Question Everything!Everything!!

Question Everything!

Question Everything!

This blog does not promote

This blog does not promote, support, condone, encourage, advocate, nor in any way endorse any racist (or "racialist") ideologies, nor any armed and/or violent revolutionary, seditionist and/or terrorist activities. Any racial separatist or militant groups listed here are solely for reference and Opinions of multiple authors including Freedom or Anarchy Campaign of conscience.

MEN OF PEACE

MEN OF PEACE
"I don't know how to save the world. I don't have the answers or The Answer. I hold no secret knowledge as to how to fix the mistakes of generations past and present. I only know that without compassion and respect for all Earth's inhabitants, none of us will survive - nor will we deserve to." Leonard Peltier

Monday, September 24, 2018

Robots In World War 3? One Author And Army Ranger’s Take On Battlefield AI

Robots In World War 3? One Author And Army Ranger’s Take On Battlefield AI



A former Army Ranger, Paul Scharre, the author of Army of None: Autonomous Weapons and the Future of War, has pondered the implications of robots and their role in a third world war. But what Scharre is really concerned about it robots and artificial intelligence that can act and make decisions without any human input at all.
It all seemed so far away a decade ago, but AI and what that means for the future of humanity is now looming. In Scharre’s new book about what robots and artificial intelligence and what it will mean for the future of warfare, all outcomes seem horrible.  Scharre has expressed his concerns that fighting machines that can act without any human input and behave in ways that are difficult to understand, reported Reason. 
Soldiers on the battlefield “have to choose between various shades of wrong,” says Scharre, who is also a defense analyst at the Center for a New American Security. “What does it say about us as humans…if we offload the moral responsibility of those decisions to machines?”
Reason‘s Zach Weissmueller sat down with Scharre to discuss the current state of autonomous weaponry, the implications for the future of warfare, and the likelihood that these tools will end up in the hands of “nonstate actors.”
“How do you program robots to follow not just the law but also some of these moral principles?” Scharre asks. Autonomous weapons appear to be the future, but just how bleak does that future look that robots could be taking human lives without suffering the moral consequences of doing so?

Apple Will Start Tracking Your Calls & Emails To Assign You A ‘Trust Score’


Apple Will Start Tracking Your Calls & Emails To Assign You A ‘Trust Score’


