Category Archives: Deep State

On the 75th Anniversary of V-E Day and the Coronavirus Scamdemic

The iconic Champs-Élysées and its Arc de Triomphe stand eerily empty before V-E Day ceremonies Friday in Paris.

This month (May 8th) marks the 75^th anniversary of “V-E Day” when German forces unconditionally surrendered to the “Allies.” Numerous articles, essays, and monographs have appeared commemorating the anniversary and while all are mostly laudatory, some have acknowledged that the outcome had its “drawbacks.”

By any objective rendering, for Western Civilization WWII was an unmitigated catastrophe whose reverberations continue to this day. Forty-three million troops were senselessly killed between American, British and Continental forces while 38 million civilians perished. Europe’s current demographic nightmare had its unfruitful seeds cut down with the depopulation of the Continent’s finest for the maniacal aims of the world’s power elites. Not only the loss of life, but the destruction of property and the cultures upon which they were built have been incalculable. Although the US emerged in the post-war world as the dominant economic and political power (as its mainland remained unscathed from wartime destruction), its participation in the conflict was a titanic geopolitical blunder.

The defeat of Germany and Japan, which would have not come about without US military might, left vast power vacuums in Eastern Europe and the Far East that Soviet Russia and Red China ruthlessly filled. Half of Europe would fall behind the Iron Curtain, subjected to fierce political repression and debilitating socialistic economic planning. In Asia, Communist regimes sprang up with the assistance of China and the Soviet Union which America attempted to counter in Korea and Vietnam at a staggering cost to its domestic economy and social tranquility.

Even after the fall of Soviet Communism, the US’s supposed lethal enemy, America maintained its empire as its “defense” spending continued to escalate beyond all reasonable levels which has led, in part, to the decline of domestic living standards of nearly all except, of course, for the politically well-connected. Not only has military adventurism bankrupted the country, but there is now “blowback” from the countless enemies either real, imagined, or contrived – created by US overseas meddling. Moreover, the nation’s military-industrial and security complex has turned on its own citizens with spying, surveillance, and data gathering that would be the envy of Stalin’s Cheka. Yet, it was US participation in WWII which cemented the nation on its ruinous course as global policeman. This was predicted and feared by “isolationists” at the time which is why they so courageously fought to keep the country neutral.

While the peoples of the world suffered from the Apocalyptic-like destruction of the war, certain groups did gain. The benefactors were obvious – Stalin and the Soviet state which was given free reign in Eastern Europe; the US military and security industrial complex which had a world empire to police; Chinese Communists, with Imperial Japan decimated, it left little opposition for them to gain control in China and beyond. For almost everyone else, even the so called “victors,” WWII was a Pyrrhic victory at best.

For the remainder of 20^th century American history, US entry into the Second World War proved to be the catalyst which led to the immense cultural, economic, and political changes, which many conservatives, libertarians, and traditional-minded people at the time and afterwards opposed. Yet, it was US participation in the war which meant that all of those changes would become permanent. Harry Elmer Barnes, who was a keen social theorist and wrote extensively in sociology, clearly understood the effects of US entry into the war:

Drastic changes in the domestic realm can also be attributed to the impact of our

entry into the second World War. The old rural society that had dominated

humanity for millennia was already disintegrating rapidly as the result of

urbanization and technological advances, but the latter failed to supply adequate

new institutions and agencies to control and direct an urban civilization. This

situation faced the American public before 1941 but the momentous transformation

was given intensified rapidity and scope as a result of the extensive dislocations

produced by years of warfare and recovery.*

Harry Elmer Barnes

While every sector of American life was unalterably changed, the most ominous took place in the political order. Although the federal government had begun to expand during the Progressive Era, its scope and involvement in society drastically accelerated during and after the war. Barnes, holding many libertarian beliefs, observed the totalitarian features of the post-war nation:

The complex and cumulative aftermath of [WWII] has played the dominant role in

producing the menacing military pattern and political impasse of our time, and the

military-industrial-political Establishment that controls this country and has sought

to determine world policy.**

The rise of America to world power status diverted attention and scarce resources away from the domestic front, which further exacerbated social and economic changes. The societal strife would become more and more acute as the nation’s overseas commitments mushroomed, as Barnes incisively explains:

The social problems of an urban age were enlarged and intensified, crime increased

and took on new forms that became ever more difficult to combat, juvenile

disorganization became rampant, racial problems increased beyond precedent, and

the difficulties of dealing with this unprecedented and complicated mass of domestic

issues were both parried and intensified by giving primary but evasive

consideration to foreign affairs in our national policy and operations.***

While domestic problems received less attention as the American empire expanded, foreign lands which held different patterns of social order or had non “democratic” forms of government, were targeted for “regime change,” even if they had taken no hostile action toward the US:

