Putin's 'Threats' - A Myth To Promote Agenda, Japan Keeping A Close Eye On China, 'This Is The Disaster Everyone Will Wish They Prepared For'

Putin’s “Threats” to the Baltics: a Myth to Promote NATO Unity

NATO is in fact aggressively expanding, and holding large-scale war games in Romania, Lithuania, and Poland, and Russia is truly concerned.

Why Latvia? Shirreff is not alone in trying to depict Latvia and the other Baltic states (Estonia and Lithuania) as immanently threatened by Russia. The stoking of Baltic fears of such are a principle justification for NATO expansion.

The argument begins with the assertion that Vladimir Putin (conflated with Russia itself, as though he were an absolute leader, a second Stalin) wants to revive the Soviet Union. His occasional comment that the collapse of the USSR was a “catastrophe” is repeatedly cited, totally out of context, as proof of this expansionist impulse. It continues with the observation that there has been tension between Russia and the Baltic states since their independence in 1991. And while Russia has never threatened the Baltic states with invasion or re-incorporation, the fear mongers like to conjure up Sir Richard’s World War III scenario.

So it’s not difficult to understand why NATO, in its largest war games since the end of the Cold War, would choose Poland, which borders both Russia (the Kaliningrad enclave) and Lithuania, as their setting. Dubbed Anaconda-2016, the ten-day exercise involves 31,000 troops from 24 countries including non-NATO members Kosovo, Macedonia and Finland. Germany, whose foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has actually criticized the exercise as “saber-rattling and warmongering,” has sent 400 military engineers but no combat troops.

This follows the June announcement that NATO would deploy four multinational battalions (about 4000 troops) in the Baltic states and Poland to “bolster their defenses against Russia.” The idea is that Russian actions in Georgia in 2008 and in Ukraine since 2014 show that Russia poses a grave threat to European security.

It doesn’t actually. Its military budget is one-twelfth of NATO’s.  It has no motive. Russia has responded to the unrelenting expansion of NATO to encompass it with stern words and defensive military measures but calm and ongoing appeals for cooperation with nations it (despite everything) continues to refer to as “our partners.”

It doesn’t actually. Its military budget is one-twelfth of NATO’s.  It has no motive. Russia has responded to the unrelenting expansion of NATO to encompass it with stern words and defensive military measures but calm and ongoing appeals for cooperation with nations it (despite everything) continues to refer to as “our partners.”

Unfortunately, the U.S. masses don’t even know what NATO is, or how it’s expanding. It is rarely mentioned in the mainstream press; its existence is never problematized, or discussed in U.S. political debates (except when Trump says the U.S.’s NATO allies are getting a “free ride”); the fact that its dissolution is not subject to questioning is all very depressing.

A Sinkhole of Economic and Moral Perversion - LewRockwell

All major political parties in Western Europe, regardless of their different names and party programs, are nowadays committed to the same fundamental idea of democratic socialism. They use democratic elections to legitimize the taxing of productive people for the benefit of unproductive people. They tax people, who have earned their income and accumulated their wealth by producing goods or services purchased voluntarily by consumers (and of course especially the ‘rich’ among those), and they then re-distribute the confiscated loot to themselves, i.e., the democratic State that they control or hope to control, and their various political friends, supporters, and potential voters.

They do not call this policy by its right name: punishing the productive and rewarding the unproductive, of course. That doesn’t sound particularly attractive. Instead, they tap into the always popular sentiment of envy and claim to tax the few ‘rich’ to support the many ‘poor.’ In truth, however, with their policy they make more and more productive people poor and a steadily increasing number of unproductive people rich.

Looking at the EU, the picture becomes even worse. The EU is the first step on the way toward the creation of a European Super-State, and ultimately of a one-world government, dominated by the USA and its central bank, the FED. From its very beginnings, and despite all high-sounding political proclamations to the contrary, the EU was never about free trade and free competition. For that, you don’t need tens of thousands of pages of rules and regulations! Rather, the central purpose of the EU, supported all-along by the USA, was always the weakening in particular of Germany as Europe’s economic powerhouse. To facilitate this, Germany was sent on a seemingly never-ending ‘guilt trip’ and thus pressured to transfer increasingly larger parts of its already limited (vis-à-vis the USA) sovereignty to the EU in Brussels. Especially noteworthy in this regard: Germany’s giving up its monetary sovereignty and abandoning its traditionally ‘strong’ currency, the DM, in favor of a ‘weak’ Euro, issued by a European Central Bank (ECB) composed overwhelmingly of politically connected central bankers from traditionally ‘weak’ currency countries.

The EU, then, is characterized by three main features: 

First: The harmonization of the tax- and regulation structure across all member states, so as to reduce economic competition and especially tax-competition between different countries and make all countries equally uncompetitive.

Second: On top of the economic and moral perversity within each country of punishing the productive and subsidizing the unproductive, another layer of international income- and wealth-redistribution is added: of punishing economically better performing countries like Germany and the countries of northern Europe and rewarding economically worse performing countries (mostly of southern Europe) and thus successively rendering the economic performance of all countries equally worse.

And third, of increasing importance especially during the last decade: In order to overcome the rising resistance, in many countries, against the steadily increasing transfer of national sovereignty to Brussels, the EU is on a crusade to erode, and ultimately destroy, all national identities and all social and cultural cohesion. The idea of a nation and of different national and regional identities is ridiculed, and multi-culturalism is hailed instead as an unquestionable “good.”

Kerry: We Will Meet Obama's Goal of Admitting 10,000 Syrian Refugees by Sept. 30

The Obama administration will meet its target of settling 10,000 Syrian refugees in the United States by the time fiscal year 2016 ends on September 30, Secretary of State John Kerry announced on Tuesday night.