Apple quietly updated their privacy policy with a new controversial ploy stating they will now collect user and behavioural data from iPhone users and claims it will be used to prevent fraud.  But is this really what’s going on? Let’s have a look.
We live on a great planet, and there are a lot of incredible people here. Let’s not forget that. At the same time, there are some serious concerns that are rising and need to be brought to light regarding the people that basically control our planet, this powerful conglomerate that sit atop the financial pyramid control everything, including politics. This group is often called the Deep State or cabal.
This is something that can be seen given many examples, one basic example is the power that corporate America has on government and how decisions are really made. It’s not the people deciding what happens, and what happens is hardly even ever disclosed to the public, and if it is, it’s hardly done so in a truthful manner.
We’re living in an age of mass surveillance and data connection, one which the global elite claims is for our own protection in the “fight against terrorism,” a fight and a war that’s been based on lies and completely fabricated, as emphasized, shown and explained by many politicians, academicians and researchers around the world. It’s an important narrative to share, given the fact that it’s one mainstream media refuses to touch.
If the reasons for mass surveillance are not actually for our own safety, and truly for ‘national security’ reasons, then what is it for? Why are they doing it, and why are they doing it in such a secretive, sneaky, and powerful manner?
“At least 80% of fibre optic cables globally go via the US, this is no accident and allows the US to view all communication coming in. At least 80% of all audio calls, not just metadata, are recorded and stored in the US. The NSA lies about what it stores. The ultimate goal of the NSA is total population control.” – William Binney, a former high ranking intelligence official with the National Security Agency (NSA). He is one of the highest placed intelligence officials to ever blow the whistle
Bribery is also used, multiple politicians have explained how ‘men in dark suits,’ perhaps representatives of the Deep State that runs corporate America, and imposes its will on a global scale. When a president is elected into office, if they are elected, and not “selected” as Rosevelt once said, then they are most likely confronted with every piece of dirt that the Deep State has on them.
There are many things to consider, but ultimately, the agenda of those who control global politics remains intact no matter who is president, and those that become president are usually just puppets and ‘partners’ with this powerful group of international people.
All of this is important to mention whenever it comes to any type of surveillance or data collection activity. At lower levels of the spectrum, it’s also being used for profit, and our data, online habits, phone conversations and more are collected and sold to various corporations. There are even corporations teaming up with pharmaceutical companies to sell data related to your DNA. You can read more about that here.
We all know about data collection and Facebook, and other social media platforms…
Apple’s New Policy
The latest news comes from Apple, who just added a new addition to their privacy policy, stating that users of their devices will now receive individual scores based on the number of phone calls they make and emails they send. As they state:
To help identify and prevent fraud, information about how you use your device, including the approximate number of phone calls or emails you send and receive, will be used to compute a device trust score when you attempt a purchase. The submissions are designed so Apple cannot learn the real values on your device. The scores are stored for a fixed time on our servers.
All we get from these corporations are justifications for taking such action, and we buy into it. At the end of the day, we have a choice, and we can choose to support these products, or opt out for some better options.
The explanation seems too vague, how does knowing how many phone calls or emails one sends combat fraud? Is this just a complete lie for something else that’s really going on? The truth is, transparency in our world, especially our corporate world, has gone completely fell down the drain. Big corporations have become a political tool. Take a look at Facebook, which basically became a tool of the intelligence agencies, and agencies like DARPA used to collect massive amounts of data and spy on people.
Now, it’s being used as a tool to censor information and shut down a narrative that doesn’t agree with ‘them.
Facebook also convinced users and businesses to bring all of their people and practices over to Facebook to create a community, only to see that community ripped out from under them as Facebook essentially said “You can’t reach your community anymore, pay us to reach them.” Yet Facebook profited billions off the data of your people. Good old bait and switch.
The Takeaway
Are these corporations acting in a way that protects us? Or are we simply customers that represent billions in profit? Why do we continue to support corporations that these companies and what they do if we have other options? While we don’t yet know what this new data collection will be used for, can we not learn from the recent Facebook data scandals?
Reprinted with permission from Collective Evolution.

Emotion Is Supplanting Evidence as the Basis for Truth

Emotion Is Supplanting Evidence as the Basis for Truth

One of the reasons that truth is on the decline is that truth is becoming emotion-based, not evidence-based.
It is all about feelings. This seems to have begun with feminists, but teaching women to trust their feelings, that feelings are truth, couldn’t be kept just in the women’s locker room. It has spread into the men’s as well and is now also an affliction of some of the younger men.
I have learned this from readers’ emails. Some are puzzled by what seems to them to be a switch on my part from being for Putin to being against him. They want to know why I stopped liking him. In other words, they interpret my growing concern about his policy as an indication that I don’t like him anymore.
I am writing about Putin’s policy, not about my feelings for Putin. His policy of ignoring provocations made perfect sense for a while. It demonstrated to Europeans that Putin, unlike Washington, is level-headed and non-confrontational. Putin’s openess and responsible behavior was contrary to the image of “Russian threat” that Washington had put in European heads. The hope was that Europe would switch from being an enabler of Washington’s aggression to becoming an obstacle to it.
The problem with a policy of turning the other cheek is that it can encourage more provocations and that the provocations increase in intensity. The question I raised is about the policy, not about Putin. How long do you stick with a policy that is encouraging more provocations instead of achieving its intended goal?
There has been some movement from some European politicians toward a more responsible attitude toward Russia, but this might simply reflect disgust with Trump or be a ploy to encourage larger subsidies from Washington to buy them back into the fold. Is it enough movement to compensate for the ever more provocative and ever more insulting behavior of Washington and the British government toward Russia?
This is the question that I raise. It has nothing to do with my feelings for Putin. It is an expression of my concern that the intensifying provocations will result in nuclear war. Putin’s policy of mild or zero response has not resulted in Europe becoming a brake on Washington’s aggressive attitude toward Russia. Instead, Putin’s policy is inviting ever more intense provocations. Washington has now said that it is going to attack Syria if Syria attempts to liberate Idlib province. Washington is putting more sanctions on Russian elites, which will make them more hostile to Putin. Russian nationalists are becoming angry with Putin for failure to defend Russia’s honor. Putin’s policy does not seem to be a formula for success.
So the question is whether Putin should continue this policy.
I think that Putin has given the policy long enough and that he should have stopped the provocations several steps back by putting down a hard foot. This would have given the world the message that the idiot Americans and Europeans are driving the world to nuclear war. I believe that this would have sobered Europeans, part of the US Congress, and would have brought pressure from other countries on Washington to cool its jets. The only reason Washington gets away with murder is that the world permits it, and the world permits it because the world does not witness a powerful country standing up to Washington.
I might be wrong. Nevertheless, my question is in order. The Russian government, not me, needs to assess whether its policy is leading to the desired result or the opposite of the desired result.
Evidence and rational thought need to be at work, not feelings, not the material interests of the Atlanticist Integrationists and the Russian Jewish lobby that The Saker calls the Fifth column.
The question before President Putin and the Russian people is whether Russia can be a sovereign country independent of Washington’s control without going to war. My concern is that unless a hard Russian foot comes down quickly, the only alternatives are Russian surrender or nuclear war.
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This article was originally published on the author’s blog site: Paul Craig Roberts Institute for Political Economy.

