Le Pen: Nationalism Will Sweep Across Europe, EU Populists See Trump Victory As Beginning Of End For Old Order, Visualizing The Global War On Cash

Le Pen: Nationalism will sweep across Europe in 2017 

 French presidential hopeful Marine Le Pen on Saturday told a European gathering of right-wing populists in Germany that a string of high-stakes elections in 2017 would blow a wind of change across the region.

Emboldened by the Brexit vote and Donald Trump’s US presidential victory, the far-right National Front leader said voters in France, Germany and the Netherlands would be next to reject the status quo.

“2016 was the year the Anglo-Saxon world woke up. 2017, I am sure, the people of continental Europe will wake up,” she told a cheering crowd at a conference hall in the western river city of Koblenz, on the river Rhine.

“It’s no longer a question of if, but when,” she added in a speech that railed against migration, the euro and open borders.

Billed as a “European counter-summit”, the Koblenz gathering is also being attended by Frauke Petry of the anti-immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), Geert Wilders of the Dutch anti-Islam Freedom Party, Harald Vilimsky, secretary general of the Freedom Party of Austria and Matteo Salvini of Italy’s anti-EU Northern League.

The conference comes just a day after the US inauguration of Trump, who assumed power with a staunchly nationalist address in which he vowed to put “America first”.

EU Populists See Trump Victory as Beginning of End for Old Order

Anti-establishment politicians including Marine Le Pen, head of the National Front in France, and Geert Wilders of the Dutch Freedom Party echoed the combative language of the new U.S. president’s inaugural address at a celebratory rally in Koblenz, western Germany, on Saturday while Chancellor Angela Merkel was trying to reassure her supporters at a meeting in the country’s industrial heartland.

Le Pen and her allies are spearheading the most sustained challenge to Europe’s status quo since the end of the Cold War, with the continent facing elections this year in Germany, France and the Netherlands. While a meeting of the populist right would once have been dismissed as a sideshow, Trump’s unexpected rise and the U.K.’s decision to leave the EU in last year’s referendum have focused investors’ concerns on the where the next threat to the European Union project might emerge.

“The first major hit on the old order was Brexit,” Le Pen told a couple of hundred cheering supporters in Koblenz’s conference center. EU countries will soon “leave the prison of Europe,” she predicted, branding Merkel’s decision to let almost a million migrants into Germany last year “a catastrophe.” Trump himself has called the move “a catastrophic mistake.”

Hammering on the key themes of her election campaign, Le Pen said every member of the euro area must have the possibility of leaving and that the shared currency is “destroying” the French economy. The latest opinion polls suggest the nationalist leader could win the most votes in the first round of France’s presidential election on April 23, though no one has projected she would win the runoff two weeks later.

German Journalist Who Exposed CIA Buying News Stories Drops Dead

Udo Ulfkotte, a German journalist and former editor of Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, who exposed the CIA and US government's control of the news media died of a heart attack.

On January 13, Udo Ulfkotte died, reportedly of a heart attack.  Ulfkotte, 56, was the author of Journalists for Hire: How the CIA Buys the News.  

Last year, he exposed how the CIA was involved in buying news, some of which we already knew for some time, especially in light of the Central Intelligence Agency's Operation Mockingbird (for more on that, click here and here), which was their operation to control the mainstream media.

We’re talking about puppets on a string, journalists who write or say whatever their masters tell them to say or write. If you see how the mainstream media is reporting about the Ukraine conflict and if you know what's really going on, you get the picture. The masters in the background are pushing for war with Russia and western journalists are putting on their helmets.

I'm ashamed I was part of it. Unfortunately I cannot reverse this. Although my superiors at the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung approved of what I did, I'm still to blame. But yes, to my knowledge I am the first to accuse myself and to prove many others are to blame.

I didn’t get money – I got gifts. Things like gold watches, diving equipment, and trips with accommodations in five-star hotels. I know many German journalists who at some point were able to take advantage of this to buy themselves a vacation home abroad. But much more important than the money and gifts is the fact that you’re offered support if you write pieces that are pro-American or pro-NATO. If you don’t do it, your career won’t go anywhere – you’ll find yourself assigned to sit in the office and sort through letters to the editor.

When you fly to the US again and again and never have to pay for anything there, and you’re invited to interview American politicians, you’re moving closer and closer to the circles of power. And you want to remain within this circle of the elite, so you write to please them. Everyone wants to be a celebrity journalist who gets exclusive access to famous politicians. But one wrong sentence and your career as a celebrity journalist is over. Everyone knows it. And everyone’s in on it.

