RUSSIA, FRANCE, BRITAIN, UNITED STATES / IN ISIS BLOWBACK SYRIAN DEATH TRAP

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The aftermath of a barrel bomb attack in a rebel-held area of Aleppo, Syria, earlier this month. Credit Karam Al-Masri/Agence France-Presse   Syria is rapidly becoming a blowback death trap for all the major countries involved; Russia, France, Britain and the United States with Israel an active silent partner. ISIS is making it a death trap for each participant with the recent Russian Airline tragedy and Paris mass killings being the latest examples ~ Britain and the United States will most likely follow if we continue on the path of empire building: Allen L Roland, PhD     “In a sense, blowback is simply another way of saying that a nation reaps what it sows. Although people usually know what they have sown, our national experience of blowback is seldom imagined in such terms because so much of what the managers of the American empire have sown has been kept secret.” ~ Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire     Marc Ash, RSN news, finally states the obvious during these perilous times and he is absolutely correct; "Call it the War on Terror, an ISIS Caliphate, defense of Islam or a battle for freedom. The bullets are flying and people everywhere are dying from global colonialist domination. The West and China are everywhere, their fingers in everything of monetary value. Those who resist are assigned the same label the Romans gave to those who took up arms against their empire, “terrorist.” ISIS will fail. Brutality cannot defeat injustice. ISIS will paint this as a great victory. In fact, gunning down unarmed civilians is only a sign of impotence and desperation. For decades the U.S. has waged the most inept and corrupt wars of domination and greed imaginable to the extent that they would not have been imaginable had the atrocities not actually been committed. We are chasing ghosts in Mesopotamia, ghosts of men and civilizations we have defiled and slaughtered for decades. That does not justify what happened in Paris. It is however an indictment of war for profit. We must respond with wisdom and determination. Not blind aggression and profiteering. The “New American Century” is over, really before it began." And then Ash offers sage advice ~ which we have yet to heed; "Do not arm good guys. Do not allow profit to be a defense strategy. If we had stayed out of Iraq, ISIS would never have risen. It’s a lot easier for ISIS to defeat themselves than it will be for the West to defeat them, by orders of magnitude. Get the idiots away from the command center ~ There is no substitute for rational thought" See RSN article ~ http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33485-global-domination-not-going-well                 So let's take a close look at Syria and sort out the players in this Death Trap ~ which has already struck Russia and France.  Here is where some of the main foreign principals stand (Courtesy of NY Times)   THE UNITED STATES   BACKS: More moderate elements among the rebel forces in Syria. OPPOSES: The government of President Bashar al-Assad, as well as the Islamic State (ISIS) and other Islamic extremist groups. HOW IT IS FIGHTING: The United States leads a coalition conducting airstrikes in Iraq and Syria against the Islamic State and other extremist groups. It has been carrying out a covert program to train and equip Syrian rebels and a separate Pentagon program to train the moderate Syrian opposition to fight the Islamic State (ISIS)…. The Pentagon program has drawn few recruits.   RUSSIA   BACKS: Mr. Assad, the leader of Syria, which has been Russia’s only persistent ally in the Middle East for decades. OPPOSES: Russia says it opposes the Islamic State, but most of its airstrikes have instead targeted rebels trying to topple Mr. Assad, Russia’s ally. Many of Russia’s early attacks have struck at an Islamist coalition called Army of Conquest, which opposes the Islamic State and had been making gains against Mr. Assad in recent months. The group includes Al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate as well as more moderate rebel factions that have received covert arms support from the United States. HOW IT IS FIGHTING: Russia has coordinated with Syria to begin a coordinated assault by land, air and sea on insurgents opposed to the Assad government. Russia said it fired 26 cruise missiles at Syrian targets from naval vessels in the Caspian Sea on Wednesday. Russia has long supplied arms to Syria, and Russian pilots carried out their first airstrikes in the country in late September. Before the airstrikes began, Russia had been deploying military equipment ~ including 32 warplanes ~ and soldiers to a Syrian airfield near Latakia for weeks, according to the United States, and Russian drones had been conducting reconnaissance flights over areas controlled by opponents of Mr. Assad.     BRITAIN   BACKS: More moderate elements among the rebel forces in Syria. OPPOSES: The Assad government, the Islamic State (ISIS) and other Islamic extremist groups. HOW IT IS FIGHTING: Because of strong opposition in Parliament to military intervention in Syria, Britain has so far focused mainly on coalition airstrikes in Iraq. However, it recently conducted a drone strike in Syria that killed two British citizens it said had joined the Islamic State  (see the United States)     FRANCE   BACKS: More moderate elements among the rebel forces in Syria. OPPOSES: The Assad government, the Islamic State (ISIS) and other Islamic extremist groups HOW IT IS FIGHTING: Facing a refugee crisis and stepped-up jihadist recruiting in Europe, France recently expanded its participation in coalition airstrikes against the Islamic State (ISIS) and other extremist groups to targets in Syria as well as Iraq. But it has ruled out any ground intervention. (See the United States)