The United States of America – The Real Reason Why They Are Never Winning Their Wars

The United States of America – The Real Reason Why They Are Never Winning Their Wars


This essay is inspired by Professor James Petras’s article, describing that the US never wins wars despite trillions of investments in her war budget and obvious military superiority.
Professor Petras is of course right, the United States is currently engaged in seven bloody wars around the globe (Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, Somalia, Libya) and has not been winning one, including WWII. The question is: Why is that?
To these wars, you may want to add the totally destructive and human rights adverse war that literally slaughters unarmed civilians, including thousands of children, in an open-air prison, Gaza, the US proxy war on Palestine, carried out by Israel; plus, warmongering on Iran, Venezuela and North Korea. Let alone the new style wars – the trade wars with China, Europe, and to some extent, Mexico and Canada, as well as the war of sanctions, starting with Russia and reaching around the world – the fiefdom of economic wars also illegal by any book of international economics.
Other wars and conflicts, that were never intended to be won, include the dismantlement of Yugoslavia by the Clinton / NATO wars of the 1990s, the so-called Balkanization of Yugoslavia, ‘Balkanization’, a term now used for other empire-led partitions in the world, à la “divide to conquer”. Many of the former Yugoslav Republics are still not at peace internally and among each other. President Tito, a Maoist socialist leader was able to keep the country peacefully together and make out of Yugoslavia one of the most prosperous countries in Europe in the seventies and 1980s. How could this be allowed, socioeconomic wellbeing in a socialist country? – Never. It had to be destroyed. At the same time NATO forces advanced their bases closer to Moscow. But no war was won. Conflicts are still ongoing, “justifying” the presence of NATO, for European and US “national security”.   
Then, let’s not forget the various Central American conflicts, Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala, the 8-year Iraq – Iran war – and many more, have created havoc and disorder, and foremost killed millions of people and weakened the countries affected. They put the population into misery and constant fear – and they keep requiring weapons to maintain internal hostilities, warfare and terror to this day.
 
