More on the Russo-Georgian Conflict

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I continue to be amazed to find myself taking the Russian side of a conflict. Having learned how to "duck and cover" in the early days of the Cold War, I never thought I'd side with the successor to the USSR. But the US-backed (if not instigated) Georgian attack on South Ossetia is just another NeoCon folly that brings us closer to the brink of war.

To sharpen my thinking, God has placed close friends in my life who put great faith in the veracity of the Mainstream Media. They really believe that Fox News is "fair and balanced." They fail to realize that Fox vs. "the liberal media" is just an extension of the false alternatives of liberal-conservative and Democrat-Republican that confuse thinking and really mask reality.

My credulous friends help me realize afresh that the American Mainstream Media is every bit as effective as Pravda was in the USSR, maybe more so. In the USSR most people understood that Pravda was putting out the party line and developed appropriate skepticism. In the US many people think that freedom and competition assure that we have courageous reporters risking everything to bring us the truth. Those who believe that don't understand the consolidation of media in multinational corporations and the compromises made by those journalists who grab the golden ring of celebrity status to become media stars.

Back to the Russo-Georgia situation: As usual, many astute observers provide more cogent analysis than I could. Patrick Buchanan exposes the hypocrisy of the Bush administration and the NeoCons. "How would we have reacted if Moscow had brought Western Europe into the Warsaw Pact, established bases in Mexico and Panama, put missile defense radars and rockets in Cuba, and joined with China to build pipelines to transfer Mexican and Venezuelan oil to Pacific ports for shipment to Asia? And cut us out? If there were Russian and Chinese advisers training Latin American armies, the way we are in the former Soviet republics, how would we react? Would we look with bemusement on such Russian behavior?"

Mike Whitney looks in depth at the geopolitics of the situation in "Putin Walks into a Trap." This amazing analysis talks extensively about Obama's chief foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzensinski, and his role in this "Grand Chessboard" strategy. Evidently Putin is in the globalists' gun sites now because he gave a speech in Munich two years ago where "he declared unequivocally that he rejected the basic tenets of the Bush Doctrine and US global hegemony." Read the excerpts from Putin's speech and see what you think.

Whitney also gives us a glimpse of the refocus of the "war on terror" that will come if Obama wins the Presidency. Zbig and his crew will redirect America's war efforts into Eurasia. McCain and the NeoCons seem more likely to keep the focus on the Middle East. Given the Bush administration's actions, it looks more like "both/and" instead of "either/or" to me. An Obama administration will surely disappoint his anti-war supporters, offering "voters a choice of wars, not a choice against war."

Paul Craig Roberts wonders whether American actions will destroy the world. See also this excellent interview with him where he discusses the NeoCons desire to nuke Iran. Follow up with this report from South Ossetia from a retired Lt. Colonel from the US military. And this one gives more insight into how the NeoCon think tanks have been instrumental in backing Russia into a corner. Or this UK reporter or this one on the ground. Gold guru Jim Sinclair discusses some of the financial ramifications of the "Georgia debacle." I'd be remiss if I didn't call your attention to Justin Raimondo's continuing analysis of the situation.

If you saw the Olympics opening ceremonies, you saw President Bush at the stadium. What you probably didn't see were these pictures or these where he looks a little bit . . . well, I'll let you decide what you think. (This is the man who will decide if we start a war with Iran, or Russia, or Pakistan.)

Whether we shortly go to war or not, will we retain our freedoms? Paul Craig Roberts doesn't think so. Nor does Charley Reese. It's up to us, folks.

Starting a war to divert the public's attention from economic problems is an old tactic. That's happened to this blog for the last week. If you need a financial tsunami fix, read "Wag the Dog: How to Conceal Massive Economic Collapse." Perhaps our wise leaders are starting more wars to put the unemployed masses to work with a new military draft. It worked for FDR.

