Inside the USS Jimmy Carter: America’s Most Secret Attack Submarine Ever
The unit makes no mention of intelligence gathering. But while the name implies a solely experimental function, the sailing branch routinely uses these types of monikers for special or elite groups. The near legendary terrorist-hunting SEAL Team Six is officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. The service describes the spy ships it runs together with the U.S. Air Force as “missile range instrumentation ships.” The squadron responsible for flying around the president and his staff is now simply called Marine Helicopter Squadron One, but still uses the acronym HMX-1 — a nod to its “experimental” origins.
On Jan. 20, 2013, the Seawolf-class attack submarine USS Jimmy Carter left her home port in Bangor, Washington. Less than two months later, the submarine appeared at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii for repairs.
It was all quite mysterious. During her time at sea, we don’t know where Jimmy Carter was or what her crew of nearly 150 were precisely doing. The Seawolf class is one of the most secretive weapons in America’s arsenal, and information about the Navy’s “Silent Service” is difficult to discover … by design.
We know Jimmy Carter was on some kind of mission, which the ship’s official annual history vaguely referred to as Mission 7. “Performed under a wide range of adverse and extremely stressful conditions without external support, this deployment continued USS Jimmy Carter‘s tradition of excellence in pursuit of vital national security goals,” the history stated
In this vessel’s official chronology, the mission warrants as much mention as a picnic in July and the crew’s Halloween party three months later. But Mission 7 was enough to earn the sailors a Presidential Unit Citation, which rewards “extraordinary heroism in action against an armed enemy,” according to an official Navy description.
As the last of the Seawolf-class attack submarines, Jimmy Carter is unique. During her construction, the Pentagon added a special 100-foot-long, 2,500-ton module called the Multi-Mission Platform. By the sailing branch’s own admission, this space can accommodate undersea drones, SEALs and much more.
More importantly, the hourglass-shaped section might allow specially trained teams to find and tap undersea communications lines and plant listening devices on the ocean floor. It’s more than likely that the submarine is one of the Pentagon’s most stealthy spies.
Another clue is the Presidential Unit Citation for Mission 7. For the sailing branch, this is akin to giving the boat itself a Navy Cross, the service’s second highest award. The criteria makes it clear that the mission must have been “extremely difficult and hazardous.” But the Secretary of the Navy’s citation for the sub’s 2013 performance is equally obtuse.
Along with sailors from the even more obscure Detachment Undersea Research and Development, Jimmy Carter “successfully completed extremely demanding and arduous independent submarine operations of vital importance to the national security of the United States,” is how the memo described the operation. Both units “overcame numerous obstacles to safely execute these demanding and complex tasks without incident.”
Two pictures attached to the report show the ship’s captain, Cmdr. Brian Elkowitz, and other officers holding the framed citation and associated pennant. In both cases, Navy censors blacked out one individual’s face, ostensibly for privacy reasons.
War Is Boring obtained these documents through the Freedom of Information Act. Every year, all ships, subs, squadrons of aircraft and commands on land are required to turn a historical report over to the Naval History and Heritage Command in Washington, D.C. But there’s no requirement that the narrative go into any great or specific detail. And Jimmy Carter‘s history is more a record of the secrecy surrounding the ship’s than her actual activities.
While already guarded about submarines in general, the Navy is especially tight-lipped about the Seawolf-class boats. Originally intended to be the most advanced undersea attackers, Washington slashed the program after the Cold War and the threat of equally high-tech Soviet submarines appeared to evaporate.
Instead of a planned fleet of nearly 30 ships, the Pentagon bought just three for more than $3 billion each. At more than 350 feet long and with a submerged displacement of more than 9,100 tons, the Seawolf class is the most expensive attack submarine ever built and the second most expensive undersea vessel of any type.
The sailing branch eventually grouped together the USS Seawolf, Connecticut and Jimmy Carter as the core of Submarine Development Squadron Five. The unit’s spartan website states it is responsible for testing new undersea listening gear and remote-controlled submersibles, either tethered to a larger sub or able to operate on their own.