All of these wars are totally unlawful and prohibited by any international standards of law. But the special and exceptional nation doesn’t observe them. President Trump’s bully National security Advisor, John Bolton, recently threatened the ICC and its judges with ‘sanctions’ in case the dare prosecution of Israeli and American war criminals. And the world doesn’t seem to care, and, instead, accepts the bully’s rule, afraid of the constant saber-rattling and threats being thrown out at the resisters of this world. Even the United Nations, including the 15-member Security Council, is afraid to stand up to the bully – 191 countries against 2 (US and Israel) is a no go?
None of these wars, hot wars or cold wars, has ever been won. Nor were they intended to be won. And there are no signs that future US-led wars will ever be won; irrespective of the trillions of dollars spent on them, and irrespective of the trillions to come in the future to maintain these wars and to start new ones. If we, the 191 UN member nations allow these wars to continue, that is. – Again, why is that?
Image on the right: Victoria Nuland
The answer is simple. It is not in the interest of the United States to win any wars.
The reasons are several. A won war theoretically brings peace, meaning no more weapons, no more fighting, no more destruction, no more terror and fear, no more insane profits for the war industry – but foremost, a country at peace is more difficult to manipulate and starve into submission than a country maintained at a level of constant conflict – conflict that not even a regime change will end, as we are seeing in so many cases around the world. Case in point, one of the latest ones being the Ukraine, after the US-NATO-EU instigated February 2014 Maidan coup, prepared with a long hand, in Victoria Nuland’s word, then Assistant Secretary of State, we spent more than 5 years and 5 billion dollars to bring about a regime change and democracy to the Ukraine.
Today, there is a “civil war” waging in eastern Ukraine, the Russian leaning Donbass area (about 90% Russian speaking and 75% Russian nationals), fueled by the ‘new’ Washington installed Poroshenko Nazi government. Thousands were killed, literally in cold blood by the US military-advised and assisted Kiev army, and an estimated more than 2 million fled to Russia. The total Ukraine population is about 44 million (2018 est.), with a landmass of about 604,000 km2, of which the Donbass area (Donetsk Province) is the most densely populated, counting for about 10% of population and about 27,000 km2.
Could this Kiev war of aggression end? – Yes, if the West would let go of the Donbass area which in any case will never submit to the Kiev regime and which has already requested to be incorporated into Russia. It would instantly stop the killing, the misery and destruction by western powers driven Nazi Kiev. But that’s not in the interest of the west, NATO, EU and especially not Washington – chaos and despair make for easy manipulation of people, for exploitation of this immensely rich country, both in agricultural potential – Ukraine used to be called the bread basket of Russia – and in natural resources in the ground; and for steadily advancing closer to the doorsteps of Moscow. That’s the intention. 
In fact, Washington and its western EU vassal allies are relentlessly accusing Russia for meddling in the Ukraine, in not adhering to the Minsk accords. They are ‘sanctioning’ Russia for not respecting the Minsk Protocol (Ukraine, Russia, France, and Germany agreed on 11 February 2015 to a package of measures to alleviate the ongoing war in eastern Ukraine), when in fact, the complete opposite is true. The west disregards the key points of the accord – no interference. But western propaganda and deceit-media brainwash western populations into believing in the Russian evil. The only ones meddling and supplying Kiev’s Nazi Regime with weapons and “military advisors” is the west. 
The going strategy is lie-propaganda, so the western public, totally embalmed with western falsehoods, believes it is always Russia. Russians, led by President Putin, are the bad guys. The media war is part of the west’s war on Russia. The idea is, never let go of an ongoing conflict – no matter the cost in lives and in money. It’s so easy. Why isn’t that addressed in many analyses that still pretend the US is losing wars instead of winning them? – Its 101 of western geopolitics.
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For those who don’t know, the US State Department has clearly exposed it’s plans to guarantee world primacy to the Senate’s Foreign Relations Commission. Assistant Secretary of State, Wess Mitchell, has declared that the United States is punishing Russia, because Moscow is impeding Washington from establishing supremacy over the world. It gets as blunt as that. The US openly recognizes the reason for their fight against Russia, and that Washington would not accept anything less than a full capitulation.
The full supremacy over the world is not possible without controlling the entire landmass of Eurasia – which for now they, the US, does not dominate. Mitchell added, contrary to optimistic hypothesis of earlier administrations, Russia and China are the most serious contenders to impede materially and ideologically the supremacy of the United States in the 21st Century, in a reference to the PNAC, Plan for a New American Century.