. . . the results of [WWII] already indicate that this produced drastic and possibly

ominous changes in the pattern of American relations to the rest of the world. We

voluntarily and arbitrarily assumed unprecedented burdens in feeding and

financing a world badly disrupted by war. . . . The United States sought to police the

world and extend the rule of law on a planetary basis, which actually meant

imposing the ideology of our eastern seaboard Establishment throughout the world,

by force, if necessary. . . .****

Had the US remained neutral as the isolationists and American First supporters had pleaded, the world today would be markedly different – undoubtedly freer, more prosperous, and likely more peaceful. Since every society is governed, in part, by its understanding of the past, the post-WWII world is built on a lie. The lie, of course, was that the attack on Pearl Harbor was unprovoked and that the Roosevelt Administration had negotiated in good faith with the Japanese in the months and years leading up to it.

While not recognized at the time and even today the outcome of WWII ushered in the totalitarian nation state which would become a permanent and intimate fixture in the lives of its citizens. There was no appeal to its dictates and as the decades rolled on it accrued unthinkable power over the society and economy. It attempted to solve every social and economic problem or inequality (most of which it created) and in each action enhanced its power and control dramatically.

The corona scamdemic may be the state’s greatest power grab yet. Besides the infringement of civil liberties, the shut down has been adroitly used to cover for the titanic economic collapse which began in the weeks prior to the draconian response measures. Actually, the financial breakdown began last September with the Fed’s “repo” operations.

All of this has been quietly and deliberately forgotten by the financial press and under the cover of fighting the virus, the Fed and the rest of the world’s central banks have expanded their power and control of financial markets to unprecedented levels, making a mockery that the economy is in any sense “capitalistic.”

The adage that “history is written by the victors” has never been more apparent than in regard to V-E Day, however, the coronavirus scam has shown once again that the consequences of the day and the war which it commemorates are now being ominously fulfilled.

*Harry Elmer Barnes, “Pearl Harbor After a Quarter of a Century.” In Left and Right: A Journal of Libertarian Thought. Vol. IV, 1968, p. 11.

**Ibid., pp. 9-10.

***Ibid., p. 11.

****Ibid., pp. 10-11.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Debt, Death, and the US Empire

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In a talk which garnered little attention, one of the Deep State’s prime operatives, National Security Advisor John Bolton, cautioned of the enormous and escalating US debt. Speaking before the Alexander Hamilton Society, Bolton warned that current US debt levels and public obligations posed an “economic threat” to the nation’s security:

It is a fact that when your national debt gets to the level ours is, that it constitutes an economic threat to the society. And that kind of threat ultimately has a national security consequence for it.*

What was most surprising about Bolton’s talk was that there has been little reaction to it from the financial press, the markets themselves, or political commentators. While the equity markets have been in the midst of a sell off, it has not been due (as of yet) to US deficits, currently in excess of $1trillion annually. Instead, the slide has been the result of fears over increase in interest rates and the continued trade tensions with China.

While Bolton’s warning about the debt is self-serving, it is accurate in the sense that the US Empire which, in part, he directs is ultimately dependent on the strength of the economy. “National security” is not threatened by a debt crisis which would mean a compromised dollar, but such an event would limit what the US could do globally. Real national security is defense of the homeland and border control – non intervention abroad.

War mongers like Bolton are fearful that a debt crisis would necessitate a decline in US power overseas. America is fast approaching what took place with the British Empire after its insane involvement in the two World Wars and its own creation of a domestic welfare state which exhausted the nation and led to the displacement of the British pound as the “world’s reserve currency.”

The US-led wars in the Middle East have been estimated by a recent Brown University study to have cost in the neighborhood of $4 trillion.** Despite this squandering of national treasure and candidate Trump calling the Iraq War a “disaster,” as president, Trump increased “defense” spending for FY 2019 to $716 billion.***

Profligate US spending and debt creation has, no doubt, been noticed by those outside of the Empire. It is probably why Russian President Vladimir Putin has been so hesitant to take any serious action against the numerous provocations that the US has taken around the globe and against Russian interests directly. The wily Putin probably figures that an implosion of US financial markets would eventually limit America’s ability to foment mayhem and havoc internationally.

The Trump Administration’s latest bellicose act, engineered by – you guessed it – John Bolton, has been the withdrawal from the intermediate-range nuclear forces treaty (INF). The treaty, signed in 1987, was a landmark achievement of the Reagan Administration which de-escalated tensions between the two super powers and kept a lid on a costly arms buildup that neither can afford.

The next financial downturn will certainly dwarf the 2008 crisis, the latter of which nearly brought down the entire financial system. The next one will be far worse and will last considerably longer since nothing has been resolved from the first crisis. The only thing that has occurred has been the creation of more debt, not only in the US, but by all Western nation states.