The group is also in charge developing new tactics for fighting in the Arctic, a region where submarines can easily hide from their opponents. Despite their current mission, each ship still has eight torpedo tubes, which can also fire Harpoon anti-ship and Tomahawk cruise missiles.
The unit makes no mention of intelligence gathering. But while the name implies a solely experimental function, the sailing branch routinely uses these types of monikers for special or elite groups. The near legendary terrorist-hunting SEAL Team Six is officially called the Naval Special Warfare Development Group. The service describes the spy ships it runs together with the U.S. Air Force as “missile range instrumentation ships.” The squadron responsible for flying around the president and his staff is now simply called Marine Helicopter Squadron One, but still uses the acronym HMX-1 — a nod to its “experimental” origins.
Further lending credibility to Jimmy Carter‘s real spying mission, the Navy retired the equally shadowy USS Parche just four months before putting the new submarine into action. The sailing branch says Parche is the most decorated ship ever, with nine Presidential Unit Citations among other awards.
Completed in 1974 as a Sturgeon-class attack sub, the Pentagon specifically upgraded the Parche to break into Soviet communications lines. Between 1978 and 1979, the submarine reportedly tapped into cables in the Sea of Okhotsk north of Japan as part of a mission dubbed Operation Ivy Bells.
“The Navy, with strong input from the NSA, was first sending Parche to Okhotsk to plant a second recording pod … to greatly increase capacity at the tap site,” Sherry Sontag and Christopher Drew wrote in Blind Man’s Bluff: The Untold Story of American Submarine Espionage. “She was being sent, in part, to prove herself before anyone dared to send her to that other, far more dangerous sea.“
Success at Okhotsk paved the way for missions in the far more crowded — and therefore dangerous — Barents Sea. To hide from Moscow’s sub-hunters, Parche hid under the cover of the Arctic ice as she sneaked into congested shipping lanes.
Nearly a decade later, the Navy sent Parche off for another overhaul. In 1991, the sailing branch sent the newly refurbished sub to join Submarine Development Squadron Five.
Though their book was published before the submarine was finished, Sontag and Drew explained that Jimmy Carter‘s expanded mid-section was to make room for the same gear Parche had carried into Soviet waters. No doubt the Navy and its partners at the NSA have made improvements since then.
While General Dynamics Electric Boat was still putting the submarine together in 2001, NSA director Lt. Gen. Michael Hayden laughed off claims about breaking into undersea cables in an interview with the Wall Street Journal. “I’m not going to sit here and dissuade you from your views,” Hayden said, before refusing to comment on Jimmy Carter‘s mission.
Two years later, the Journal again reported that the submarine’s role suggested an undersea spook, citing “people knowledgeable about it.” After more than a decade of apparently very active service, little else has slipped out about the ship or her operations.
We could easily have to wait another decade or more for there to be any real confirmation — likely from a book like Sontag and Drew’s rather than the Navy — about Jimmy Carter‘s unique history and details about Mission 7.
This first appeared in WarIsBoring back in early 2016.
Assange Vows To Prove That Russia Was Not His Source In 3-Hour Meeting With Congressman
In a three hour meeting with Representative Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA) at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, Julian Assange vowed to provide proof that Russia was not the source of his leaks last year and promised more ‘helpful’ information in the near future. Rohrabacher recounted the details of the meeting with Assange to The Hill:
“Our three-hour meeting covered a wide array of issues, including the WikiLeaks exposure of the DNC emails during last year’s presidential election,” Rohrabacher said, “Julian emphatically stated that the Russians were not involved in the hacking or disclosure of those emails.”
Pressed for more detail on the source of the documents, Rohrabacher said he had information to share privately with President Donald Trump.
“Julian also indicated that he is open to further discussions regarding specific information about the DNC email incident that is currently unknown to the public,” he added.
Of course, this is hardly the first time that Assange has publicly denied that Russia was his source for the DNC and/or Podesta leaks. Back in January, Assange recorded an interview with Sean Hannity of Fox News and unequivocally stated that “our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party.”