There are other participants like Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Qatar but you have now met the principals whose principle agenda is Regime Change ~ see NY Times article http://www.nytimes.com/2015/10/01/world/middleeast/the-syria-conflicts-overlapping-agendas-and-competing-visions.html

Robert Parry, Consortium News, asks the most obvious question ~ "Will President Barack Obama and other leaders finally level with the American people and the world about what the underlying reasons for this madness are? Will Obama explain how U.S. “allies” in the Middle East, such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar, have been fuelling this Sunni extremism for years? Will he dare recognize that Israeli repression of the Palestinians is a major contributing factor, too?" See Parry article ~ http://readersupportednews.org/opinion2/277-75/33514-can-obama-level-with-the-people

Of course President Obama will do no such thing and will instead accommodate the neocons and liberal hawks, including Hillary Clinton, who remain influential within his own administration.

In Essence,The War on Terror and Syria is still all about Empire building and Regime Change and only the honest and rational thoughts of people such as Chalmers Johnson ( who has seen it all ) can offer the tough truth needed to deal with the reality of this ISIS Blowback Death Trap.

“Terrorism The suicidal assassins of September 11, 2001, did not “attack America,” as political leaders and news media in the United States have tried to maintain; they attacked American foreign policy. Employing the strategy of the weak, they killed innocent bystanders, whose innocence is, of course, no different from that of the civilians killed by American bombs in Iraq, Serbia, Afghanistan, and elsewhere.”
~ Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, Second Edition: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire

 

Allen L Roland, PhD

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2015/11/russia-france-britain-united-states-in.html

Heart centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

 

CHINA'S BLACK HOLE OF DEBT CREATES GHOST CITIES AND WORLD CRISIS

 

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The ripple effect of China's out of control black hole of debt with its overbuilt and uninhabited ghost cities throughout China as well as its poorly regulated and hyper valuated stock market is becoming a world crisis which, like a black hole in space, is drawing most of the world into its rapidly collapsing debt vortex where the mother of all real estate bubbles is in the process of bursting: Allen L Roland, PhD

 

 "I have been warning for years that the greatest - and final - bubble to burst, in this century of bubbles, would be China. Now that cracks in the great red dragon's economy are widening, it's time to prepare for the worst" ~  Harry Dent, Global Financial columnist

In the immediate aftermath of the 2008 global financial crisis, the claim was advanced that China could serve as the growth engine for the world economy. That illusion was dashed some time ago by China's recent currency devaluation ~  but it has been replaced by growing fears that an unravelling of the massive Chinese investment and real estate boom will have major global consequences, especially for so-called emerging markets that are dependent on the Chinese economy and its already happening. See CBS 60 minutes 12 minute report on China's real estate bubble and ghost cities ~ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uxjwhk1ktNw

 

China's consumer spending by households is only 35 percent of the nation’s G.D.P. ~ one of the lowest levels in the world. Its investment rate ~ nearly 50 percent of G.D.P is extraordinarily high. And the productivity of this investment is beyond dismal.

To a large extent, China's authoritarian command and control economic governance is to blame for its current financial peril. Limits on legal migration to cities promoted an underclass of illegal urban workers toiling for meager wages, slowing consumer spending and hindering urban development. State-owned monopolies plowed profits back into investment rather than into government spending on social welfare. Near-zero interest rates on deposit accounts provided cheap loans to business but penalized savers and the name of the game became to buy real estate ~ it's the mother of all mothers real estate bubble and its bursting at the seams.

Further economic change in China will inevitably lead to political instability ~ which is not exactly the strongest incentive for government reform in China so it's time for China's leaders to circle the wagons and protect the authoritarian regime, regardless of the consequences to the people ~ for the Chinese Potemkin village of progress must be maintained or China will financially bring the world down with its immanent stock market collapse.

 

It's the ultimate financial blackmail and it may just work for a short time ~ for it's also a con game operating on a worldwide basis.

As usual, WSWS provides the on target lurid details of this world wide Ponzi scheme;

"An article published Sunday in the New York Times (“Investors Race To Escape Risk In Global Bonds”) sheds light on a significant factor behind the crisis atmosphere on global markets. The Times explains that some of the biggest bond mutual funds based in the US, including BlackRock, Franklin Templeton and Pimco, are massively invested in emerging market government bonds whose values are now collapsing.

