Judiciary Branch Has Self-Abolished The US no longer has a judiciary. This former branch of government has transitioned into an enabler of executive branch fascism. Privacy is a civil liberty protected by the US Constitution. The Constitution relies on courts to enforce its prohibitions against intrusive government, but if the executive branch claims (no proof required) “national security,” courts kiss the Constitution good-bye. Federal judges are chosen by the executive branch. The senate can refuse to confirm, but that is rare. The executive branch chooses judges who are friendly to executive power. This is especially the case for the appeals courts and the Supreme Court. The Justice (sic) Department keeps tabs on district court judges who rule against the government, and these judges don’t make it to the higher courts. The result over time is to erode civil liberty.
Category: Head Stories
The Chinese are in the process of displacing the monopoly of the US dollar. They are dropping their US Treasury bonds, stockpiling gold reserves, and opening regional distribution banks for their own national currency. This will give them easier access to capital markets and insulate them from financial manipulation by Washington and Wall Street. Fearing the eclipsing of the US dollar and the Bretton Woods system by a rival financial architecture the US response has been an attempt to damage the Chinese markets and increase the value of China’s currency. China has responded through regulations in the market and then quantitative easing of its currency to maintain the low prices of Chinese manufactured goods and exports.
Europe is in free fall. Nobody can doubt that any more. In fact, the EU is simultaneously suffering from several severe problems and any one of these could potentially become catastrophic. Let’s look at them one by one. The 28 member EU makes no economic sense The most obvious problem for the EU is that it makes absolutely no economic sense. Initially, in the early 1950s, there was a small group of not too dissimilar nations which decided to integrate their economies. These were the so-called Inner Six who founded the European Community (EC): Belgium, France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands. In 1960 this “core group” was joined by seven more countries, the Outer Seven, who were unwilling to join the EC but wanted to join a European Free Trade Association (EFTA).
Full interview with President al-Assad “Syrian News Arab Agency ” – Damascus, SANA – President Bashar al-Assad asserted that terrorists are the true tool of the Israeli aggression on Syria and that the terrorists’ acts are more dangerous than Israel’s, therefore confronting Israel requires confronting its tools first. In an interview given to al-Manar TV, President al-Assad said the essence of the crisis in Syria is foreign interference, and once this interference ceases in all its forms, then it would be possible to say that the crisis is in its final stages, because then confronting terrorism would be easier.
Economic Destabilization, Financial Meltdown and the Rigging of the Shanghai Stock Market? The dramatic collapse of the Shanghai stock exchange has been presented to public opinion as the result of a spontaneous “market mechanism”, triggered by weaknesses in China’s economy. The Western media consensus in chorus (WSJ, Bloomberg, Financial Times) portend that Chinese stocks tumbled due to “uncertainty” in response to recent data “suggesting a downturn in the world’s second-largest economy”. This interpretation is erroneous. It distorts the workings of stock markets which are the object of routine speculative operations. An engineered decline in the Dow Jones, for instance, can be precipitated in various ways: e.g. short selling, betting on the decline of the Dow Jones Industrial Average in the options market, etc. 1
US Tests Space Weapon: Back to Star Wars With public attention centered on other things the United States has been deploying new and more sophisticated weaponry in space. Step by step the Earth’s orbit is becoming primed for war. A growing number of space objects lurk in space and there is a good reason to surmise that they are possibly waiting for commands to disable other satellites and start a star war. The US deploys powerful sea-based Aegis air-defense systems that, with accurate guidance, could reach into orbit to destroy enemy spacecraft. A war in orbit could wreck the satellites network the world so much relies on. It has been reported that the US Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is to reboot the concept of Airborne Laser by building a laser-armed aircraft that can shoot down ballistic missiles at the time they are the most vulnerable – just after launch – without having to come close and risk being shot down itself.
Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has hit out at American and European Ukraine policy, saying it ignores Russia’s relationship with its neighbor, and has called for cooperation between the White House and the Kremlin on the issue. “Breaking Russia has become an objective [for US officials] the long-range purpose should be to integrate it,” the 92-year-old told The National Interest in a lengthy interview for the policy magazine’s anniversary that touched on most of the world’s most pertinent international issues. “If we treat Russia seriously as a great power, we need at an early stage to determine whether their concerns can be reconciled with our necessities.”
From Regional War, “Regime Change” to Global Warfare 2015 has become a year of living dangerously. Wars are spreading across the globe. Wars are escalating as new countries are bombed and the old are ravaged with ever greater intensity. Countries, where relatively peaceful changes had taken place through recent elections, are now on the verge of civil wars. These are wars without victors, but plenty of losers; wars that don’t end; wars where imperial occupations are faced with prolonged resistance. There are never-ending torrents of war refugees flooding across borders. Desperate people are detained, degraded and criminalized for being the survivors and victims of imperial invasions.
Now major nuclear powers face off in Europe and Asia: NATO versus Russia, US-Japan versus China. Will these streams of blood and wars converge into one radiated wilderness drained of its precious life blood?
For those interested in that sort of thing, 20th August 2015 has been a fascinating day in the markets. Oil has plunged, Kazakhstan and Vietnam have both floated their currencies, the Kazakh currency has fallen by 20% in a single day, and what are politely referred to as the currencies of the “emerging market economies” – which include the rouble – have all fallen in unison. In Russia the rouble has tracked the fall in the price of oil, with Economics Minister Ulyukaev saying that because oil is likely to continue its fall, the rouble is likely to fall further.
New data released by World Bank says that adjusted for Purchasing Power Parity Russia overtook Germany as world’s 4th economy in 2013 At least according to the latest revision of the World Bank’s PPP-adjusted GDP estimates. China has long been expected to overtake the US economy (one economist dated it to as early as 2010), and there had already been a flurry in the media when the IMF claimed the same thing in December last year. The World Bank’s new figures just confirm the new reality and scaremongering about a bad night at the irrelevant casino that is the Chinese stockmarket is not going to materially change the fact.