HANNITY: Can you say to the American people, unequivocally, that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails, can you tell the American people 1,000 percent that you did not get it from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?
ASSANGE: Yes. We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party… Obama is trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate President.
http://content.jwplatform.com/players/8o1zA4rX-EAYoNgFe.html
So, what does Assange want in return for his evidence that could completely undermine Special Counsel Mueller’s entire investigation? Apparently he would like for Wikileaks to be granted a seat in the White House press corps…oh, and we’re sure a presidential pardon would be welcome as well.
Rohrabacher said he had information he planned to carry back to Trump when he returned to the United States, including a request that the WikiLeaks organization be given a news media seat inside the White House press room.
“Julian passionately argued the case that WikiLeaks was vital to informing the public about controversial though necessary issues. He hoped that Wikileaks — an award winning journalistic operation — might be granted a seat in the White House press corps. As a former newsman myself I can’t see a reason why they shouldn’t be granted news status for official press conferences,” he said.
As for other information to be given to the president, Rohrabacher said: “We left with the understanding that we would be going into further details in the near future. The rest of the message is for the president directly and I hope to convey it to him as more details come in.”
Of course, we’re certain it won’t take long for the mainstream media to label Rohrabacher as just another of Putin’s “useful idiots” and discredit whatever information Assange eventually releases about his source as a desperate attempt to curry favor with an administration that could negotiate his freedom after being holed up in the Ecuadorian embassy for 5 years.
North Korea: US cannot dodge ‘merciless strike’
North Korea declared it has the military capacity to target the mainland U.S.
North Korea on Sunday warned the U.S. it faces a “merciless strike” following “reckless behavior driving the situation into the uncontrollable phase of a nuclear war.”
North Korea declared it has the military capacity to target the mainland U.S. as well as the U.S. territory Guam in a strike the U.S. cannot “dodge,” according to CNN.
CNN reports the message was in the official government newspaper, Rodong Sinmun.
The warning comes a day before the U.S. begins conducting annual military exercises with South Korea starting Monday. The Ulchi Freedom Guardian exercises, computer-simulated defensive exercise, run August 21-31, according to the Defense Department.
Walmart Customers Blast CEO’s Criticism Of Trump: “You Want To Be A Political Pundit, Go On CNN”
Tyler Durden
Walmart shoppers love the everyday low prices (apparently too low judging by this morning’s earnings guidance) they get shopping at the largest big box retailer in the country, but they apparently don’t give a rip about the political beliefs of its executive management team.
In fact, Walmart shopper Ed Congdon of Indiana thinks “all CEO’s should keep their mouths shut” about political issues unless they want to be a political pundit, in which case they should “go on CNN.” Per the New York Times:
“I think all C.E.O.s should keep their mouths shut,” said Mr. Congdon, 63, who was listening to the Rush Limbaugh radio show while his wife shopped inside. “You want to be a political pundit, go on CNN.”Mr. Congdon, who drives tractor-trailers for a living, said he agreed with President Trump’s hesitation to place the blame for the violence solely on the “conservative side.”
“The biggest problem is that they’re not calling out the liberal side of things,” he said, adding that the Virginia protesters should be “investigated” as to who “paid them.”
Of course, these comments come as Walmart shoppers around the country are being asked to respond to CEO Doug McMillon’s statement released yesterday which, among other things, criticized President Trump for his response to the Charlottesville tragedy. Here is the full statement he made yesterday per CNBC:
Respect for the individual is one of our core beliefs at Walmart. And the role we play in communities around the country to build a more diverse and inclusive society is more critical than ever as the tragic events in Charlottesville over the weekend painfully reminded us. Our prayers are with the victims and their families.As we watched the events and the response from President Trump over the weekend, we too felt that he missed a critical opportunity to help bring our country together by unequivocally rejecting the appalling actions of white supremacists. His remarks today were a step in the right direction and we need that clarity and consistency in the future.