Under current ideological conditions, a change in US foreign policy to non-intervention is unlikely. Public opinion is decidedly pro-military after years of indoctrination and propaganda by the press, government, academia, and the media. It will take a fall in America’s economic power, specifically the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency, which will ultimately bring down the empire that has neocons like John Bolton concerned.

Unfortunately, until that time, the US will continue its rampaging ways. The day of reckoning, however, appears to be fast approaching and instead of a defeat on the field of battle, the US Empire will collapse under a mountain of debt. It would be more than fitting that such a scenario should play itself out which would thus begin the very necessary retribution process that may, at least in a small sense, compensate those who have suffered and died from America’s murderous foreign policy.

*Tyler Durden, “John Bolton Warns National Debt Is An ‘Economic Threat’ To The US Security.” Zero Hedge. 01 November 2018.

**Jason Ditz, “Study: US Wars Cost $4 Trillion, Killed 259,000.” Antiwar. 29 June 2019.

Military Benefits, “2019 Defense Budget Signed byTrump.” Military Benefits. September, 2018.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Mike Pompeo and John Bolton: Trump’s Tag Team of Death and Destruction!

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Trump Pompeo Bolton Trump’s Men!

With the welcome departure of war mongering UN Ambassador Nikki Haley, the Trump Administration’s neocon tag team of death and destruction – Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo and National Security Advisor (NSA), John Bolton – have enthusiastically taken up where the repellent Haley has left off. It is highly doubtful that the former Ambassador will meekly return from under the rock in which she crawled, but will reappear possibly as a primary challenger to her former boss in 2020, and, most certainly, as a Presidential contender in 2024.

Last week, Messrs Pompeo and Bolton were dutifully carrying forth Haley’s promises of mayhem to anyone opposed to US hegemony even if those “enemies” have never taken hostile action against the US mainland. Of course, threats and attacks against nations which have done nothing to America have never much mattered to the foreign policy establishment!

Haley Pompeo Bolton Neocon Triumvirate

In one of the most provocative comments ever made by a US diplomat, maniacal Mike threatened Iran with mass starvation of its population (via US sanctions) if it does not submit to Uncle Sam’s outrageous and humiliating demands. In a BBC interview, the Secretary of State warned that:

[Iran’s] leadership has to make a decision that they want their people to eat.*

Following up on his genocidal warning, the Secretary of State (with a supposedly straight face) said that Iran was a “destabilizing influence” in the Mideast and was a state sponsor of terrorism.

Incredibly, the sociopathic Pompeo actually believes that Iran has been the greatest disrupter of peace in the Middle East when, in fact, it has been the nation in which he represents (along with Israel) that has been the real culprit of state sponsored terrorism with its destruction of Iraq, the overthrow of Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and the attempted regime change in Syria to name just a few of America’s nefarious activities in the region.

A Brown University study shows the absurdity of Pompeo’s claims. The study estimates that between 480,000 to 507,000 people were killed in America’s post-9/11 wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan. For the US, some 60,000 troops have lost their lives or been wounded.***

US Destruction of Iraq

After threatening genocide of the Iranian people, Pompeo told an outright lie as he accused Iran for the catastrophe that is taking place in Yemen:

[The] Iranians are responsible for the starvation of Yemen civilians.****

No one outside of the Western controlled press or among the clueless American populace believes such a claim and knows that the starvation which is taking place in Yemen has been caused by the US’s ally, Saudi Arabia, which America has armed for decades. It is not the Iranians, but the US which is guilty as an accomplice for the genocide taking place in that misbegotten land.

Yemen Drone Stike Yemen Drone Strike

Not to be outdone by his fellow merchant of death, John Bolton focused his most recent bellicose talk on Latin American regimes that have not fallen in line with the US Empire’s wishes. He labeled three countries as “the troika of tyranny in this hemisphere – Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua.”** Big Bad John boasted that the three had “finally met [their] match” in the Trump Administration.

Wow, John, you are so tough, but saying that these three hellholes are a “match” for the US is a bit much when it is unlikely that the three combined could even defeat Rhode Island’s National Guard in a pitched battle!

While Bolton ruled out (for now) military intervention, he did say that sanctions would soon be placed on the “troika of tyranny.” Bolton proclaimed that “Under this administration, we will no longer appease dictators and despots near our shores.”

Yes, by all means, a possible invasion by a Cuban/Venezuelan/Nicaraguan juggernaut rolling up to the shores of south Florida should be a concern for all Americans. No telling how much damage inflicted and territory conquered the “Latin American Axis” could accomplish! It is good that perceptive and ever vigilant foreign policy experts like John Bolton keep a watchful eye out for such threats!

These are dangerous and evil men who think nothing of inflicting pain and suffering upon innocent people who have little control over what their nation’s leadership does, just as Americans have little say in the policies and actions of their government.