Then Mitchell launched a bomb, “It is always of primordial interest for the United States’ national security to impede the domination of the Eurasian landmass by hostile powers.” – This clearly means that the United States will shy away from nothing in the pursuit of this goal – meaning an outright war – nuclear or other – massive killing and total destruction – to reach that goal. This explains the myriad false accusations, ranging from outright insults at the UN by a lunatic Nikki Haley, the never-ending saga of the Skripal poisoning, to Russian meddling in the 2016 US elections – and whatever else suits the political circumstances to bash Russia. And these fabricated lies come mostly from Washington and London – and the rest of the western vassals just follows.
“War is hugely profitable. It creates so much money because it’s so easy to spend money very fast. There are huge fortunes to be made. So, there is always an encouragement to promote war and keep it going, to make sure that we identify people who are ‘others’ whom we can legitimately make war upon.” Roger Waters, Co-founder of the rock band Pink Floyd.
Russia today is attacked by economic and trade “sanctions”, by travel bans, by confiscated assets they have in the west. The Cold War which propagated the Soviet Union as an invasive threat to the world, was a flagrant and absolute lie from A to Z. It forced the Soviet Union, thrown into abject poverty by saving the west from Hitler during WWII – yes, it was the Soviet Union, not the US of A and her western ‘allies’ that defeated Hitler’s army – losing between 25 and 30 million people! – Imagine! – by saving Europe, the Soviet Union became unimaginably devastated and poor. 
The US propaganda created the concept of the Iron Curtain which basically forbade the west to see behind this imaginary shield to find out what the USSR really was after WWII – made destitute to the bones by the second World War. Yet this Cold War and Iron Curtain propaganda managed to make the western world believe that it is under a vital threat of a USSR invasion day-in-day-out, and that Europe with NATO must be ready to fend off any imaginary attack from the Soviet Union. It forced the Soviet Union to using all her workers’ accumulated capital to arm themselves, to be able to defend themselves from any possible western aggression, instead of using these economic resources to rebuild their country, their economy, their social systems. That’s the west – the lying, utterly and constantly deceiving west. Wake up, people!!!
Here you have it, confirmed by Wess Mitchell. The US would rather pull the rest of the world with it into a bottomless and an apocalyptic abyss with its sheer military power, than to lose and not reaching her goal. That’s the unforgiving ruling of the deep state, those that have been pulling the strings behind every US president for the last 200 years. – Unless the new alliances of the East – i.e. the SCO, BRICS, Eurasian Economic Union – half the world’s population and a third of the globes economic output – are able to subdue the United States economically, we may as well we doomed.
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As the seven present ongoing wars speak for themselves, chaos – no end in sight and intended – allow me to go back to a few other wars that were not won, on purpose, of course. Let’s look again at WWII and its sister wars, economic wars and conflicts. Planning of WWII started soon after the Great Depression of 1928 to 1933 – and beyond. Hitler was a ‘convenient’ stooge. War is not only hugely profitable, but it boosts and sustains the economy of just about every sector. And the major objective for the US then was eliminating the Bolshevik communist threat, the Soviet Union. Today its demonizing President Putin and, if possible, bring about regime change in Russia. That’s on top of Washington’s wish list.
In the midst of the Great Depression, in 1931, the US created the Bank for International Settlement in Basel, Switzerland, conveniently located at the border to Germany. The BIS, totally privately owned and controlled by the Rothchild clan, was officially intended for settling war compensation payments by Germany. Though, unknown to most people, Germany has paid almost no compensation for either WWI and WWII. Most of the debt was simply forgiven. Germany was an important player in Washington’s attempt to eliminating the “communist curse” of the USSR. The BIS was used by the FED via Wall Street banks to finance Hitler’s war against the Soviet Union. 
As usual, the US was dancing on two weddings: Pretending to fight Hitler’s Germany, but really supporting Hitler against Moscow. Sounds familiar? – Pretending to fight ISIS and other terrorists in the Middle East and around the world, but in reality, having been instrumental in creating, training, funding and arming the terror jihadists. When WWII was won by the Soviet army at a huge human sacrifice, the US, her allies and NATO marched in – shouting victory. And to this day these are the lessons taught in western schools, by western history books, largely ignoring the tremendous credit attributable to the Soviet Union, to the Russian people.
And since the USSR was not defeated, the Cold War had to be invented – and eventually with the help of Washington stooges, Michael Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, the west brought down the Soviet Union – preparing the way for a unipolar world. This grandiose goal of the exceptional nation was however – and very fortunately – stopped in its slippery tracks by the ascent of Russian President Putin.