The article raises the very real possibility that one or more of these firms could be bankrupted by demands from investors for the return of their cash, under conditions where the firms cannot offload their emerging market bonds and meet these demands. Such an event would be comparable to, if not worse than, the collapse of Lehman Brothers in 2008.

Following the 2008 Wall Street crash, the American ruling class led the way in using unlimited supplies of virtually free credit provided by central banks to push stock prices to record highs and generate an emerging market bubble, while laying siege to the jobs, wages and conditions of workers through mass unemployment and austerity policies.

The resulting “recovery” had the character of a gigantic Ponzi scheme, resting on a stagnant real economy and ever-increasing social inequality. This financial house of cards is being undermined by the growth of deflationary tendencies in the world economy, reflected most starkly in collapsing commodity prices and the slowdown in China, but also in anemic growth or outright recession in Japan, Europe and the US."

On September 16, 2008, the day after the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the WSWS declared: “A sea change is unfolding in the US and world economy that portends a catastrophe of dimensions not seen since the Great Depression of the 1930s.”   

See WSWs article http://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2015/08/24/pers-a24.html

China's black hole of debt is now twice the size of its gross domestic product and it's fueling a Potemkin Village of potential growth. China’s total debt amounted to RMB 111.6 trillion ($18.3 trillion) at the end of 2012, which was 215.7 percent of that year’s GDP. Of this amount, corporate debt equaled 113.5 percent of GDP; government debt, 53.5 percent; household debt, 31.1 percent; and financial sector debt, 17.6 percent.

Ruchir Sharma, Head of Emerging Markets at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, wrote last year that: “Since 2008, China’s total public and private debt has exploded to more than 200 percent of GDP ~ an unprecedented level for any developing country” in his opinion ~ and that China’s debt problems are “huge.” See article http://www.forbes.com/sites/jackperkowski/2014/01/21/chinas-debt-how-serious-is-it/

 

This black hole of Chinese debt is clearly unsustainable, along with its ghost cities, but there is one person who clearly saw the hand writing on the wall in 2009 regarding China's dangerous debt excesses and his name is Jim Chanos. The was the founder of Kynikos Associates, a $3 billion hedge fund that specializes in short-selling, Chanos was the first person to figure out, some 15 years ago, that Enron was a house of cards ~ and now he reveals that China is also a huge house of cards on a massive international scale.

 

Joe Nocera , New York Times Op Ed columnist makes the Chanos connection on August 25th, 2015;

"Chanos and his crew at Kynikos don’t make big “macro” bets on economies; their style is more “micro”: looking at the fundamentals of individual companies or sectors. And so it was with China. “I’ll never forget the day in 2009 when my real estate guy was giving me a presentation and he said that China had 5.6 billion square meters of real estate under development, half residential and half commercial,” Chanos told me the other day.

“I said, ‘You must mean 5.6 billion square feet.’ ”

The man replied that he hadn’t misspoken; it really was 5.6 billion square meters, which amounted to over 60 billion square feet.

For Chanos, that is when the light bulb went on. The fast-growing Chinese economy was being sustained not just by its export prowess, but by a property bubble propelled by mountains of debt, and encouraged by the government as part of an infrastructure spending strategy designed to keep the economy humming. (According to the McKinsey Global Institute, China’s debt load today is an unfathomable $28 trillion.)

That insight soon led Chanos to make an audacious call ~ Short Chinese stocks. China was in the midst of an unsustainable credit bubble ~ witness the countless Chinese ghost cities fueled by nationwide false hope and manipulation.

Chanos soon went public with his thesis, giving interviews to CNBC and Charlie Rose, and making a speech at Oxford University. He told Rose that property speculation in China was rampant, and that because so much of the economy depended on construction ~  in most cases building properties that had no chance of generating enough income to pay down the debt ~ China was on “the treadmill to hell.”

 

As it turns out, China’s economy began to slow right around the time Chanos first made his call. No matter: Most China experts remained bullish. Chanos, meanwhile, was shorting the stocks of a number of companies that depended on the Chinese market. And he was regularly sending out emails when he came upon articles that seemed to confirm his thesis: stories about newly constructed ghost cities and troubled banks and debt-laden state-owned enterprises."

 

China’s not the only reason the stock market has been so volatile, but it’s the most important one. China’s economy is faltering, its stock market is collapsing, and the ham-handed efforts by government officials to prop up both have mainly had the effect of disabusing anyone who still thinks the government can revive the economy with the snap of its fingers. This loss of confidence in China and its leaders has spooked stock markets around the world."  See article ~  http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/25/opinion/joe-nocera-the-man-who-got-china-right.html?emc=edit_th_20150825&nl=todaysheadlines&nlid=65700837

 

This loss of confidence has rightfully spooked stock markets around the world because we are all part of this world wide credit/debt scam and China's descent into this black hole of debt will have worldwide ramifications that will affect us all.

