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US dollar ‘Empire of Debt’ will go to war to stop emergence of petro-yuan

The imminent introduction of oil trading in yuan is a very bold move by the Chinese, because the US will not give up the basis of its hegemony – the dollar as the world’s reserve currency – without a fight, Max Keiser, host of RT’s financial program ‘Keiser Report' says. The Chinese plan to roll out a yuan-denominated oil contract before the end of this year is a very brave move, since countries who “ tried to exit the oil-dollar matrix have met terrible ends, ” Keiser pointed out. “ Saddam Hussein wanted to trade oil in Euros and he was killed, Muammar Gaddafi wanted to trade his energy in something other than the US dollar – he was killed, ” Keiser said. China, however, has the resolve and the resources to pull-off the de-dollarization, and besides, it’s backed by several major countries which are “ resistant to America’s financial cartel, ” namely Russia and Iran, Keiser says. “ Kudos to China for taking this project on and of course they are

Clinton, Assange and the war on truth

Australia’s public broadcasting network gave Hillary Clinton an open mike to defame WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange as “a tool of Russian intelligence” without giving him a chance to respond. by John Pilger Part 4 - Generational ‘Icon’ The ABC interviewer lauded Clinton as “the icon of your generation.” She asked her nothing about the enormous sums she creamed off from Wall Street, such as the $675,000 for speaking to Goldman Sachs, one of the banks at the center of the 2008 crash. Clinton’s greed deeply upset the kind of voters she abused as “deplorables.” This high-profile journalist made no mention of Clinton’s own “clear and present danger” to the people of Iran whom she once threatened to “obliterate totally,” and the 40,000 Libyans who died in the attack on Libya in 2011 that Clinton orchestrated. Flushed with excitement, the Secretary of State rejoiced at the gruesome murder of the Libyan leader, Colonel Gaddafi.\Clearly looking for a cheap headline in the Aus

Perception Management: how the US government used ordinary citizens to construct the myth of UFOs

globinfo freexchange In the 1980s, more and more people in the United States reported seeing unexplained objects and lights in the sky. At the same time, investigators who believed in UFOs revealed that they had discovered top-secret government documents that stated that alien craft had visited Earth. The documents had been hidden for 20 years and they seemed to prove that there had been a giant cover-up. But, actually, the reality was even stranger. The American Government might have been making it all up, that they had created a fake conspiracy to deliberately mislead the population. The lights that people imagined were UFOs may, in reality, have been new high-technology weapons that the US Government was testing.  The government had developed the weapons because they, in turn, imagined that the Soviet Union was far stronger than it was and still wanted to conquer the world. The government wanted to keep the weapons secret, but they couldn’t always

The FBI’s forgotten criminal history

by James Bovard President Trump’s firing of FBI chief James Comey last May spurred much of the media to rally around America’s most powerful domestic federal agency. But the FBI has a long record of both deceit and incompetence. Five years ago, Americans learned that the FBI was teaching its agents that “the FBI has the ability to bend or suspend the law to impinge on the freedom of others.” This has practically been the Bureau’s motif since its creation in 1908. The bureau was small potatoes until Woodrow Wilson dragged the United States into World War I. In one fell swoop, the number of dangerous Americans increased by perhaps twentyfold. The Espionage Act of 1917 made it easy to jail anyone who criticized the war or the government. In September 1918, the bureau, working with local police and private vigilantes, seized more than 50,000 suspected draft dodgers off the streets and out of the restaurants of New York, Newark, and Jersey City. The Justice Depart

CIA in Afghanistan: Operation Phoenix redux?

by Matthew Hoh These CIA teams in Afghanistan are not just reminiscent of the Operation Phoenix program in Vietnam, the death squads of Central America and the Shia torture and murder militias of Baghdad, they are the direct descendants of them. The CIA is continuing a long tradition of utilizing savage violence by indigenous government forces, in this case along sectarian/ethnic lines, in an attempt to demoralize and ultimately defeat local populations. The results will assuredly be the same: war crimes, mass murder, torture and the terrorization of entire communities of men, women and children in their own homes. This will lead to more support for the Taliban and a deepening of the war in Afghanistan. The CIA should ask itself, where has this worked before? This escalation by the CIA in Afghanistan fits into the broader war campaign of the United States in the Muslim world as the United States, despite its protestations of wanting negotiations and ulti

