorned while falling headlong into Thatcher’s neoliberal trip? Precisely none. What good will it do today to call for a dismantling of the Eurozone, of the European Union itself  …?”

Varoufakis omits all mention of the Social Democratic Party that split the Labour vote and led to Blairism. In suggesting people in Britain “scorned socialist change” – when they were given no real opportunity to bring about that change – he echoes Blair.

The leaders of Syriza are revolutionaries of a kind – but their revolution is the perverse, familiar appropriation of social democratic and parliamentary movements by liberals groomed to comply with neo-liberal drivel and a social engineering whose authentic face is that of Wolfgang Schauble, Germany’s finance minister, an imperial thug. Like the Labour Party in Britain and its equivalents among former social democratic parties such as the Labor Party in Australia, still describing themselves as “liberal” or even “left”,  Syriza is the product of an affluent, highly privileged, educated middle class, “schooled in postmodernism”, as Alex Lantier wrote.

For them, class is the unmentionable, let alone an enduring struggle, regardless of the reality of the lives of most human beings. Syriza’s luminaries are well-groomed; they lead not the resistance that ordinary people crave, as the Greek electorate has so bravely demonstrated, but “better terms” of a venal status quo that corrals and punishes the poor. When merged with “identity politics” and its insidious distractions, the consequence is not resistance, but subservience. “Mainstream” political life in Britain exemplifies this.

This is not inevitable, a done deal, if we wake up from the long, postmodern coma and reject the myths and deceptions of those who claim to represent us, and fight.

John Pilger

Obama Lied About Bin Laden Raid

It’s been four years since a group of US Navy Seals assassinated Osama bin Laden in a night raid on a high-walled compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan. The killing was the high point of Obama’s first term, and a major factor in his re-election. The White House still maintains that the mission was an all-American affair, and that the senior generals of Pakistan’s army and Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) were not told of the raid in advance. This is false, as are many other elements of the Obama administration’s account. The White House’s story might have been written by Lewis Carroll: would bin Laden, target of a massive international manhunt, really decide that a resort town forty miles from Islamabad would be the safest place to live and command al-Qaida’s operations? He was hiding in the open. So America said.

Seymour Hersh full article London Review of Books

Lord Jacob Rothschild Warns Of Dangerous International Economy

Lord Jacob Rothschild has warned investors that the world is facing the most dangerous geopolitical situation since the end of the Cols War.

The 78-year-old chairman of Rothschild Bank and RIT Capital, a £2.3bn trust, used the organization’s annual report to caution investors and partners that the focus of the firm would be the preservation of shareholders’ capital and not short term gains through investments.

Rothschild said that “a geopolitical situation perhaps as dangerous as any we have faced since World War II” has created a “difficult economic background” of which investors should be wary.

Rothschild, whose business associates include Bill Gates and Zebigniew Brzezinski, blamed the fraught climate on, “chaos and extremism in the Middle East, Russian aggression and expansion, and a weakened Europe threatened by horrendous unemployment, in no small measure caused by a failure to tackle structural reforms in many of the countries which form part of the European Union”. 

Davos Economic Forum during which it was revealed that the wealthy are purchasing secret hideaways in remote locations in order to escape social upheaval and possible riots. 

Economist Robert Johnson made headlines when he divulged that “hedge fund managers all over the world….are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.” 

Johnson cited income inequality and the potential for civil unrest and riots as the reason for the panic. 

Dallas Brincrest

Panel Heavy With Right Wing Academics Advising Abe

 

A panel of experts appointed by Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe met for the first time Wednesday to discuss what he should say in a statement marking the 70th anniversary of the end of World War II, fueling speculation that he may water down previous government apologies for the country’s wartime past.

Japan issued a landmark apology on the 50th anniversary in 1995 under then-Prime Minister Tomiichi Murayama, for the first time acknowledging its colonization and aggression in parts of Asia before and during the war. In 2005, then-Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi also apologized.