Our country is facing some very difficult issues that require our elected officials, business leaders and community-based organizations to work together. Representing a company with the largest and one of the most diverse groups of associates in the U.S., and an even more diverse customer base of tens of millions of customers, we believe we should stay engaged to try to influence decisions in a positive way and help bring people together. I will continue to strongly advocate on behalf of our associates and customers, and urge our elected officials to do their part to promote a more just, tolerant and diverse society.
Thank you for representing Walmart and our values today — and every day.
Of course, not everyone disapproved of McMillon’s comments. Shandra Tenney of Las Vegas simply didn’t think she could “come here and give them my money” unless Walmart’s CEO publicly clarified his stance on Trump’s political controversy…after all, anything less than a public rebuke of the President at this point is clearly a full endorsement of radical white supremacist groups and hate crimes of all types.
“I’m pleased with the C.E.O.’s response,” said Mr. Ellington, 40. “He was spot on. What Trump did was miss a very critical opportunity. Considering today’s society and climate, those types of opportunities are important and not to be wasted. To have the president in office not stepping up is a disgrace to the office.”Shandra Tenney, 25, agreed. A married dental assistant, Ms. Tenney left the store with a bounty of the 12-packs of soda that were on sale.
“If the C.E.O. had been for Trump after what he said yesterday, I don’t think I could have come here and given them my money,” she said. “I’m really happy they are standing up to this guy. These business guys, and Trump is a business guy, are saying something. And they are saying, to me, they don’t think he’s a good guy to be in business with. It says something.”
Meanwhile, Peter Caprio of New Jersey seemed to interject some logic into the New York Times’ narrative…“If it doesn’t affect stockholders, best to let it go.”
Mr. Caprio, a school business administrator, said Mr. Trump had made fair points in his news conference on Tuesday, when he said the violence was not just the fault of the white supremacists. “He was right; it’s on both sides,” he said.But even if he might have agreed with Mr. McMillon’s position, he suggested it was not appropriate for the chief executive of a big company like Walmart to comment on politics.
“The C.E.O. has to worry about stockholders, nobody else,” Mr. Caprio said. “If it doesn’t affect stockholders, best to let it go.”
Perhaps someday America’s CEOs will learn that while 100% of people may approve of their products, roughly 50% are always going to disagree with their political views. Maybe these CEO’s would be well-served to remember they’re fiduciaries of public companies hired to pursue whatever is in the best interests of shareholders….not elected officials that need jump on TV every single time a national tragedy strikes.
Conspiracy or Chaos: “The Farce Of Competing Political Parties Is A Smoke Screen Used By The Deep State To Maintain Their Control”
“The main thing that I learned about conspiracy theory is that conspiracy theorists believe in a conspiracy because that is more comforting. The truth of the world is that it is actually chaotic. The truth is that it is not The Iluminati, or The Jewish Banking Conspiracy, or the Gray Alien Theory. The truth is far more frightening – Nobody is in control. The world is rudderless.” – Alan Moore
Alan Moore, the renowned graphic novel writer, and author of the dystopian classic V for Vendetta, politically identifies as an anarchist. His view that all political states are an outgrowth of anarchy, with the biggest gang taking control and dictating how things will be run, is manifested in V for Vendetta. As an anarchist, you can understand why he is doubtful of conspiracy theories and an all-powerful entity controlling the world. He believes in a chaotic world competing gangs position themselves to gain power and control.
“We live in a badly developed anarchist situation in which the biggest gang has taken over and have declared that it is not an anarchist situation – that it is a capitalist or a communist situation. But I tend to think that anarchy is the most natural form of politics for a human being to actually practice.”- Alan Moore
The Guy Fawkes mask from V for Vendetta has been adopted by anarchist groups around the world, including: Anonymous, WikiLeaks, and the Occupy protestors. Moore’s positive view of the Occupy movement was based on his belief ordinary people had the right to reclaim what had been taken from them by criminal bankers. The initial impetus for the Occupy protests was the destruction of Main Street USA by Wall Street sociopaths, who not only escaped prosecution for their crimes, but were bailed out by the taxpayers they had pillaged and further enriched as captured politicians enabled them to get even bigger.