Moving to the Brink of War

The situations with Georgia and Iran are so precarious, I feel the need to post links to a few articles that will help you cut through the stupid propaganda spewing from the Mainstream Media. Though we are generally powerless to affect what our crazed -- no, evil -- leaders are doing, we can do something. We can spread awareness. We can pray. If enough people figure out what's happening, spread the word, and contact their political representatives, then maybe we can stop the deadly path we're on.

If you think I'm exaggerating, then I ask you to research deeper than the trite lies the MSM is feeding the sheep.

Today is the 27th anniversary of the sale first IBM PC. Personal computers have revolutionized our way of life. Communicating with you like this, in a no-cost, instant, easily transferable form via the internet is unprecedented, and offers the first real check on the power elites in history. They've always kept their power by controlling the flow of information. Masses of bloggers and emailers are circumventing the gatekeepers' matrix with real information.

If we will use the power we have, and not let them take it away, perhaps we can steer the planet away from the brink of mass annihilation and totalitarianism, and into the light of human potential unleashed in the creativity and productivity that freedom allows. So do your part, and pass this information on to the conscious, caring people you know.

I have several excellent articles to help you understand what's happening in Georgia. Read them so you can help enlighten your friends when they yammer about how bad it is that Russia "invaded Georgia." Justin Raimondo remarks on the anti-Russian bias of the Western media as he clearly points out who the real aggressor is. It's the US-backed Georgia.

Earl of Stirling calls the Georgian attack on South Ossetia the beginning of World War III. He details the 1,000+ US Marine trainers and 1,000 Israeli mercenaries helping the Georgian army. Read to the end as he shifts to the problem with Iran. It seems they have advanced biological weapons that make nuclear weapons unnecessary.

The blockade the US, England and France are setting up on Iran is an act of war designed to provoke a response from the Iranians. Surely this will be a case of wishing you had not gotten what you asked for. "This is a most serious game of military brinkmanship with major nuclear armed powers that have profound objections to the neo-con grand strategy and to western control of all of the Middle East's oil supply." His Addendum 2 on Iran's advanced biowar capability should take the wind out of any hawk's sails.

Stratfor explains how the Russo-Georgian War shows how the balance of power in Eurasia has clearly shifted to Russia. The Bear is back! You can clear your palate with Karl Schwarz's "American Lies & American Delusions." He's not optimistic the the overly credulous "Boobus Americanus" (as H.L. Mencken dubbed the American middle class many years ago) is capable of waking up from its distractions and help change the course of history.

William Engdahl goes into more detail about "The Puppet Masters Behind Georgia's President Saakashvili." "The controversy over the Georgian surprise military attacks on South Ossetia and Abkhazia on 8.8.08 makes a closer look at the controversial Georgian President and his puppet masters important. An examination shows 41 year old Mikhail Saakashvili to be a ruthless and corrupt totalitarian who is tied to not only the US NATO establishment, but also to the Israeli military and intelligence establishment."

Spiked-Online goes deeper into "the messy truth behind the morality tale" in Georgia. It seems that Bush's phony "war on terror" has helped destabilize the region and bring more innocent suffering and detruction. Just another day at the office.

Where's the media in all this? Why aren't they helping us get an accurate picture of what's going on? It seems that "America's Israeli Occupied Media" is falling down on its job and doing its dead-level best to define all situations from the Israeli point of view.

I'd be remiss if I didn't mention that Barack Obama is toeing the party line right along with McCain. According to Eric Walberg (and echoed by countless other progressives), "Barack Obama as the candidate promising change is revealing his true colours, much to the despair of anyone actually expecting any change." Again, we find the real power behind Obama's throne is his chief foreign policy advisor, Zbigniew Brzesinski. Zbig, well-known for his virulent anti-Russian stance, just compared Putin to Hitler. Anyone hoping Obama is a candidate of peace is living in Dreamland. Both McCain and Obama are pawns of the global elite.

My initial curiosity and somewhat favorable opinion of Obama when he was still an "empty suit" offering a "change" from the pathetic, destructive Presidency of George Bush, vanished long ago. His backers, his policies, his beliefs, the skeletons in his closet -- all make me incredibly pessimistic about his Presidency, IF he makes it through.