 

"The world economy is like an ocean liner without lifeboats,” Stephen King, chief economist at HSBC, wrote in a recent research note.

 

And this ocean liner has just hit a massive iceberg of debt and is sinking fast ~ and there are no lifeboats and that includes Quantitative Easing ~ An unconventional monetary policy in which a central bank purchases government securities or other securities out of thin air from the market in order to lower interest rates and increase the money supply.

 

The Fed is now pumping annually approximately 1 to 2 trillion dollars out of thin air into the economy and that includes vast amount of Mortgage backed bonds and effectively putting a halter on Interest rates but at the same time piling up more debt ~ which now stands at 18 billion versus 6 billion in 2008.

Every great con game or Ponzi scheme eventually comes to an end and it's always painful.

"Why would any rational investor want to put money into investments that will make them poorer on a purchasing power basis in the long run?  And when any central bank initiates a policy of “quantitative easing”, any rational investor should immediately start demanding a higher rate of return on the bonds of that nation.  Creating money out of thin air and pumping into the financial system devalues all existing money and creates inflation.  Therefore, rational investors should respond by driving interest rates up.  Instead, central banks told everyone that interest rates would be forced down, and that is precisely what happened.  But now things have shifted.  Investors are starting to behave more rationally and the central banks are starting to lose control of the financial markets, and that is a very bad sign for the rest of 2015. See http://theeconomiccollapseblog.com/archives/tag/quantitative-easing

 

The game is up and the day of reckoning is already here but the global elite will do everything in their power to indefinitely keep the Ponzi con game intact.

 

The weakness in China is even compelling officials at the United States Federal Reserve to think more globally, as they consider raising interest rates. William C. Dudley, the president of the New York Fed, said on Wednesday that a September rate increase looked less compelling than it did a few weeks ago and China's economic blowback as well as credibility is the obvious unmentioned reason.

The confusion and bankruptcy of governments and policymakers in the face of the renewed China downturn was summed up in a column published in the Financial Times over the weekend by former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers, who called on the Federal Reserve to keep interest rates at zero indefinitely.

Summers wrote: “Satisfactory growth, if it can be achieved, requires very low interest rates that historically we have only seen during economic crises. This is why long-term bond markets are telling us that real interest rates are expected to be close to zero in the industrialized world over the next decade"

Summers, who has virtually no financial credibility, is also in denial for the die is cast and China's collapsing Debt vortex has already captured if not been inspired by the United States who has been playing the same con game as well as delaying the inevitable economic collapse.

We stand at the precipice or the event horizon of the greatest economic transition that any of us have ever seen.

China's black hole of debt has taken China beyond the point of no return and even though things may seem very “normal” to some people right now ~ the truth is that the global financial system is fundamentally flawed, and large cracks in the system are appearing throughout its infrastructure..

One thing is certain ~ when this economic Ponzi game does collapse, it will take most people entirely by surprise.

But it shouldn’t for it has always been in plain sight for those willing to see beneath the surface as well as  the Potemkin Chinese ghost cities without inhabitants.

All con games eventually fall apart in the end, and we are about to learn that lesson the hard way.

 

Allen L Roland, PhD
http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2015/08/chinas-black-hole-of-debt-creates-ghost.html

Heart centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net

 

60th Anniversary of Russell-Einstein Manifesto Now Reinforced by Climate Change and Teilhard's Warning

 

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Sixty years after Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell issued their manifesto about the growing threat of world war, the globe continues to face the prospect of nuclear annihilation coupled with the looming threat of climate change as well as Teilhard's ominous warning ~ Love one another or you will perish: Allen L Roland, PhD

 

"We have reached a decisive point in human evolution, at which the only way forward is in the direction of a common passion ~ Either we must doubt the value of everything around us, or we must utterly believe in the possibility, and I would add, in the inevitable consequences of universal love."  Teilhard de Chardin, Human energy

 

As Emanuel Pastreich brilliantly explains in Transcend Media Service / Foreign Policy In Focus ~ "It was exactly 60 years ago that Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein gathered together with a group of leading intellectuals in London to draft and sign a manifesto in which they denounced the dangerous drive toward war between the world’s Communist and anti-Communist factions …. They were blunt, equating the drive for war and reckless talk of the use of nuclear weapons sweeping the United States and the Soviet Union at the time, as endangering all of humanity. The manifesto argued that advancements in technology, specifically the invention of the atomic bomb, had set human history on a new and likely disastrous course…..The manifesto stated in harsh terms the choice confronting humanity: Here, then, is the problem which we present to you, stark and dreadful and inescapable: Shall we put an end to the human race; or shall mankind renounce war?"