Millions were evicted from their homes and lost their jobs. Middle class families have seen their real income continue to stagnate, while bankers, corporate executives, and politicians have reaped billions in bonuses, stock gains, and payoffs, provided by central bankers in their back pocket.
“I can’t think of any reason why as a population we should be expected to stand by and see a gross reduction in the living standards of ourselves and our kids, possibly for generations, when the people who have got us into this have been rewarded for it – they’ve certainly not been punished in any way because they’re too big to fail. I think that the Occupy movement is, in one sense, the public saying that they should be the ones to decide who’s too big to fail. As an anarchist, I believe that power should be given to the people whose lives this is actually affecting.” – Alan Moore
For those of us who visited Zuccotti Park during the early stages of the Occupy Movement, you understood this was a true populist protest with Ron Paul libertarians alongside liberal college students, old time hippies, middle aged men and women put out of work by the massive Wall Street fraud, and a myriad of citizens supporting varied causes and exercising their First Amendment rights. They were primarily focused on the true enemy – sociopathic Wall Street bankers and corrupt captured politicians. Sadly, the movement was co-opted in short order by Soros and his minions, just as the Tea Party had been co-opted by neo-cons earlier. Supposedly liberal mayors in NYC and across the country eventually unleashed their police state thugs on the protestors and wiped it out. Was this an example of chaos or conspiracy?
There isn’t an easy answer to this question. I have to lean towards Alan Moore’s view of the world. There are certainly conspiratorial schemes plotted by powerful men in smoke filled rooms, but there are other gangs of men conspiring to push their competing agendas. Conspiracy theorists who think there is one massive conspiracy controlling every aspect of the world have an extremely tough case to make. People who believe everything is part of a grand conspiracy are seeking an easy solution to our problems, rather than dealing with the complexity and chaos which is the true nature of our world. V’s speech to London after blowing up the Old Bailey explains who is really to blame for allowing Deep State actors to gain control of our government, creating an Orwellian surveillance state.
Good evening, London. Allow me first to apologize for this interruption. I do, like many of you, appreciate the comforts of the everyday routine, the security of the familiar, the tranquility of repetition. I enjoy them as much as any bloke. But in the spirit of commemoration – whereby those important events of the past, usually associated with someone’s death or the end of some awful bloody struggle, are celebrated with a nice holiday – I thought we could mark this November the fifth, a day that is sadly no longer remembered, by taking some time out of our daily lives to sit down and have a little chat.
There are, of course, those who do not want us to speak. I suspect even now orders are being shouted into telephones and men with guns will soon be on their way. Why? Because while the truncheon may be used in lieu of conversation, words will always retain their power. Words offer the means to meaning and for those who will listen, the enunciation of truth. And the truth is, there is something terribly wrong with this country, isn’t there?
Cruelty and injustice…intolerance and oppression. And where once you had the freedom to object, to think and speak as you saw fit, you now have censors and systems of surveillance, coercing your conformity and soliciting your submission. How did this happen? Who’s to blame? Well certainly there are those who are more responsible than others, and they will be held accountable. But again, truth be told…if you’re looking for the guilty, you need only look into a mirror.
I know why you did it. I know you were afraid. Who wouldn’t be? War. Terror. Disease. There were a myriad of problems which conspired to corrupt your reason and rob you of your common sense. Fear got the best of you and in your panic, you turned to the now High Chancellor Adam Sutler. He promised you order. He promised you peace. And all he demanded in return was your silent, obedient consent.
Last night, I sought to end that silence. Last night, I destroyed the Old Bailey to remind this country of what it has forgotten. More than four hundred years ago, a great citizen wished to embed the fifth of November forever in our memory. His hope was to remind the world that fairness, justice and freedom are more than words – they are perspectives. So if you’ve seen nothing, if the crimes of this government remain unknown to you, then I would suggest that you allow the fifth of November to pass unmarked. But if you see what I see, if you feel as I feel, and if you would seek as I seek…then I ask you to stand beside me, one year from tonight, outside the gates of Parliament. And together, we shall give them a fifth of November that shall never, ever, be forgot!
