Modwiz' Musings: Topical Discussion

[Elen]

I hear you on that, but then again, I personally don't support any form of government — as you may remember me expounding upon earlier already. Any form of government — whether it's regional, national or international — is always going to lead to corruption, because the people who are elected for such governments are always the people who want to be in a role where they can dictate the law onto others.

I just want to us to be clear on that.

Who wants to "governed"?

[modwiz]

Wow! A rare clip of an impassioned reply from Zakharova to a question from an obviously trollish MSM person. The translation is provided and no translation is required to read her frustration with stupidity. She addresses 'stupid' towards the end of her brilliant answer.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVoLgD1RIxE

[Aianawa]

Wow! A rare clip of an impassioned reply from Zakharova to a question from an obviously trollish MSM person. The translation is provided and no translation is required to read her frustration with stupidity. She addresses 'stupid' towards the end of her brilliant answer.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVoLgD1RIxE

Totally amazingly Xlent

[sandy]

No >>>>uhs, duhs, ums, ifs ands or buts when one is speaking their truth.......love it!! Thks for posting

[modwiz]

During more sane times Alex Jones can be over the top with the fear aspect of things. However, with the insanity of the past week or so with some serious warmongering, Alex is a voice of sanity.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YMz3hTH9OHM

[modwiz]

Although not an official Corbett Report, James is featured, along with Sibel Edmunds in this video that flew by when listening to it. Filled with lot of information and considerations I had not read about, regarding Turkey and it rapprochement with Russia and the possibility of it leaving NATO.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p-0eB0mOir8

[modwiz]

I am guessing nobody here in this forum is unaware of the real situation in Syria but, just in case there is anyone who needs more info, this short video is informative and has no grisly scenes.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6HqPGth344Y

[bsbray]

I hope Turkey does pull out of NATO, and then I hope Trump is elected and cuts US funding of NATO drastically.

After WWII, the United States essentially colonized western Europe. Traditionally it had been European powers colonizing other nations, but after how Europe treated US support in WWI, including billions of dollars of aid to European nations, which almost all of them refused to pay back, after that sheer arrogance from Europe to the US, our administration took advantage of Europe's devastated state after WWII and the US colonized Europe. Western Europe has largely consisted of US puppet states ever since. That's just the reality of the direction international politics has taken. Even the world reserve currency was established to be the US dollar and only the US dollar.

That may be bad politically for Europe (at least for full autonomy, since they have had to consider US policy in everything they do), but it's also been bad economically for the US, because we are still sinking billions of dollars into Europe to pay for the control systems we have set up there, including our military control of Europe through NATO. Most of NATO's bill is footed single-handedly by the US. As an American I see absolutely no benefit to this. It seems to only be used as a tool to draw us into conflict with other nations, whether it's Libya or Iraq or Syria or Ukraine or Russia. If there is a legitimate military threat from any of these places then let Europe deal with it on its own. I have a feeling if Europe was left to its own devices they might reconsider the situation in much fairer terms to Russia and the others.

[Aragorn]

While I agree with (almost) everything you wrote in post #203, I do want to respond to the following.

[...] Most of NATO's bill is footed single-handedly by the US.

That is most definitely not true. While the US may pay the bill for NATO's control systems, the financial expenses for the NATO-related actions of each of the individual NATO member states are carried by the respective citizens of those member states, not by the USA.

And by the way, so are the political consequences of such NATO actions. We've now already got Muslim terrorists here in Belgium because the current Belgian government drools over any opportunity to placate NATO, as well as the CIA and the US government in general. Before our government became enamored with US military imperialism, Belgium had never been a target for Islamic terrorists.

Granted, the fact that the Belgian State Secret Service went after the guy who organized the Paris attacks hasn't exactly made things any better, but then that only moves the responsibility higher up the food chain, because the attacks in France and Nice were the result of the French government eagerly playing ball with NATO earlier already.

As an American I see absolutely no benefit to this. It seems to only be used as a tool to draw us into conflict with other nations, whether it's Libya or Iraq or Syria or Ukraine or Russia. [...]

Not as a tool for drawing the USA into any armed conflicts, but as a tool by which the USA itself can force other nations to collaborate in its own prospective military conflicts, and as such, increase the USA's chances at success, while at the same time strongly reducing the financial cost of going to war. And that's quite a different thing.

But I agree that NATO is outdated. It's a construct that was put up during the (first) Cold War, because of the Big Commie Scare™. And the CIA did more than that too. They organized a sleeper agent network all across Europe, called Operation Gladio, which is still believed by many to have been responsible for the Brabant massacres and to have been linked to the ultra-right-wing Westland New Post, whose intentions were to turn Belgium into a police state by way of false flag attacks.

Does that sound familiar?

[bsbray]

That is most definitely not true. While the US may pay the bill for NATO's control systems, the financial expenses for the NATO-related actions of each of the individual NATO member states are carried by the respective citizens of those member states, not by the USA.

That is what's called direct funding, and when you only consider direct funding, then that's true. But that doesn't include a lot of expenses incurred by the US that fall outside of that strict consideration. Even the Washington Post admits that numbers that Trump cite have about the right idea when it comes to indirect spending.

On the other hand, if Trump is talking about indirect spending on NATO, which exceeds direct funding, he begins to have a point. U.S. officials have long complained that other NATO members are not pulling their weight in the alliance; President Obama recently asserted to Atlantic Monthly’s Jeffrey Goldberg that some European allies are “free riders,” a term that Trump echoed in his CNN interview.