A key question is whether Abe will use the same terms such as “colonial rule” and “aggression” in his statement.

Abe appointed the 16-member panel - 10 academics, three business leaders, two journalists and an international aid worker - to seek advice on what he should say on Aug. 15, the anniversary of the war’s end.

Abe told the panel he hopes to get their views on what Japan has learned from the past, how Japan has contributed to international peace in the postwar era and what Japan’s regional and international contribution should be in the future. He did not refer to the apology, and panel members said they are not bound by the specific words used in past statements.

Abe, who took office in late 2012, initially signaled his intention to revise the 1995 apology, triggering criticism from China and South Korea. He now says his Cabinet stands by the apology, but that he wants to issue a more forward-looking statement, raising speculation that he will somehow water it down.

“A 70th anniversary statement issued by the prime minister has a highly political and diplomatic meaning, and we must take that into consideration,” said international politics professor Shinichi Kitaoka, deputy head of the panel and one of Abe’s favorite academics. He said the panel will suggest possible elements for the statement and will not decide exactly what Abe will say.

About one-third of the panel members are regulars on Abe’s policy advisory committees, like Kitaoka, though they exclude his associates with the most extreme right-wing views. The appointment of centrist Asia experts Takashi Shiraishi and Shin Kawashima and a journalist from the liberal-leaning Mainichi newspaper give the panel some balance, but some other members stand out as historical revisionists.

Among them, Masashi Nishihara, head of a national security think tank, has written that reports of the Japanese military’s use of sex slaves during the war are “fabricated in South Korea.” Entrepreneur Yoshito Hori says the war was one of self-defense, not aggression.

China and South Korea have sent warnings on the statement. Chinese Foreign Minister Wang Yi, speaking at a U.N. public debate, warned against attempts to “whitewash past crimes of aggression.” In Seoul, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Abe’s statement should not backpedal from past apologies.

The United States has raised concerns over Tokyo’s row with the two neighbors over its wartime history.

The debate over the statement reflects a simmering divide in Japan 70 years after the war.

On one side are those who say that accounts of Japanese wartime atrocities are false or exaggerated, and that it’s time to restore Japanese pride in their country. On the other are liberal defenders of Japan’s Constitution who don’t want the country to forget its colonization of Korea and invasion of China and Southeast Asia, and the disaster they spawned.

 

Senior ruling party lawmaker Masahiko Komura told reporters before the meeting Wednesday that a more forward-looking statement would sound convincing if it clearly states Japan’s adherence to past apologies.

AP

Obama Greatest Enemy To Press Freedom

Many reporters have contentious relationships with sources and with the government, but James Risen is in a class of his own. The veteran New York Times national-security reporter has scored some notable scoops the authorities didn’t want him to—most notably about a failed CIA sabotage operation on Iran’s nuclear program. When Risen got the story the first time, the government convinced The Times to quash it for national-security reasons. (He eventually published it in a book).

The CIA thought it knew who leaked the info, and it subpoenaed Risen to reveal his source. Demanding this of a journalist is technically legal, but is highly unusual and often frowned-upon. Risen refused to divulge the source and said he’d go to jail instead, setting up a long showdown with the Justice Department. Ultimately, Risen won. Under pressure, Attorney General Eric Holder vowed, ambiguously, “As long as I’m attorney general, no reporter who is doing his job is going to go to jail.” Risen testified, refusing to name his source, and the Justice Department still managed to convict Jeffrey Sterling for leaking. Everyone else lived happily ever after.

Or not. Risen has launched a one-man crusade against Holder and the Obama administration. Risen escalated that this week with a series of angry tweets replying to a speech Holder gave the National Press Club, in which the reporter blasted the current White House as the greatest enemy of press freedom in a generation and accused the attorney general of shredding the First Amendment.