We have no one to blame but ourselves for our current state of affairs. Blaming it on some shadowy group makes us feel somehow comforted. If an all-powerful entity is controlling the world, then we can easily convince ourselves anything we do to try and change the course of history would be fruitless. Therefore, we just bitch on internet forums. The truth is fear rules the actions of the majority.
Those who constitute the Deep State are not conspiring directly by working together to rule the world and control the people. What they are doing is taking advantage of a dumbed down fearful populace by using the chaos, incompetence of institutions, and confusion spread by the propaganda press to institute their agendas. The Deep State consists of shadowy billionaires, mega-corporations, the military industrial complex, surveillance state agencies, crooked bought off politicians and their mass media mouthpieces.
Those with the financial means and access to the power of the media have embraced the Edward Bernays worldview that an invisible government of the rich and powerful is necessary to manipulate the opinions of the masses through propaganda in order for society to function smoothly. Is this truly a conspiracy or just competing gangs of rich and connected men utilizing their wealth to mold the minds of the masses in a way that continues to benefit and enrich them?
These Deep State players don’t meet every other Saturday to conspire and plot ways to pillage and enslave the masses. But they do know each other and silently agree to never rock the boat, whether they are Democrats, Republicans, liberals, conservatives, socialists, corporate executives, academics, or journalists. Money, control and power are at stake.
Those currently pulling the wires behind the scenes are conspiratorial in nature. It has become crystal clear since the election of Trump the farce of competing political parties is just a smoke screen used by the Deep State players to maintain their control. Trump’s shocking upset and seeming disregard for bowing down to the status quo has forced politicians of all persuasions to reveal their true masters. Both parties favor bloated government control of healthcare, with a medical industrial complex controlling the show, writing the rules, reaping riches, and buying off politicians. “Free” healthcare buys votes.
The flogging of the false Russian narrative by the corporate media has been used by neo-cons and ultra-libs to force Trump into the military interventionist camp – guaranteeing increased wealth for the military industrial complex. Neither party has any interest in cutting spending. The debt ceiling will be raised. The $4 trillion in annual spending will ratchet ever higher. Both sides are perfectly fine with $1 trillion deficits and $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities, as long as their gravy train keeps being fueled by the Deep State. They will spend your money until it all collapses under the mountains of debt.
Donald Jeffries explains why it is vital to the vested interests they scorn and ridicule anyone who uses factual data to prove conspiratorial intent by the government or its cancerous corporate outgrowths.
“I can remember when believing in conspiracies wasn’t cool. Now, in the second decade of the twenty-first century, more people are starting to sense that things may not be as they appear to be. The truth in Lord Acton’s classic axiom that “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” becomes more self-evident every day. Politicians from the only two parties we have to choose from break promises, are unresponsive to the will of the people, and opt for war, austerity measures, and state control over and over again. Gary Allen, author of the book None Dare Call It Conspiracy, defined things perfectly when he wrote, “It must be remembered that the first job of any conspiracy, whether it be in politics, crime or within a business office, is to convince everyone else that no conspiracy exists.” – Donald Jeffries – Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics
It ultimately comes down to power and control over the key mechanisms of finance, taxation, legislation and the media. There isn’t one specific group of conspirators working together to rule the world. Is George Soros attempting to influence and control what happens in the U.S. and Europe to benefit his interests? Yes. Are the Koch brothers attempting to do the same with a different end goal? Yes. Are Pelosi and Schumer conspiring to push their left wing agenda? Yes. Are McConnell and Ryan conspiring to implement their establishment vision? Yes.
They have competing agendas, but they want the status quo to remain intact. No one within the establishment wants to change anything of substance. The current system benefits their personal interests, while destroying the lives of hard working American citizens. The country is currently run by same party with slightly different rhetoric and policies put forth by the Republican side and Democrat side. Promises are made to voters and then reneged on in short order. Therefore, no significant change ever occurs. Meanwhile, the anger and frustration build among the deplorables.