I've long expected the "swift-boating" of Obama. Jerome Corsi, who help write the swift boat book on John Kerry, just released "Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality." It's already number 1 on the NY Times bestseller list. Devvy Kidd wonders when the National Inquirer will finish the job on Obama that it did on John Edwards? Another writer speculates that Obama's Pearl Harbor event will happen soon after the convention. From what I've seen, there's plenty of stuff left over to pay the same compliment to John McCain. Hmm. Maybe that's why Hillary and Romney merely suspended their campaigns?

The Olympics, War and the Financial Tsunami

The most obvious, but unstated, point of the Olympics so far is this: China is the major superpower of the 21st century. NBC's commentators tiptoed around the elephant in the living room. The closest they came was when Matt Lauer said the drum show was "a little bit intimidating." The official line is that this is China's "coming out party." No, China is announcing they are the "Big Dog" now. The last 150-200 years of economic history have been just a little down tick in a 5,000 history of world dominance.

The opening ceremonies were a breath-taking blend of sophisticated technology and precision works of human action and arts. The is will be the post-American century, probably much sooner than any of us realize.

The idiot warmongers in charge of American foreign policy seem determined to accelerate our downfall. The pieces are moving into place for a naval blockade on Iran. This is a clear act of war. Iran has every right to develop peaceful nuclear technology, and the most recent inspections showed they had no nuclear weapons program. This won't deter the Bush-Cheney-NeoCon gang. Their lies are legion. (Conveniently, Congress is on summer recess.)

More Bush lies to justify the Iraq invasion pour forth each week. Pulitzer prize-winner Ron Suskind's new book claims that the White House "buried British intelligence on Iraq WMDs." Suskind also reported that an ex-CIA agent he interviewed says Cheney likely ordered a letter on White House stationery linking Saddam Hussein to the 9/11 attacks. Despite White House denials, Suskind stands by his report.

Remember our report last week that "Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's shocking revelations "that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran?" All it would take is an apparent Iranian missile sinking our oldest aircraft carrier to the bottom of the Persian Gulf to incite revenge blood lust in the American public. Edgar Steele has an excellent run-down of many events that point to World War III and the reason to make your preparations now.

Arnaud deBorchgrave agrees that we're nearing war with Iran. Apparently Israel is ready to attack Iran "without US permission." Of course, Israel can't attack Iran without overflying Iraq (which needs US permission.) I've mentioned previously the grave economic consequences for the US if we go to war with Iran. Given the close economic economic and military ties Iran has with both China and Russia, such a conflict could easily escalate to WWIII. Which brings us to . . .

US and Israeli-backed Georgia foolishly attacked the Russian-leaning secessionist South Ossentia. Putin-led Russia has said they are through retreating and have apparently crushed the Georgian assault. Israel has been extensively involved in selling arms to Georgia and providing training for at least seven years. "Georgia's defense minister, Davit Kezerashvili, is a former Israeli who is fluent in Hebrew." Michel Chossudovsky of Global Research has an excellent analysis, with maps, that shows how this might lead to a larger US-Russian military conflict. The Georgian attack had to have had the okay and direction of the US, NATO and, probably, Israel.

Alex Jones, at http://www.infowars.com/, is staying up to the minute on what's happening. His current article recaps the latest status. The NeoCons at the Wall Street Journal and elsewhere are likening the Russian response to Hitler, forgetting the Georgia started the confrontation. The US is airlifting Georgian troops from Iraq, and reports are surfacing about American and NATO soldiers/mercenaries being found in the conflict. As usual, Karl Schwartz has an insightful take on this.

Paul Craig Roberts points out that "Georgia was part of Old Russia and the Soviet Union for two centuries. After Soviet communism collapsed, the US taxpayer funded neoconservative National Endowment for Democracy broke every agreement that President Reagan had made with Gorbachev and began using US taxpayers’ money to rig and purchase elections in former constituent parts of the Russian/Soviet empire. The Endowment for Democracy purchased Georgia as a US colony. The affront to Russia was extreme, but at the time Russia was weak. Oligarchs with outside money had grabbed control over Russian resources, and Russia was in dire straits and could not resist American imperialism. Putin corrected the situation for Russia."