A global empire attracts personality types like Haley, Pompeo and Bolton. It needs such sociopaths to provoke others and stir up troubles where there is none to justify its existence. A more peaceful world will only come about with the demise of the American Empire, not changing the personalities who guide it.

Sadly, for Americans who have to fund it and the peoples of the world who are in its path, until there is an economic collapse and/or a dollar crisis, the American Empire will continue to threaten and, in some instances, carry out those threats led by the likes of Michael Pompeo and John Bolton.

*Tyler Durden, “Iran’s Leadership Must Decide ‘If They Want Their People to Eat’ – Pompeo.” Zero Hedge. 9 November 2018.

**Alex Gorka, “US Declares War on ‘Troika of Tyranny’ Pushing Them Closer to Russia.” Strategic Culture Foundation. 7 November 2018.

*** Jason Ditz, “US Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan Killed 500,000 People.” Antiwar.com 8 November 2018.

****Durden, “Iran’s Leadership Must Decide.”

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

The United States of Hubris

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If anyone should have any questions about whether the United States of America is not the most aggressive, warlike, and terroristic nation on the face of the earth, its latest proposed action against the supposed rogue state of North Korea should allay any such doubts.

Last week, the US circulated a draft resolution which it intends to present to the UN Security Council that would give the American Navy and Air Force the power to interdict North Korean ships at sea to determine if they were transporting “weaponry material” or fuel and that US forces would be given “the right” to use “all necessary measures” to “enforce compliance.”*

Not surprisingly, Nikky Haley, the blood-thirsty and incompetent American Ambassador to the UN, has enthusiastically backed the resolution, utterly clueless of its ramifications if passed, the most horrific of which would be the igniting of WWIII. Trump’s selection of the neocon mouthpiece as UN Ambassador has been a disaster on several fronts: first, it was an early and quite telling sell out of his political base whom he promised an American First foreign policy of less belligerency and intervention. Second, Haley had no foreign policy experience and has made a fool of herself internationally on more than one occasion with her inane statements.

That the US is even considering such a provocative scheme once again shows the hubris which exists within its vast corridors of power. Any other country which would suggest such an audacious act would be rightly condemned, ostracized, and labeled as a rogue state. Yet, it is US lawmakers, policy wonks, and the CIA/NSA-directed American press corps that charge others (mostly those who do not kowtow to US dictates) of “terrorism.”

This year, as of yet, North Korea has not been responsible for a single death of a foreign national. Nor has the tiny communist state ever used a nuclear weapon against an enemy like the US did with its immoral and hellish destruction of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki at the conclusion of WWII.

On the other hand, since the start of the Trump Presidency, US-backed forces have been responsible for the deaths of some 3700 civilians in Mosul, Iraq.** This is not to mention its murderous armed strikes in Yemen and Afghanistan. Nor is American aggression limited to direct military action, but its arms supply sales to despots and its puppets has escalated tensions and makes conflicts that do break out much more brutal.

Fortunately, for the future of global peace, US hegemony is coming to an end. The nation is hopelessly broke while its welfare/warfare economy is beyond reform and faltering badly which means that when the inevitable collapse does happen, it will mean the end or a serious pull back of the Empire. A similar situation took place in Great Britain in 1945 after it took part in another senseless global conflict which liquidated the British Empire once and for all.

Any sober thinking realist would recognize the deteriorating societal and economic conditions at home, yet because of the collective hubris embedded in the political class, American bellicosity continues.

The last hope of changing US overseas affairs in a peaceful direction was Donald Trump who throughout the campaign spoke of an American First foreign policy which garnered widespread support. Within Trump’s foreign policy statements, however, there were many troubling ones: call for increased defense spending, “wiping out ISIS,” updating the nation’s nuclear arsenal, putting an end to the North Korean “problem.” The encouraging words about non-intervention and getting along with Russia were quickly scuttled while the militaristic side of Trump’s campaign rhetoric has won the day.

History is replete with examples of hubristic regimes which appeared invincible and everlasting, but quickly fall with severe and quite nasty retribution from their enemies. While the US goes about the world threatening, bombing, and destabilizing those it does not like, it too, possibly in the not too distant future, will face the deserved wrath of those it has humiliated and terrorized.

*David E. Sanger, “U.S. Seeks U.N. Consent to Interdict North Korean Ships.” New York Times. 6 September 2017.

**Adam Johnson, “Corporate Media Largely Silent on Trump’s Civilian Death Toll in Iraq.” Fair. 19 July 2017. http://fair.org/home/corporate-media-largely-silent-on-trumps-civilian-death-toll-in-iraq/

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

Why is North Korea Being So Unreasonable?

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On April 28, Secretary of State Rex Tillerson told the U.N. that North Korea “must dismantle its nuclear missile programs” before the US “can even consider talks.”*

Sounds reasonable.