What Trump has realized quickly is how powerful the vested interests are and how ruthless they will act to retain their power. During the campaign Trump ran on a non-interventionist platform, looking to repair our relationship with Russia, scorning NATO, and lessening our involvement in the Middle East. He know rattles his saber on a daily basis, threatening war with North Korea, Venezuela, Iran, Syria and anyone else who doesn’t toe the American Empire line.
He provokes Russia and China on a regular basis. He has sent more troops to Iraq, Afghanistan, and Syria, while expanding spending on the military. Neo-cons and neo-libs don’t think Trump is being aggressive enough in policing the world. They won’t be happy until middle class boys across the land are sacrificed as cannon fodder for our welfare warfare surveillance state.
Trump bloviated about the stock market being in a bubble during the campaign when it was trading at 18,000. He now pronounces the record highs of 22,000 as proof of his brilliant economic leadership. Meanwhile, the economy has grown at less than 2% during his first six months, retailers are going bankrupt and closing stores at a record pace, consumer spending and real wages are barely growing, and consumer debt has reached all-time highs. Best time to buy, according to the Prez.
A critical thinking individual might wonder how a market could be in a bubble at 18,000 but not be in a bubble at 22,000 ten months later. During the campaign Trump accused Obama and his BLS minions of manipulating the data to make horrible jobs numbers appear strong. Now he bellows about the strong jobs market as if we’re now supposed to believe the hysterically absurd 4.3% reported rate when 101 million out of 255 million working age Americans aren’t working. And a vast majority of the jobs are either part-time and/or low paying service jobs with shitty pay and benefits.
Trump is playing the status quo Deep State game in an attempt to fend off a coup currently in progress by lying to the masses. Jobs are plentiful, consumers are confident, the economy is booming, the stock market is always right. Ignore those vacant crumbling malls, your declining disposable income as health care cost increases outpace your salary increases by a factor of five, and your ever increasing credit card balance.
Trump wouldn’t be using the tried and true method of distracting from domestic failure by starting a foreign conflict because he understands how easily manipulated the ignorant American masses can be moved by fear? Rather than draining the swamp, Trump has been forced to swim with the gators. And his own people hired a Deep State alligator hunter named Mueller who will stop at nothing to mount Trump as a trophy or force him to depart the DC swamp for the friendly environs of Manhattan Island.
Trump belittled the troll-like Yellen during the campaign, declaring her low interest policy was geared to help Obama/Clinton. He talked tough about replacing Yellen and increasing rates. He evidently got the talk from the banker cabal and he suddenly loves low interest rates and believes Yellen is doing a bang up job. He has filled his cabinet with vampire squid and other Wall Street scum. He is as beholden to the Fed and their Wall Street puppeteers as his predecessors. Wall Street remains in control, while Main Street will continue to get screwed. It’s not a conspiracy. It’s about powerful special interests capturing the levers of government.
Our government doesn’t in any way resemble its original concept of a republic. It doesn’t even resemble a democracy at this point. Since FDR and specifically since LBJ, we’ve become a welfare/warfare state. Since Bush II we’ve devolved into a corporate fascist surveillance socialist state. Despite rhetoric about free market capitalism, both parties have embraced socialism. The super-rich, bankers, corporate executives, liberals and conservatives came to the realization socialism disguised as capitalism fills their coffers at a much higher rate than true free market capitalism.
They have bought off the poor with unfunded welfare benefits, the old and poor with unfunded “free” healthcare, government union workers with unfunded pension benefits and all with unfunded social security payments. Trillion dollar annual deficits and $200 trillion in unfunded welfare promises, enabled by Federal Reserve easy money policies, does wonders for the bank accounts of Deep State players and their acolytes. Spending money you don’t have is the ultimate confidence game, but the payback will be a bitch.