Critics called it a rant; Risen said it was merely a fact-check. That divided response shows the dangers for reporters debating press freedom. It’s the one area that can turn otherwise impartial journalists into fierce advocates. While many in the media see that as an essential risk, it is no doubt a risk. It’s also unclear whether the public is on the press’ side, and how it might react to that advocacy.

 

From Infowars

We Stand With Freedom

Truth About the Trans Pacific Partnership

Abe Thinks US Feels Threatened With His Aussie Deal

What Abe does not understand is that the US will simply ignore Japan and keep pumping business into China.

Any way, Japan has already backed off signing the TPA with Australia as Japanese farmers threatened to back the opposition party Democratic Party of Japan ahead of December 14 polls.

Now, Abe has backed Japan into a corner since Australia in return killed the TPA in the parliament.  Japan either signs the TPP or the high tariffs on Japanese cars remain in Australia, New Zealand, USA, and Canada.  Abe again flubbed an opportunity with catering to the wrong lobby.

China's Legitimacy Problem

By now the statistics of China’s rise are well-known. It has the world’s second largest gross domestic product (GDP). It will likely overtake U.S. GDP in the next decade. It is the world’s second largest spender on defense. It aims to build a blue-water navy, including aircraft carriers. It likely already has the missile and drone ability to deny the U.S. Navy the ability to operate inside the “first island chain” (from southern Japan south through Taiwan and the Philippines to the South China Sea) without unacceptable losses. It has the world’s largest population: one in seven persons today is a Chinese national.

As Hugh White has argued, the U.S. has never faced a greater challenger in its history as a world power. The U.S. roughly emerged as a great power in the 1880s. In that time, it has faced four major challengers: German nationalism in WWI, fascism in World War II, communism in the Cold War, and millenarian jihadism in the war on terror. Only the Soviet challenger ever came close to the U.S. in terms of power resources. Hitler and bin Laden were arguably the most terrifying, but Stalinist power was much greater, and even that collapsed. China however exceeds all these in the resources it can muster. It is vastly better governed than the U.S.S.R. was, and far larger economically than Germany, Japan, and various Islamist states and groups. China is catching up, fast.

Chinese hegemony in the western Pacific is not inevitable. For one thing, it has many opponents. But for all sorts of reasons, a full-blown containment line from India east and north to Japan is increasingly unlikely. India is hesitant. Southeast Asia desperately wants to trade with China and be pulled up along with its rise, not balance against it. South Korea is as likely to align with Beijing against Japan as vice versa. That leaves Japan, Taiwan, and the U.S. This might be enough to deter Chinese ambition, but Japan has been struggling for decades, and the U.S. is overextended. White’s prediction that some kind of Sino-U.S. compromise is the best shot to avoid a disastrous Sino-U.S. conflict seems ever more likely. Chinese power in East Asia will likely have to be recognized at some point in the next two decades.

The follow-on question then for China is whether it can legitimate its incipient regional hegemony. Can it demonstrate to other local players that Chinese regional dominance does not simply mean tyranny? It is often suggested that China today seeks an updated tribute system. If so, this is not as bad as it sounds (assuming there is no alternative to Chinese hegemony). The tribute system demanded formal hierarchy but permitted informal near-equality. Specifically, it left the tributaries’ domestic politics alone (even in the closest tributary, Korea), and exerted only mild influence over foreign policy. That sounds an awful lot like what the U.S. already does in Latin America and Europe.

But American hegemony is moderated by a reasonably liberal ideology that gives participant states a say in the larger framework. States like Germany or Japan are not subjects of the United States, they are allies, and their exit option is real. If the U.S. is an “empire,” it is rather soft one. When France withdrew from NATO’s military integration in 1966, and when the Philippines voted the Americans out of their bases in 1992, the U.S. did nothing. When Soviet “allies” tried to exit the Warsaw Pact, they were crushed. In turn then, the Eastern European allies-turned-subjects gave up, slacked on their contribution to “socialist fraternity,” and became a burden for the Soviet Empire rather than an asset.