Why hasn’t the Kim Jong-Un regime responded with open arms and shouts of joy for this generous and fair-minded proposal from Uncle Sam?

Maybe it is because North Korea not only has first-hand knowledge of US “diplomacy,” but it can point to the grisly consequences that happen to regimes that do not have nuclear capabilities when they fall out of favor with Washington war mongers. Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria are just some recent examples.

Nor does North Korea have to look around the globe for what the US does to nations without nuclear arsenals, but can recall events which took place not so far away. For more than a decade, America mercilessly pulverized the little, defenseless country of Vietnam. Despite the destruction and mass murder inflicted, it was to no avail except, of course, to line the pockets of arms manufactures while American citizens were drained of their wealth and blood.

Or simply, Kim Jong-Un can look at his nation’s own history and see how the US treated it prior to it becoming nuclear. In the “police action” of 1950-53, American coalition forces killed over 3 million North Koreans and dropped more bombs on the country then were used on Japan in World War II according to international war crimes lawyer Christopher Black.**

And, why would North Korea or, for that matter, anyone else have any faith in diplomatic agreements with the US which consistently violates terms of international accords and often complains afterwards when agreements are reached. The latest example is President Trump carping that Iran is not living up to the “spirit” of the nuclear deal concluded under the Obummer Administration and signed off on by six major world powers.

North Korea, as well as the rest of the world, which is not bribed or threatened by the US Deep State, is certainly aware that the two American-Iraqi Wars had their origins due to American duplicity. While it originally gave Saddam Hussein permission to intervene in Kuwait, the US then reneged blaming the Iraqi strongman which thus laid the groundwork for his murder and the country’s destruction.

Not only can North Korea look to the murderous and duplicitous US foreign policy record, but it can point to how the American state has killed its own citizens from its involvement in the take down of the World Trade Center, to the gassing and slaughter of men, women and children at Waco, Texas. Moreover, the federal government and now local authorities are terrorizing their citizens with increasing regularity via a number of false flag events and drills.

By all means, the Kim Jong-Un regime should come to its senses and acquiesce to US demands.

Unfortunately, because it is an authoritarian society based on the immoral and economically unworkable system of communism, North Korea is unable to make an ethical case against the hypocrisy of the US which accuses Syria and others of human rights violations, yet has allowed the slaughter of innocent babies of some 40 million since the legalization of abortion in 1973. Moreover, in another societal-wrecking and depraved act, the US Supreme Court has sanctioned sodomy, one of the four sins that cry to heaven for vengeance.

While no single entity can militarily challenge US hegemony, a reversal of the murderous ways of American foreign policy will only come about through a change in ideology on the home front. Once the justification for empire is debunked in the court of public opinion, the mobilization of anti-war/anti-empire movement can commence.

After generations have been inculcated by the media, public schools, colleges/universities and the government about the glories of the US military, it is unlikely that there will be any paradigm shift in American foreign policy matters anytime soon. Only an economic collapse or severe enough financial panic will force the US to pull back on its overseas adventurism.

In the meantime, if Kim Jong-Un intends to survive and keep his country from resembling Iraq or Syria, he should maintain his “unreasonable” stance when the likes of Rex Tillerson demand that North Korea disarm.

*Tyler Durden. “Trump Slams ‘Disrespectful’ North Korea After Unsuccessful Missile-Test, Warns Situation is ‘Bad.'” 28 April 2017. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-04-28/north-korea-test-fires-another-ballistic-missile

**Christopher Black. “North Korea: The Grand Deception Revealed.” New Eastern Outlook. 3 March 2017. http://journal-neo.org/2017/03/13/north-korea-the-grand-deception-revealed/

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

On the Commemoration of World War I: From Woodrow Wilson to Donald Trump

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Trump - Wilson

It is altogether fitting that the US attack on a Syrian airport, the dropping of a MOAB on defenseless Afghanistan, and the potential outbreak of nuclear war with North Korea have all come in the very month one hundred years earlier that an American president led the nation on its road to empire. President Trump’s aggressive actions and all of America’s previous imperialistic endeavors can ultimately be traced to Woodrow Wilson’s disastrous decision to bring the country into the First World War on April 6, 1917.

This month, therefore, should be one of national mourning for the decision to enter that horrific conflict changed America and, for that matter, the world for the worse.

Had the US remained neutral, the war would most likely have come to a far quicker and more politically palatable conclusion, however, the entry of America on the Entente side prolonged the conflict and extended its economic and political destruction to such a degree that the Old Order could not be put back together again. The great dynasties (Germany, Russia, and especially Austria) were ruthlessly dismantled at the conclusion of WWI by the explicit designs of Wilson which left a power vacuum across Central Europe. The vacuum, of course, was filled by the various collectivist “isms” which produced the landscape for another global conflagration even greater than WWI.