Addressing an end-of-Ramadan Eid al-Fitr reception at the State Department, Kerry noted that the 10,000 figure would be a six-fold increase in Syrian refugee admissions from FY 2015.

“Tonight, I can announce proudly that we will meet President Obama’s goal of welcoming 10,000 Syrian refugees to the United States in the current fiscal year,” he said.

Japan Keeping a Close Eye on China Following Hague Decision

Japan’s military will closely monitor Chinese activity in the neighboring East China Sea after an international court rules on Beijing’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, the defence minister said on Tuesday.

“We urge all parties concerned to react in a way that does not raise tensions,” Defence Minister Gen Nakatani told a briefing in Tokyo. “We will keep a close watch on the situation in the East China Sea,” he added.

U.S. officials have said say they fear China may declare an air defense identification zone in the South China Sea, as it did in the East China Sea in 2013, or step up its building and fortification of artificial islands.

Tokyo, however, is more worried China will also take action in the neighboring East China Sea where Asia’s two biggest economies are locked in a separate territorial dispute.

Maduro Puts Military In Charge Of Venezuela's Food, Calls It "Great Sovereign Supply Mission" | Zero Hedge

Every time we believe Venezuela has hit rock bottom, president Nicolas Maduro finds a way to surprise us. In the latest installment of Venezuela's social collapse, we find that the president of the socialist utopia has put the armed forces in charge of a new food supply system aimed at alleviating crippling shortages, in the process ceding even more power to a military apparatus that is already involved in everything from banking to imports. According to some interpretations, this is merely the latest step in the military's takeover of a government that has now lost virtually all support as well as authority to govern.

As WSJ reports, the head of the armed forces, Defense Minister Vladimir Padrino - who now becomes one of the most powerful people in the socialist government - will be in charge of transporting and distributing basic products, controlling prices and stimulating production, according to a decree published Tuesday in the official gazette.  “All the ministries, all the ministers, all the state institutions are at the service and in absolute subordination” to Padrino’s so-called Great Sovereign Supply Mission, Maduro said in a televised address Monday night.

The appointment comes at a time of unprecedented crisis for Venezuela, where a full-blown food crisis has emerged over the past few months. Entire days are now spent outside stores waiting to buy a handful of basic items, with protests and looting rising sharply. Hoarding and flipping scarce goods have become a growth industry. Those who buy and resell, known as bachaqueros, are among the few succeeding in this economy.

"This is now a completely militarized government,” said Luis Manuel Esculpi, a security analyst in Caracas and former head of the armed forces commission in the congress. “The army is Maduro’s only source of authority.”

Some see through the latest news as a de facto takeover by the local military, one which allows Maduro to quietly exit the scene of the crime and leave the local army to handle the upcoming revolution.

The problem for the military is that by fully aligning themselves with the Maduro regime, they will also lose the people's trust, making violent conflict virtually inevitable.

A former high-ranking general said the new measures would end up discrediting the armed forces, “because now they’ll be responsible for sustaining a model that has no viability.” He said the move would also open more doors for corruption in a country the watchdog group Transparency International considers among the world’s more corrupt.

“This Is The Disaster Everyone Will Wish They Prepared For”: SoCal Megaquake Threatens 20 Million – The Daily Coin

Experts in business and policy have conducted a survey of the potential damage that could be expected after what scientists now say is an inevitable mega-earthquake along the San Andreas fault. It exposed many deep flaws in the system, and forecast a disaster of epic proportions for of Southern California.

Because the pressure has been building for over a century, and simply must be released, the earthquake is not just a potential event, but a liability that is sure strike sooner or later, and models show that the magnitude could easily approach 8.0.

It could easily become every prepper’s worst nightmare – an event big enough to test the shaky resolve of the entire population as they face being cut off from food, water and electricity; even a modestly large earthquake could disrupt pipelines and power lines for water supply, sewage, natural gas and more for several weeks or even months… and it would only take a matter of hours and days for riots and looting to begin.

But when the Big One hits, a recent report says, the western state is ill-prepared and local officials as well as major businesses need to face that reality to “prevent the inevitable disaster from becoming a catastrophe.”

Drafted by a group of business and policy leaders, the report identifies several key areas that need to be addressed before a quake as strong as a magnitude 8 happens, notably aging infrastructure, water supplies and the risk of catastrophic fires…including freeways, railway lines, gas and petroleum pipelines as well as electric lines.

A major earthquake on the San Andreas, one of California’s most dangerous faults, would cut most lifelines in and out of southern California, preventing critical aid from reaching some 20 million people and hampering recovery efforts, experts say.

[…]

“It is inevitable that we will have a big earthquake because that pressure needs to be released,” said Robert Graves, a seismologist with the USGS.

Computer simulations by the US Geological Survey (USGS) suggest that a magnitude 7.8 quake on the southern end of the San Andreas fault would cause shaking for some two minutes, killing at least 1,800 people, injuring 53,000 and causing $213 billion in damage.

“Most of the water that we get has to cross the fault to reach us but when the earthquake happens, all of the aqueducts will be broken at the same time,” Jones, known as California’s “earthquake lady,” told AFP.

Experts admit that services could be disrupted for several months, so serious preppers living in earthquake zones should be certain that there is a minimum 2-3 month food supply for everyone in the home, as well as 30-60 days of water, along with other typical supplies.

THE STORY: THEY PLAYED YOU AMERICA!

Obama will only impose martial law if it looks like Trump will win

End Time Persecution Is Here: Russia Just Banned Evangelism And China Has Torn Down 1000s Of Crosses – The Daily Coin