This should be a cautionary lesson for China. China is indeed powerful. That power will gain it regional fear and a grudging respect. To cross China is risky. But for power to last through the ups-and-downs of history, it must be more than just bullying. As Richard Armitage once said, “China will never be great until it stands for something more than itself.” Today, China is little more than that. Instead, as David Shambaugh put it: “China is, in essence, a very narrow-minded, self-interested, realist state, seeking only to maximize its own national interests and power. It cares little for global governance and enforcing global standards of behavior (except its much-vaunted doctrine of noninterference in the internal affairs of countries). Its economic policies are mercantilist and its diplomacy is passive. China is also a lonely strategic power, with no allies and experiencing distrust and strained relationships with much of the world.

This strategy is a recipe for short-term success (free-riding on the U.S. to continue to rise cheaply), medium-term regional discomfort (nearby states bristle at selfish “leadership”), and long-term decline (those nearby countries, upset at their poor treatment earlier, abandon China later in its time of need). As China rises dramatically over its neighbors, they will look for input into its choices, a sense of rules that give them some kind of place in a system, rather than serfdom in an extra-territorial despotism, and a language of power, a legitimating ideology that places restraints on Chinese power rather than simply exalting it. China’s current behavior in Xinxiang and Tibet, where Han nationalism and strict central control are being pushed onto a resistant periphery, are not good signs. China needs to build something more conciliatory and appealing to non-Chinese, akin to the U.S. liberal order that has netted the U.S. so many allies around the world.

This legitimating ideology must be some kind of intellectual framework, not raw ethnocentrism. Nationalism is not enough, even if it appeals to more than a billion people. Much as Putin’s aggressive Russian nationalism has alienated much of the Russian and post-Soviet periphery, so will China’s current ideology of nationalist grievance and resentment. Even North Korea and Myanmar, precisely the kind of repressive autocracies that should be comfortable with Beijing, have tacked away from it as they have increasingly realized that “alliance” with China means subordination in practice. Something more positive and supra-national is necessary.

Marxism, of course, sought to be this. It laid out an ideology of formal equality, and “socialist fraternity” might not have been a fraud if the Soviet Union had been more genuinely communist and less a cover for Russian nationalism and imperialism. But that is gone now of course. Liberalism too offers such a language of legitimated power that might re-assure others. U.S. liberalism has ensured reasonably good treatment of Canada and Mexico over the years: both have more or less stuck with the U.S. despite a huge power imbalance. But domestic liberalism is a non-starter for the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).

China’s own history suggests a neo-tribute system perhaps. That was indeed supra-ethnic. It was based a general willingness of peripheral states to accept the cultural superiority of Chinese Confucianism and the suzerainty of the emperor. While leaving peripheral states more or less free from intervention, it did require what would be today an unacceptable level of humiliation and groveling. Prestige-accrual was the central Chinese reward of the tribute system – the recognition and exaltation by others of China as the “Middle Kingdom” and center of civilization, even if the tributaries didn’t really believe that. But modern Asia is both highly nationalistic and post-Confucian in its international relations. China would struggle mightily to bring back such a feudal order convincingly. It would be asking Asia to swallow a lot of nationalist pride to re-introduce the old hierarchy and therefore strikes me as unlikely.

In brief, as Chinese power over Asia rises, it will increasingly need to define its position as more than just realpolitik and nationalist glory-seeking. If it cannot voluntarily win over its neighbors to cooperation, Chinese hegemony will be little more than a despotism. Perhaps that is all that Chinese leaders care for, but I doubt it. Most of us wish to be loved more than feared; China’s soft power exertions suggest that the CCP feels that too. But to date, the CCP has no real legitimating language of power for its neighborhood. Hence, for all its might, it continues to stand alone. Finding that legitimating framework, lifting China above just being a grievance-fueled regional bully, is the next large debate in Chinese foreign policy: the floor is open to suggestions.

Robert Kelly