But that’s not all. For dominating Russia, Europe had to be ‘colonized’ – made into a “European Union” (EU) that was never meant to be a real union, as in the United States of America. The idea of a European Union was first planted shortly after WWII by the CIA, then taken over by the Club of Rome – and promoted through numerous conventions all the way to the Maastricht Treaty of 1992. The next logical step was to give the EU a Constitution, to make the EU into a consolidated Federation of European States, with common economic, defense and foreign relations strategies. But this was never to be. 
The former French President, Giscard d’Estaing (1974 – 1981), was given the task to lead the drafting of an EU Constitution. He had strict instructions, though unknown to most, to prepare a document that would not be ratified by member states, as it would have bluntly transferred most of the EU nations sovereignty to Brussels. And so, the constitution was rejected, starting by France. Most countries didn’t even vote on the Constitution. And so, a federation of a United Europe didn’t happen. That would have been an unbeatable competition to the US, economically and militarily. NATO was eventually to take the role of unifying Europe – under the control of Washington. Today, the EU is ever more integrated into NATO.
What happened in parallel to the construct of a (non) European Union, was the European financial and economic colonization or enslavement, through the Bretton Woods Agreements in 1944. They created the World Bank, to manage the Marshall Plan, the US-sponsored European reconstruction fund, and the International Monetary Fund (IMF), to monitor and regulate the gold standard (US$ 35 / Troy Ounce), vis-à-vis the so-called convertible mostly European currencies. In fact, the Marshall Plan, denominated in US-dollars, was the first step towards a common European currency, prompted by the Nixon Administration’s exiting the gold standard in 1971, eventually leading to the Euro, a fiat currency created according to the image of the US dollar. The Euro, the little brother of the US fiat dollar, thus, became a currency, with which the European economic, financial and monetary policies are being manipulated by outside forces, i.e. the FED and Wall Street. The current President of the European Central Bank, Mario Draghi, is a former Goldman Sachs executive.
These are wars, albeit the latter ones, economic wars, being constantly waged, but not won. They create chaos, illusions, believes in lies, manipulating and mobilizing people into the direction the masters of and behind Washington want them to move. These are the same masters that have been in control of the west for the last 200 years; and unknown to the vast majority of the western population, these masters are a small group of banking and financial clans that control the western monetary system, as we know it today. It was brought into existence in 1913, by the Federal Reserve Act. These masters control the FED, Wall Street and the BIS – also called the central banks of central banks, as it – the BIS – controls all but a handful of the world’s central banks. 
This fiat financial system is debt-funding wars, conflicts and proxy hostilities around the world. Debt that is largely carried in the form of US treasury bills as other countries’ reserves. The continuation of wars is crucial for the system’s survival. It’s hugely profitable. If a war was won, peace would break out – no war industry profit there, no debt-rent for banks from peace. Wars must go on – and the exceptional nation may prevail, with the world’s largest military-security budget, the deadliest weapons and a national debt, called ‘unmet obligations’ by the US General Accounting Office (GAO) – of about 150 trillion dollars – about seven and a half times the US GDP. We are living in the west in a pyramid monetary fraud – that only wars can sustain, until – yes, until, a different, honest system, based on real economic and peaceful output, will gradually replace the dollar’s hegemony and its role as a world reserve currency. It’s happening as these lines go to print. Eastern economies, like the Chinese, with China’s gold-convertible Yuan, and a national debt of only about 40% of GDP, is gradually taking over the international reserve role of the US dollar. 
The US of A, therefore, will do whatever she can to continue, demonizing Russia and China, provoke them into a hot war, because dominating, and outright ‘owning’ the Eurasian landmass is the ultimate objective of the killer Empire.
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Note to readers: please click the share buttons above. Forward this article to your email lists. Crosspost on your blog site, internet forums. etc.
Peter Koenig is an economist and geopolitical analyst. He is also a water resources and environmental specialist. He worked for over 30 years with the World Bank and the World Health Organization around the world in the fields of environment and water. He lectures at universities in the US, Europe and South America. He writes regularly for Global Research; ICH; RT; Sputnik; PressTV; The 21st Century; TeleSUR; The Vineyard of The Saker Blog, the New Eastern Outlook (NEO); and other internet sites. He is the author of Implosion – An Economic Thriller about War, Environmental Destruction and Corporate Greed – fiction based on facts and on 30 years of World Bank experience around the globe. He is also a co-author of The World Order and Revolution! – Essays from the Resistance. 