William Engdahl says Washington risks a nuclear war by miscalculation. Obviously the Bush-Cheney NeoCons can't calculate the real costs of war, since Iraq was to be a six-week "cakewalk" and cost less than $50-60 billion before all those Iraqi oil revenues kicked in to pay for our occupation.

"Nuclear Primacy" is "what gives the seemingly obscure fight over two provinces the size of Luxemburg the potential to become the 1914 Sarajevo trigger to a new nuclear war by miscalculation. The trigger for such a war is not Georgia’s right to annex South Ossetia and Abkhazia. Rather, it is US insistence on pushing NATO and its missile defense right up to Russia’s door."

If Russia deploys nuclear-capable bombers in Cuba, the crisis will only escalate.

On the economic front, the financial tsunami continues to pick up force. All my reading tells me we still see only the tip of the iceberg. The gold price has been manipulated down to around $860. If you've been waiting for gold or silver to fall, wait no more. Both are already very hard to get.

Just a few economic reports:

America Out of Economic Ammunition -- we have no more financial weapons left.

Rep. Paul Ryan says US Headed Toward Bankruptcy.

The Fire This Time? "What happens if the US economy has finally hit the wall of remorseless reality, and can only produce what it can honestly produce? What happens to the American economy and American standards of living if all the gimmicks have been exhausted?"

Sidney Blumenthal writes on "The Strange Death of Republican America." George Bush has ended the Republican dominance that began in 1968. I'll be a delegate in Minneapolis at the GOP convention the first week in September. Ron Paul will have a simultaneous 3-day event, climaxing with a major rally at the Target Center on September 2. I hope I have time to record some of my observations on the ground.

Grace and Peace and Courage!

Financial Tsunami Update

The economic storm clouds are getting darker. More writers are calling this a financial "tsunami," and more are comparing it with the Great Depression of the 1930's. The only voices of optimism are Paulson, Bernanke and Bush, and the lap dog mainstream press. And their credibility is plummeting.

Yet I find a number of people, in the spirit of American optimism, think I'm exaggerating. They believe the rhetoric that the Fed will fix things and we'll "muddle through" to face the next crisis. How I wish it were so this time.

The truth is, the die was cast a long time ago. When the US dollar was on a gold standard, monetary discipline was imposed on the financial system. With the founding of the Federal Reserve System in 1913 and Roosevelt's abandonment of the gold standard in 1933, we went on a debt standard. Nixon threw out the last vestige of monetary restraint in 1971 when he closed the gold window. Now the US dollar was backed by nothing but debt, and the "full faith and credit" of the US Government (i.e., the printing press in the back room).

Given the proclivities of politicians to spend money and wage war without raising taxes, the fate of the dollar was sealed. The only variable was how long would it take? A good date to pick for the death of the dollar is 2013, the hundreth anniversary of the founding of the Fed.

FDR and LBJ, as well as every administration since, ramped up social welfare spending that could not be funded in the long run, i.e, when the Baby Boomers started retiring. The Federal Government grew into a self-sustaining, expensive bureaucracy that outlasts every President and never stops increasing in size and cost. The military-industrial complex Eisenhower warned about turned the US into a welfare-warfare state, with the resulting Demopublican War Party firmly entrenched in power.

The media had its last hurrah as a watchdog after Watergate and Iran-Contra. Now the top media stars are highly paid celebrities beholden to their corporate masters, with interlocking ownership and directorates with the entire military-corporatist-banking-globalist establishment.