For America, after a brief revival of isolationism and non-interventionist sentiment throughout the land, the country, led by another ruthless and power-mad chief executive, provoked and schemed its way into the second general European war within a generation, this time via “the backdoor” with Japan. A second US intervention, making the war global, could not have come about had there been no WWI, or if that war had ended on better terms.

After the Second World War, the US emerged as the world’s dominant power with bases across the globe and entered into a string of never ending hot and cold wars, regime changes, destabilizations, assassinations, bombings, blockades, and economic sanctions that have continued to this very day and hour. Quickly after the war’s conclusion, the American media, academia, and the security and military industrial complex had to invent the myth that the Soviet Union and the US were of equal military might which turned out to be a blatant lie. After being decimated in WWII and its adherence to unworkable and economic destructive socialistic planning, the Soviet Union could never produce the wealth necessary to maintain a global empire as the US did, and still does. The “Soviet threat” was always a ruse to get gullible Americans to vote for and support greater and greater “defense” spending.

Besides Ron Paul and to a far lesser extent his son, Donald Trump was the only viable candidate who spoke of taking a new, less interventionist foreign policy which is why he was able to garner so much support from millions of empire-weary Americans during the presidential campaign. He rightly called the Iraqi War a “disaster,” spoke of getting along with Russia, and the US’s commitment to NATO should be rethought, among other refreshing comments on foreign affairs.

In one of the most memorable and hopeful passages of his Inaugural Address, the new president championed non-intervention abroad:

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world, but we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone, but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow.

Unlike Ron Paul, however, Trump had no grounding in a true America First foreign policy. While critical of his predecessors’ foreign policy decisions, Trump was not opposed philosophically to the US Empire or saw it as the greatest threat to world peace which currently exists.

Without an ideological basis against American globalism, Trump was easy pickings against the threats and machinations of the Deep State. Without a refutation of the ideology which drove Wilson and all of his successors to promote military adventurism abroad, Trump will be little different than his imperial predecessors and with a personality that is thin-skinned, impulsive and unpredictable, Trump could, God forbid, become another Woodrow Wilson.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com

The Cost of a Trump Presidency

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Syrian Bombing

Last Thursday’s wanton attack on a Syrian air field by the US and its bellicose actions toward North Korea have brought to the forefront the real cost of candidate Trump’s landslide victory last November.

Unlike most laymen, accountants, and financial analysts, economists look at cost differently. For economists, cost or more specifically, “opportunity cost,” means “a benefit that a person could have received, but gave up, to take another course of action. Stated differently, opportunity cost represents an alternative given up when a decision is made.”

Such thinking can be roughly applied to the political realm. In the case of last fall’s US Presidential election, the cost of Donald Trump’s unexpected victory was not the money spent on the campaign, but the diffusion (hopefully, only temporary) of the growing anti-Establishment groundswell that was percolating not only in America, but across the globe.

The Trump phenomenon, Brexit, Texas secession talk, anti-immigration gatherings, central bank scrutiny, the exposure and decline of the lying, dominant mass media, and other populist movements and causes were symptoms of the masses dissatisfaction with their exploitation by the ruling elites. Trump’s triumph has squashed and defused many of these populist uprisings since a number of his campaign themes empathized with these trends.

A similar situation occurred after Ronald Reagan’s victory in the 1980 election as the great anti-government wave, which swept him into power, dried up almost immediately since Ronnie was perceived as “one of us.” Of course, Reagan was a disaster and fulfilled none of his anti-government campaign rhetoric, but instead went on to become, for a time, the biggest Presidential spender in US history.

A Clinton victory, although certainly tyrannical in the short run, would have, no doubt, furthered the anti-Establishment fires and inspired more. For example, Texas may be now on the road to independence from the Federal Leviathan.

The ills that plague the US and, for that matter, the Western world, will not be solved through a Trump Presidency in “making America great again,” but will only come about through political decentralization and the abolition of central banking with a return to sound money. Concomitant with political decentralization and secession is military contraction, as smaller political jurisdictions will have lesser pools of wealth to tap from while the absence of an inflationary central bank will make military adventurism extremely difficult to conduct.

Yet, before such a transformation can take place, an ideological foundation must first be established. A Hillary Clinton Administration would have provided fertile ground for such change.

Since the groundwork for a depoliticized world has not been laid, a Trump Presidency made sense as long as he kept as close as possible to his campaign agenda, the most important of which was foreign policy. His condemnation of the neocons’ policies which have bankrupted the nation, murdered thousands of innocents abroad, and heighten tensions everywhere was crucial in his shocking victory last November. It is apparent that he did not understand how important this support was or he would have never undertaken such an utterly stupid decision.