What Comes Next

What Comes Next

Previews of the coming reckoning

All things have a beginning, a middle and and end.
And now, more than 3,480 days into the current bull market, the longest in history, we can say with high confidence we are very close to its end.
Why?
For manifold reasons that are multiplying fast. So many, in fact, that each of the key speakers at the recent Peak Prosperity/Contra Corner Summit in New York City had difficulty finding enough time to enumerate them all during the six-hour event.
David Stockman, President Reagan’s budget head and former US Congressman, focused his warnings on the overconcentration of financialized (i.e., phony) profits in the world economy, which mask the steep decline in the production of tangible (i.e., real) value.
Among his long litany of examples of the sclerosis and fraud within today’s economy, he explained how so much of today’s euphoric stock prices are an artifact of the cheap credit made possible by the world’s central banking cartel — enabling a massive LBO of our corporate industry.
Long story short: artificially low rates have been allowing corporate executives, for years, to buy back a huge percentage of their company’s shares, enriching shareholders (most notably the execs themselves) in the immediate term, while saddling the underlying companies under tremendous leverage (1m:13s):
As long as stock prices stay high and rates stay low, no one cares; they’re making too much money. But as rates rise and prices fall, these corporations will become crippled by their debt service requirements, be forced to lay off large swaths of their workforces, and quite possibly go out of business. Failures will ripple across the corporate landscape, sinking the US into prolonged recession.
As a society we’ll be the poorer for it. And suffer the full brunt of the pain this collapse of malinvestment will bring.
But the fat cat execs? They’ll simply retire to their mansions and enjoy their spoils.
Chris Martenson built on Stockman’s evidence of the economy’s vulnerability by showing how there simply won’t be enough (net) energy in the coming decades to power the growth the world is counting on. To drive this point home, he explains how demand from China alone is on track to consume 100% of world oil exports by 2040 (1m:43s):
Following that, James Howard Kunstler tied it all together by warning that we — as a society that is sacrificing our long-term potential and resilience for convenience and the quick buck — are in great peril of inheriting the bankrupt future we deserve (2m:12s):
The trio took over an hour of “ask anything” Q&A from the audience, who primarily wanted to hear these experts’ responses to How do you see all this playing out? and What steps should we be taking now?
Here’s (part of) Stockman’s explanation of why he predicts the Federal Reserve and other central banks will be unable to prevent the next market crash, which he sees coming soon (4m:57s):
The common theme amongst Stockman, Martenson and Kunstler? Use the precious time we have today to fully understand the trends in play, take prudent preparation in advance of the coming crisis, and develop trusted bonds within a like-minded community well-positioned to help its members through future adversity.
The above clips represent less than 10 minutes of the material covered in the 5+ hours of active presentation and discussion from last weekend’s Peak Prosperity/Contra Corner NYC Summit. If you were unable to attend the Summit live, but would like to purchase the replay video of the full event, you can do so at the ‘early bird’ discount price of $275 by clicking here. (Note: after Sep 30th, the cost of the replay video will rise to the full retail price of $350)
Reprinted with permission from Peak Prosperity.


FREEDOM OR ANARCHY CAMPAIGN OF CONSCIENCE