The Bush-Cheney-NeoCon "war on terror" has become a war on America, installing the machinery for a full-blown police state. John McCain and Barack Obama are salivating at the thought of wielding all that power to push their own agendas. Both have pledged to carry on the NeoCon program in the Middle East and subservience to Israeli Zionists. Moreover, Obama is pushing a socialist-communitarian-communist ideology that promises fundamental changes in the rights to life, liberty, property and self-defense that most Americans cherish. But more on politics in another post.

If you still believe things aren't too bad economically, you owe it to yourself to challenge your premises. Your financial future depends on it. Start with a trip to John Williams' excellent Shadow Government Statistics. He exposes in great detail the biased and often-manipulated government economic reporting.

For political reasons, important statistical indicators of economic health have been biased to minimize the bad news about inflation, the federal deficit, unemployment, GDP, etc. This started before Bush II. Williams reconstructs and continues measures the government dropped (like M-3 money supply growth), and recalculates others with their original components (like CPI). The results are staggering.

For instance, by applying Generally Accepted Accounting Practices to the US Government, we're adding an average of $4.6 Trillion a year to our indebtedness! The Federal Net Worth was a negative $57.1 Trillion at the end of 2007!! There is no way to tax or grow our way to solvency. And the politicians seem determined to keep printing money out of thin air to bail out the financial system and cover our obligations.

A must read is his comprehensive report "Hyperinflation." If you will take time to study this well-written 27-page report, you will see why he says a "hyperinflationary depression" worse than the Great Depression (Great Depression II, if you will) is unavoidable between 2010 and 2018. Probably it will be sooner than later. The graphs are clear about what has happened to the value of the dollar, and what is its fate.

Please read this report! His economic theory is sound and his statistics impeccable. You will see why you must put yourself on a plan to survive the meltdown of the dollar. Yes, the Weimar Republic can happen here. So can the rise of a messianic dictator who offers hope and "economic security" in the midst of economic catastrophe and the resulting social unrest. [Friends, the federal government is not able to provide economic security for anyone. Remember "I am from the government, and I'm here to help you"?]

At the risk of distracting you from the main report, I provide secondary evidence that the consumer is tapped out. Unemployment is rising, wages are falling, auto sales are crashing, credit cards are maxed, "discretionary" purchases are going instead to buy higher prices energy and food. The US economy, based 70% on consumer spending, is contracting.

Did I mention that banking systems around the world are failing? First Priority Bank in Florida failed Friday, the 8th US bank this year. The National Bank of Australia took a 90% loss on US mortgage debt writedowns. Royal Bank of Scotland is poised for the biggest loss in UK banking history. One observer says the Fed is panicking to hide the truth about the credit crisis so that the wealthy can be bailed out at the expense of the poor.

If Bush-Cheney-McCain-Obama-Israel start a war with Iran, the hyperinflation timetable shortens considerably. And shades of 9/11, what are we to make of Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh's shocking revelations "that Bush administration officials held a meeting recently in the Vice President’s office to discuss ways to provoke a war with Iran?"

Says Hersh, "There was a dozen ideas proffered about how to trigger a war. The one that interested me the most was why don’t we build — we in our shipyard — build four or five boats that look like Iranian PT boats. Put Navy seals on them with a lot of arms. And next time one of our boats goes to the Straits of Hormuz, start a shoot-up." Cheney's "false flag operation" sounds like Operation Northwoods reincarnated. (Keith Olbermann gave Cheney his "worst person in the world" award for this idea.)

Take advantage of the last few weeks of the traditional summer doldrums in the precious metals. The base for gold seems established at $910 and silver at $17. Expect gold at near $1200 and silver above $20 by the end of 2008, IF Iran is not attacked. (Big IF). A few graphs (and here) might give you courage. Howard Ruff says "inflation is not rising prices; it's a falling dollar."

I've been begging some of my dear friends to buy gold for the last five years. It was always "too high," at $375, $450, $600, $650. Today it still seems high at $910. Meanwhile, whereas the dollar could buy 1 Euro for $0.85 six years ago, it now takes almost $1.60. As experienced traders say, "Don't fight the trend!" And as Gary North says, "Procrastination kills!"

Grace and Courage and Peace be with you!