With the strike on Syria and seemingly more military action in the offering, Trump’s Presidency is now the worst of all possible worlds, at least in the short run, for those opposed to the New World Order. Most serious observers, however, understood, especially after the appointment of so many Goldman Sachs cretins, Israeli Firsters, and nutty warmongers to his administration, that Trump would eventually succumb to the pressure. More importantly, Trump was never fully grounded in an America First mindset, probably not knowing where that term originated or its gallant founders.

All, however, is not lost.

Trump’s capitulation makes it abundantly clear that the system itself is beyond repair. Getting the right individual to salvage the American welfare/warfare state cannot be done. Trump had many advantages that no future candidate will likely possess which means that anybody that follows will be an “insider.” Much of his base, therefore, will no longer support a future Republican candidate or will give him only lukewarm support . With no independent personality to rally around, the millions of disappointed Trumpians will seek new governing paradigms which hopefully will lead to the growth of secession movements.

Ultimately, however, a permanent American foreign policy of non intervention, peace, and free trade will only come about when there is a change in the prevailing ideology of society where all contenders for political office espouse such a notion and today’s warmongers are seen for what they are: enemies of humanity and its Creator.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com/

The American Empire and Economic Collapse

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Despite the widespread hope among libertarians, classical liberals, non-interventionists, progressive peaceniks, and all those opposed to the US Empire that it may have some of its murderous reins pulled in with the election of Donald Trump, it appears that such optimism has now been dashed. While the hope for a less meddlesome US foreign policy is not completely extinguished and would never have existed had the Wicked Witch of Chappaqua been elected, a number of President Trump’s foreign policy actions, so far, have been little different than his recent predecessors.

President Trump’s biggest blunder was his acquiesce to the Deep State’s coup of General Michael Flynn, the most Russian friendly among Trump’s foreign policy entourage. Since Flynn’s abrupt departure, there has been little talk of a rapprochement with Russia, but instead there has been continued saber rattling by the war mongers that Trump has, unfortunately, chosen to surround himself with.

The most recent Russian badgering has come from Secretary of Defense, James “Mad Dog” Mattis who wrongly accused it of “bad behavior:” “Russia’s violations of international law are now a matter of record from what happened with Crimea to other aspects of their behavior in mucking around other people’s elections and that sort of thing.”* Of course, the US has never tried to influence the outcomes of elections or “mucked around” in the affairs of sovereign countries, heaven forbid!

While candidate Trump correctly spoke of the Iraqi War as a disaster and US Middle Eastern policy as a failure, he has done little to alter course in the region, but continues to follow and has, in some instances, escalated tensions. Some ominous examples:

Bombing raids of Mosul killing over 200 civilians

The deployment of another 1,000 ground troops to Syria

Additional US ground troops “expected” to be deployed to Afghanistan

Continuous threats to Iran – “put on notice”

In the Far East, President Trump has done little to alleviate hostilities. In a belligerent March tweet during Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson’s trip to the region, he wrote: “North Korea is behaving very badly. They have been ‘playing’ the United States for years. China has done little to help.”**

A number of perceptive commentators think otherwise and have shown that it has been the US over the years that has acted disingenuously. “Despite Western media demonization of North Korea as some kind of crazy rogue state,” Finian Cunningham points out, “the people there are not fools. They know from family histories the atrocious cost of American war. And they know that any nation perceived as weak by Washington will be bombed back to the Stone Age.”***

These trends, and the President’s unnecessary request for increased “defense spending,” all point to more of the same for US overseas relations. In fact, there will most likely be continued military escalation if the likes of General “Mad Dog” Mattis get their way.

It is now apparent that the only way in which significant change will come about in American foreign affairs will be if there is a severe financial crisis which impairs the nation enough so that it can no longer bankroll its military adventurism. History has a number of examples of this.

Great Britain, who the US Empire is largely patterned after, lost its empire when it became financially exhausted due, in large part, to its insane decision to enter the two World Wars of the past century. To fight in those conflagrations drained Britain of its wealth and devastated it demographically which it, and the rest of Europe, has never recovered.

The US is heading down a similar path of decline as it has squandered its wealth and treasure in the maintenance of an overseas empire while it has expanded its welfare state at home, meaning less wealth which can be tapped from an increasingly unproductive and parasitic populace. Couple this with an onerous tax burden, an inflationist monetary policy which has destroyed the purchasing power of the dollar, and gargantuan public debt and you have primed the country for a financial cataclysm.

Despite the dramatic fall in the standard of living and the immense social strife and unrest that an economic collapse would bring about, there is a silver lining. Like Great Britain before it, a financial crisis and/or the loss of the dollar as the world’s reserve currency would force the US to abandon its overseas empire – closing bases, bringing troops home, and stopping intervention in the myriad of arenas across the planet.

A defunct US Empire would also be bad news and mean grisly retribution for all those lackeys and puppets who have been supported and propped up by American might: another positive aspect to the end of the Empire.