NATO documents show that a majority of NATO members fail to meet NATO’s guideline, established in 2006, that defense expenditures should amount to 2 percent of each country’s gross domestic product. The median spending in 2015 is just 1.18 percent of GDP, compared to 3.7 percent for the United States, NATO says. Just four other countries currently exceed the 2 percent guideline.

“The volume of the US defense expenditure effectively represents 73 per cent of the defense spending of the Alliance as a whole,” NATO says in a discussion of indirect funding. “This does not mean that the United States covers 73 per cent of the costs involved in the operational running of NATO as an organization, including its headquarters in Brussels and its subordinate military commands, but it does mean that there is an over-reliance by the Alliance as a whole on the United States for the provision of essential capabilities, including for instance, in regard to intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance; air-to-air refueling; ballistic missile defense; and airborne electronic warfare.”

NATO concedes this imbalance has been an issue since the start of the alliance: “The combined wealth of the non-US Allies, measured in GDP, exceeds that of the United States. However, non-US Allies together spend less than half of what the United States spends on defense.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...hare-for-nato/

It looks like they are including total US military expenditures worldwide as contributions to NATO as an organization, which goes hand-in-hand with the fact that no one should be nation-building and interfering all over the world to begin with, but it's what the globalist network is doing. One of Trump's closest advisors is Michael Flynn, former head of military intelligence (the DIA), and I'm guessing that he's where Trump is getting a lot of the info he's using in his talking points about how he's going to frame his policies.

And by the way, so are the political consequences of such NATO actions. We've now already got Muslim terrorists here in Belgium because the current Belgian government drools over any opportunity to placate NATO, as well as the CIA and the US government in general. Before our government became enamored with US military imperialism, Belgium had never been a target for Islamic terrorists.

It all goes back to WWII. Whether it was set up to happen this way intentionally or not, the US invested enormously into the rebuilding of several governments and I get the distinct impression that American officials at that time didn't just stand by passively and watch it happen. I get the feeling that they played an active role in all of it that time, after what had happened after WWI (the US never even signed the Versailles Treaty). The USSR was doing much worse on the other side of Europe at the same time.

Not as a tool for drawing the USA into any armed conflicts, but as a tool by which the USA itself can force other nations to collaborate in its own prospective military conflicts, and as such, increase the USA's chances at success, while at the same time strongly reducing the financial cost of going to war. And that's quite a different thing.

From either side you look at it, it's really globalists that are doing this, and they don't seem to feel particular attachment to any country, George Soros being one example. They're an outside and often illegal political influence on a lot of states in the world. The Egyptians

But I agree that NATO is outdated. It's a construct that was put up during the (first) Cold War, because of the Big Commie Scare™. And the CIA did more than that too. They organized a sleeper agent network all across Europe, called Operation Gladio, which is still believed by many to have been responsible for the Brabant massacres and to have been linked to the ultra-right-wing Westland New Post, whose intentions were to turn Belgium into a police state by way of false flag attacks.

Does that sound familiar?

No, but it's not surprising. It's the same globalist faction doing all of that stuff.

[modwiz]

The Russians, Iranians and other oil producers have now learned to play the rigged oil game. They know whenever production cuts are anticipated the futures markets and computer algos automatically bid up the price. So, by making false announcements the price goes up temporarily and they reap the benefits. As this Zerohedge article states, production went up after statements of production cuts hit the news.

The increased production shows, among other things, not only just how farcical the recent oil surge has been on the back of expectations that somehow OPEC will actually not only agree on lower production quotas and more importantly comply with then, but also how much work OPEC must do to achieve production cuts it agreed to last month in an attempt to end a crude glut that has depressed prices for two years.

Sechin said he doubted some OPEC countries, such as Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela, would cut their output either: "Try to answer this question yourself: would Iran, Saudi Arabia or Venezuela cut their production?"

The answer, of course, is no. But it will take the algos some time to figure it out.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-1...o-production-c

[modwiz]

Unofficially, Russia recommends that all Russians children attending school in USA come home, even if it interrupts their school term. Wow!

This may not speak to just possible conflagrations at the macro level but, perhaps at a more personal level. My take on this is, Russia may be forced to perform some surgical strikes within the USA. By surgical I refer to "wetwork". There are some officials calling for war that it may be better for them to be "relocated" off planet. I do not refer to spacecraft either. Every country has 'agents' working inside other countries and this is one possibility. However, plausible deniability might engender another strategy. There are mafias inside many countries as well. Mafias associated with certain home countries. If certain warmongers start ending up deceased then that could be the cause for some revenge. Getting the children of officials out of a country where certain actions may be taken is only good sense. Most people will tend to think this, removal of children of officials, points to a hot war. I think it could signal something more subtle and appropriate. Cutting off the head of a snake is more surgical and spares innocents.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbd2fZ3pOsw

[modwiz]

A little mirth from Lavrov.

Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8H7aKGOpSwE

[PurpleLama]

It starts to take on an ominous tone, what Cayce said in regards to the Light of the World coming from Russia, when one considers that that country is the (only?) one actually preparing its population for the potential advent of an atomic onslaught. It may be that in another decade, the only viable population left in the northern hemisphere will be theirs. Civil defence, what is that? Something out of a movie I saw once, I think.

[PurpleLama]

I loved the quip from Lavrov. That was priceless.

As an aside, everything natural about life is priceless.