Trump’s war against his own voters

by Ralph Nader As a candidate, Donald Trump promised regular people, “I will be your voice,” and attacked the drug industry for “getting away with murder” in setting high prices for lifesaving medications. But as president, he has declared war on regulatory programs protecting the health, safety and economic rights of consumers. He has done so in disregard of evidence that such protections help the economy and financial well-being of the working-class voters he claims to champion. Already his aggressive actions exceed those of the Reagan administration in returning the country to the “Let the buyer beware” days of the 1950s. Though Mr. Trump is brazen in his opposition to consumer protections, many of his most damaging attacks are occurring in corners of the bureaucracy that receive minimal news coverage. His administration, for instance, wants to strip the elderly of their right to challenge nursing home abuses in court by allowing arbitration clauses i

Clinton, Assange and the war on truth

Australia’s public broadcasting network gave Hillary Clinton an open mike to defame WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange as “a tool of Russian intelligence” without giving him a chance to respond. by John Pilger Part 3 - A ‘Nihilistic Opportunist’ CLINTON: So I think Assange has become a kind of nihilistic opportunist who does the bidding of a dictator. FERGUSON: Lots of people, including in Australia, think that Assange is a martyr for free speech and freedom of information. How would you describe him? Well, you’ve just described him as a nihilist. CLINTON: Yeah, well, and a tool. I mean he’s a tool of Russian intelligence. And if he’s such, ah, you know, martyr of free speech, why doesn’t WikiLeaks ever publish anything coming out of Russia? (Again, Ferguson said nothing to challenge this or correct her.) CLINTON: There was a concerted operation between WikiLeaks and Russia and most likely people in the United States to weaponize that information, to make up

How the neoliberal priesthood of the West has used China's progress to build the myth that globalization is a great success

globinfo freexchange Speaking to Sharmini Peries and The Real News , Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington D.C., Mark Weisbrot, gave a characteristic example of how the tools of the global neoliberal priesthood, like IMF, are using highly disputable data to persuade that globalization is a success story. Using generalizations and oversimplifications, the World Bank, the IMF and other bank-occupied Western institutions, support that, for example, extreme poverty has been cut from nearly 40% of the world to under 10%, implying that neoliberal policies have been successful. In reality, two-thirds of that extreme poverty reduction concerns China, which, furthermore, did exactly the opposite of what these neoliberal policies dictate! As Weisbrot explained: A lot of people defend the globalization that's designed here in Washington as something that really helps the poor, the majority of people in the world. And so here's the

Covert operations: How the CIA works with Hollywood

The Weinstein story was suppressed by Hollywood, using its legal and financial muscle to keep a lid on it - until now. But there are also power centres in the US government that can dictate to Hollywood: the Pentagon and the CIA.

Από τον Τσαλδάρη στον Τσίπρα και από τον Τρούμαν στον Τραμπ

του Διονύση Ελευθεράτου Τέσσερις δεκαετίες παρήλθαν από τότε που οι σκιτσογράφοι, εδώ στην Ελλάδα, «έβαζαν» φουστανέλα στον Τζίμι Κάρτερ, «φρέσκο» – τότε – πρόεδρο των ΗΠΑ. Μεγάλη ευφορία είχαν προκαλέσει, βλέπετε, κάποιες δηλώσεις του πριν από τις αμερικανικές προεδρικές εκλογές του 1976, περί ενδεδειγμένης λύσης του Κυπριακού, βασισμένης στο διεθνές δίκαιο και τα ψηφίσματα του ΟΗΕ. Ευφορία που εξελίχθηκε σε ενθουσιασμό, όταν ο Κάρτερ προειδοποίησε την Άγκυρα ότι θα τερματιζόταν η παροχή αμερικανικής βοήθειας προς αυτήν, εάν δεν σημειωνόταν ουσιαστική πρόοδος στο Κυπριακό. Η εκλογική νίκη του πανηγυρίστηκε στην Αθήνα ως βέβαιη είσοδος «των σχέσεων Αθήνας – Ουάσινγκτον σε νέα εποχή», αλλά και ως απαρχή μιας θετικής αντίστροφης μέτρησης: Στο τέλος της θα βρίσκαμε, υποτίθεται, χαμογελαστή και καλοσυνάτη, μια «δίκαιη λύση» του Κυπριακού. Η συνέχεια, γνωστή. Λίγα χρόνια έπειτα από την εκλογική νίκη του Κάρτερ, όποιος θα εντόπιζε έστω και ίχνη δικαίωσης στ