The collapse will mean America, too, will face reprisals from all those who have suffered under its hegemony. The payback will come from both economic warfare as the US has used through its “Dollar Diplomacy” to control and manipulate foreign economies and by some sort of military humiliation.

The impact of an economic collapse could be mitigated somewhat if the US abandoned its role as global policeman as resources squandered abroad could be then available for the rebuilding of the domestic economy while, at the same time, hostility with America’s adversaries would be reduced.

Unless President Trump replaces the warmongers and interventionists which he has unwisely surrounded himself with and return to his wildly popular campaign promise of an American First foreign policy, the US Empire will remain the greatest threat to world peace that currently exists. If things continue as such, it will only be through the comeuppance of Economic Mother Nature when She bursts the American bubble economy that the Empire upon which it rests will, at long last, come to a fitting and much needed end!

*Ellen Mitchell, “Mattis Says Response Coming Soon on Russia Arms Treaty Violation.” The Hill. 31 March 2017.

**Pamela Engel, “Trump: North Korea is ‘Behaing Very Badly,’ and China ‘Has Done Little to Help.'” Business Insider. 17 March 2017.

***Finian Cunningham, “Only a Fool Would Trust Rogue State USA.” Sputnik Internaional. 19 March 2017.

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com/

Welcome to Totalitarian America, President Trump!

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Deep-State-vs-Trump II

If there had been any doubt that the land of the free and home of the brave is now a totalitarian society, the revelations that its Chief Executive Officer has been spied upon while campaigning for that office and during his brief tenure as president should now be allayed.

President Trump joins the very crowded list of opponents of the American State which includes the Tea Party, tax resistors, non-interventionists, immigration opponents, traditional family advocates, and a host of others who have been spied upon, persecuted and badgered by federal “intelligence” authorities. While Congress conducted some feeble hearings and investigations of the shenanigans of the US spy agencies during the interminable Obummer Administration, no real action or reform was taken to reign in the eavesdropping and spying by the national security state on American citizens.

Hopefully, the surveillance of President Trump will change his outlook on the US “intelligence community” especially in regard to those courageous souls who have spoken out and risked life and limb to alert the public about their rulers’ nefarious activities. Edward Snowden should be among the first to receive a pardon while the person who provided him sanctuary from his American persecutors, the reviled Vladimir Putin, should be commended for his noble act, a rarity among world leaders in this democratic age.

President Trump has demonstrated throughout his life loyalty to those who have supported him. He should, therefore, do all in his power to extricate Julian Assange from the Ecuadoran Embassy in Great Britain and provide him with safe conduct to the US or any destination in which the heroic whistleblower prefers. Without the deluge of Wikileaks during last fall’s presidential contest exposing the massive corruption of the Clintonistas, it is unlikely that Trump would have ever prevailed never mind winning by an electoral landslide.

Not only has candidate and President Trump been monitored, but just about every American citizen is under surveillance, the data of which can be used against them at the appropriate time if and when they should challenge the American Leviathan. NSA whistleblower William Binney confirmed what has been long known in government circles and by those Americans awake to Washington’s tyranny.

Binney confirmed Trump’s suspicion about surveillance to Fox News, “I think the president is absolutely right. His phone calls, everything he did electronically was being monitored.”* He added that, “Everyone’s conversations are being monitored and stored.”

Ironically, it has been the immense wealth generated by a relatively free market in America that has provided the means for the government to create, expand, and maintain such a sophisticated and dangerous spying apparatus that is now being used on the very people funding it. That such a situation could emerge under the supposed “checks and balances” of the US Constitution demonstrates again how truly worthless the document is in the protection of individual rights.

While reform of the current system has proven to be futile and without any constitutional restraint, it, unfortunately, will mean that spying and the murderous US empire of which it is a part will continue as long as the economy does not collapse and the dollar retains its world reserve status. A silver lining, therefore, from a dollar crisis, would mean a decline in the US military and security state.

Of course, the demise of the US spy and military establishment will not be a simple process, but will be fraught with tremendous social and political upheaval and more than likely bloodshed as the Deep State will do everything in its power to protect its turf.

While a collapse may be a ways off, it is hoped that the spying on President Trump will move him to rethink his position on the Deep State which wants to sabotage his every move that goes against its interests most notably a potential detente with Russia. Talk of deescalation of American military presence in world affairs is anathema to the powers that be.

In his Inaugural Address, President Trump repeatedly promised to put America first. The nation’s intelligence agencies do not share that vision, but instead owe their allegiance to the New World Order. If the President has not figured this out after having been secretly monitored, there is little hope for the near future.

*Tyler Durden. “Former NSA Whistleblower: ‘Trump Is Absolutely Right, Everything Was Being Monistored.'” Zero Hedge. 3 March 2017. http://www.zerohedge.com/print/589722

Antonius Aquinas@AntoniusAquinas

https://antoniusaquinas.com/