Ulfkotte was not the only journalist to expose what is going on in the media.

In December 2015, I wrote about investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson's video that exposed how the media corrupts and manipulates the public.

"What if all isn't as it seems?" Attkisson asked. "What if the reality you found was false, a carefully constructive narrative by unseen special interests designed to manipulate your opinion, a Truman Show-esque alternate reality all around you?"

"Complacency in the new media, combined with incredibly powerful propaganda and publicity forces means we sometimes get little of the truth," she said. "Special interests have unlimited time and money to figure out new ways to spin us while cloaking their role. Surreptitious astroturf methods are now more important to these interests than traditional lobbying of Congress."

Visualizing The Global War On Cash

There is a global push by lawmakers to eliminate the use of physical cash around the world. This movement is often referred to as “The War on Cash”, and there are three major players involved:

1. The Initiators

Who? Governments, central banks.

Why? The elimination of cash will make it easier to track all types of transactions – including those made by criminals.

2. The Enemy

Who? Criminals, terrorists

Why? Large denominations of bank notes make illegal transactions easier to perform, and increase anonymity.

3. The Crossfire

Who? Citizens

Why? The coercive elimination of physical cash will have potential repercussions on the economy and social liberties.

A Declaration of War

Governments and central banks have moved swiftly in dozens of countries to start eliminating cash.

Some key examples of this? Australia, Singapore, Venezuela, the U.S., and the European Central Bank have all eliminated (or have proposed to eliminate) high denomination notes. Other countries like France, Sweden and Greece have targeted adding restrictions on the size of cash transactions, reducing the amount of ATMs in the countryside, or limiting the amount of cash that can be held outside of the banking system. Finally, some countries have taken things a full step further – South Korea aims to eliminate paper currency in its entirety by 2020.

But right now, the “War on Cash” can’t be mentioned without invoking images of day-long lineups in India. In November 2016, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi demonetized 500 and 1000 rupee notes, eliminating 86% of the country’s notes overnight. While Indians could theoretically exchange 500 and 1,000 rupee notes for higher denominations, it was only up to a limit of 4,000 rupees per person. Sums above that had to be routed through a bank account in a country where only 50% of Indians have such access.

The Hindu has reported that there have now been 112 reported deaths associated with the Indian demonetization. Some people have committed suicide, but most deaths come from elderly people waiting in bank queues for hours or days to exchange money.

Doug Casey Warns "Every American Needs To Be Concerned Right Now"

Now, in 2017, the U.S. is in real trouble. Not as bad as Rhodesia 40 years ago—and definitely a different kind of trouble—but plenty serious. For many years, it’s been obvious that the country was eventually going to hit the wall, and now the inevitable is rapidly becoming imminent.

What do I mean by that? There’s plenty of reason to be concerned about things financial and economic. But I personally believe we haven't been bearish enough on the eventual social and political fallout from the Greater Depression. Nothing is certain, but the odds are high that the U.S. is going into a time of troubles at least as bad as any experienced in any advanced country in the last century.

It strikes most people as outrageous because the long-running post-WWII boom has been punctuated only by brief recessions. After 70 years, why should it ever end? The thought of a nasty end certainly runs counter to the experience of almost everyone now alive—including myself—and our personal experience is what we tend to trust most. But it seems to me we're very close to a tipping point. Ice stays ice even while it’s being warmed—until the temperature goes over 32° F, where it changes very quickly into something very different.

That point—economic bankruptcy accompanied by financial chaos—is quickly approaching for the U.S. government.With deficits over a trillion dollars per year for as far as the eye can see, the U.S. Treasury will very soon be unable to roll over its maturing debt at anything near current interest rates. The only reliable buyer will be the Federal Reserve, which can buy only by creating new dollars.

Within the next 24 months, the dollar is likely to start losing value rapidly and noticeably. Foreigners, who own over 6 trillion of them (including T-bills and other IOUs), will start panicking to dump them. So will Americans. The dollar bond market, today worth $40 trillion, will be devastated by much higher interest rates, a rapidly depreciating dollar, and an epidemic of defaults.

And that will be just the start of the trouble. Since the U.S. property market floats on a sea of debt (and is easy to tax), it’s also going to be hit very hard, again, this time by stifling mortgage rates. The next step is up for interest rates. Forget about property owners paying their existing mortgages; many won’t be able to pay their taxes and utilities, and maintenance will be out of the question.