But we must take little comfort in those accomplishments today for as Pastreich explains ~ " The United States has completely forgotten about its obligations under the Nonproliferation Treaty, and the words “arms control” have disappeared from the conversation on security. The last year has seen the United States confront Russia in Ukraine to such a degree that many have spoken about the risks of nuclear war.

As a result, on June 16 of this year Russia announced that it will add 40 new ICBMs in response to the investment of the United States over the last two years in upgrading its nuclear forces.

Similar tensions have emerged between Japan and China over the Senkaku/Diaoyutai Isles and between the United States and China over the South China Sea. Discussions about the possibility of war with China are showing up in the Western media with increasing frequency, and a deeply disturbing push to militarize American relations with Asia is emerging."  See article ~ https://www.transcend.org/tms/2015/07/satoshi-ashikaga-transcend-media-service/

But this time, as Pastreich correctly asserts,  the dangers of nuclear war are complemented if not reinforced by an equal, or greater, threat: Climate Change. ~ " Even the commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, Admiral Samuel Locklear, told the Boston Globe in 2013 that climate change “is probably the most likely thing that is going to happen . . . that will cripple the security environment, probably more likely than the other scenarios we all often talk about.’’

But perhaps the warning voice of Teilhard de Chardin, who died 60 years ago, should also be added to those of Bertrand Russell and Albert Einstein in proclaiming that our trip on the dark side has only one obvious consequence ~ Extinction.

 

 

Teilhard de Chardin

 

It is Teilhard,  the Jesuit priest. paleontologist and explorer of the soul whose life's work was the reinterpretation of Christianity in the light of evolution, who stands impatiently at the summit of man's quest for the ultimate truth proclaiming to all that God is love.

 

To Teilhard, not only is love the most universal, the most powerful and the most mysterious of the cosmic forces but it is also the primal and universal psychic energy ~ a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness whose primary property is the universal urge to unite.

 

Teilhard wrote in his last unpublished work " "Le Christique " (The promised Land ) of the inevitable consequences when this truth appears: "Sooner or later there will be a chain reaction ~ for the truth has to appear only once, in one single mind, for it to be impossible for anything ever to prevent it from spreading universally and setting everything ablaze"

 

And it is Teilhard who writes in Human Energy ~ " Love one another. These words were pronounced two thousand years ago ~ but today they sound again in our ears in a very different tone. It no longer says only; Love one another in order to be perfect but adds Love one another or you perish … Therefore, despite all checks and all improbabilities, we are inevitably approaching a new age ~ in which the world will throw off its chains and at last give itself up the power of its inner affinities ~ the universal urge to unite and universal love".

 

We cannot escape our destiny and it is divine. It will perhaps happen during our lifetime and we all have a part to play in it if we will but surrender to what is deepest within us ~ a Unified Field of love and soul consciousness or as Emerson wrote The thread of all sustaining beauty that runs through all and doth all unite.

Declaration on the 60^th Anniversary of the Russell-Einstein Manifesto

July 9, 2015

In view of the growing risk that in future wars weapons, nuclear and otherwise, will be employed that threaten the continued existence of humanity, we urge the governments of the world to realize, and to acknowledge publicly, that their purpose cannot be furthered by a world war, and we urge them, consequently, to find peaceful means for the settlement of all matters of dispute between them.

We also propose that all governments of the world begin to convert those resources previously allocated to preparations for destructive conflict to a new constructive purpose: the mitigation of climate change and the creation of a new sustainable civilization on a global scale.

This effort is endorsed by Foreign Policy in Focus, the Asia Institute, and World Beyond War, and is being launched on July 9, 2015.

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YOU CAN SIGN, AND ASK EVERYONE YOU KNOW TO SIGN, THE DECLARATION: http://diy.rootsaction.org/p/man

 

"I know not with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will be fought with sticks and stones": - Albert Einstein

 

Allen L Roland, PhD

http://allenlrolandsweblog.blogspot.com/2015/07/60th-anniversaru-of-russell-einstein.html

 

Heart centered spiritual consultant and advisor Allen L Roland can be contacted at  allen@allenroland.com Allen is also a lecturer and writer who shares a weekly political and social commentary on his web log and website allenroland.com. He is also featured columnist on Veterans Today and  guest hosts a monthly national radio show TRUTHTALK on www.conscioustalk.net