“Why are the super-rich for socialism? Don’t they have the most to lose? I take a look at my bank account and compare it with Nelson Rockefeller’s and it seems funny that I’m against socialism and he’s out promoting it.” Or is it funny? In reality, there is a vast difference between what the promoters define as socialism and what it is in actual practice. The idea that socialism is a share-the-wealth program is strictly a confidence game to get the people to surrender their freedom to an all-powerful collectivist government. While the Insiders tell us we are building a paradise on earth, we are actually constructing a jail for ourselves.” – Gary Allen, None Dare Call It Conspiracy
The Deep State thrives on chaos, confusion, and complexity. Our financial system, healthcare system, entitlement systems, military, and government agencies are too big and complex to fix. Those pulling the strings don’t want the public to understand how anything operates. Supposed “experts” are put forth on the corporate propaganda networks to further confuse the masses. The purpose of government run public education is to matriculate non-thinking socially engineered consumers into the world.
The vast majority of iGadget distracted, math challenged, functionally illiterate morons will believe anything the propaganda media peddles because they are incapable of critical thinking. They have an infinite capacity for rationalizing how spending money they don’t have on things they don’t need is actually making their lives better. This same mindset keeps them from questioning how their government can run up a $20 trillion national debt (with $15 trillion added since 2000), with no adverse consequences. These debts are the ultimate threat to our survival as a nation.
Based on everything that has happened in the last twelve months, to believe this is part of some well-planned conspiracy is a reach of epic proportions. The Deep State/status quo were sure their hand-picked candidate Hillary Clinton was a shoe in. Since November the country has been roiled in election result challenges, chaotic antifa violence, fake news stories, silent coups, thousands of tweets, congressional investigations, assassination attempts on congressmen, special prosecutors, increasing odds of civil and foreign wars, and deteriorating economic conditions for the majority. Just when you thought the chaos couldn’t get more pronounced, we experienced a week of sheer turmoil and tumult. Even the stock market stopped rising for a day or two.
I’ve been observing the goings on this week with a jaundiced eye. As the rhetoric between President Cheeto and Kim Jung Nutjob has ramped up to nuclear proportions I’ve been reminded of the rhetoric and fake news leading up to the invasion of Iraq. Suddenly, confidential reports are released saying the midget dictator has miniaturized a nuclear warhead to go on top of his ICBMs that now supposedly can kill everyone in the U.S. The exaggeration of this country’s nuclear capabilities is on par with Hussein’s WMD and killing of babies in Kuwaiti hospitals.
The neo-cons smell blood and more money for their beloved arms peddlers. The propagandists have two thirds of Americans fearful of this rotund midget with an IQ of 85. Trump then set in motion his backup plan – attack Venezuela, which poses absolutely zero risk to America or our interests. But it does have the largest oil reserves on earth.
Now this weekend’s escapades in Charlottesville have worked the propaganda media into a tizzy. It’s these types of stories that reveal all the corporate media to be peddling the same narrative. Fox News was peddling the same white hate narrative as CNN and MSNBC. Because protestors with proper permits included some white supremacists, nazi sympathizers, and KKK members, all participants were branded as racists. Their right to protest regarding the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue was guaranteed by the First Amendment.
It was the violent Soros funded antifa SJWs who were bussed in to create a violent confrontation, while government officials told police to stand down and let the clashes happen. The Deep State is desirous of a race war and their media mouthpieces are busy spreading misinformation and falsehoods to further rile up the masses. Their job is to portray all flyover country whites who elected Trump as rednecks, racists and white supremacists. And at least half the country believes this fake news.
“The militia experts accuse anti-government agitants of paranoia, yet they spin around and claim that militias speak in coded phrases, have underground bunkers, and are secretly conspiring to take over the world and enslave minorities. They say it`s lunacy that men at the pentagon can conspire, yet they`re certain that farmers out on the plain are plotting as we speak. They depict the United Nations as weak and ineffectual, yet they portray raggedy-ass backwoodsmen as the world`s biggest organized military threat.” – Jim Goad, The Redneck Manifesto: How Hillbillies, Hicks, and White Trash Became America’s Scapegoats
I don’t believe what is happening in this country and around the world is some vast conspiracy. But I do believe the Deep State thrives on chaos and fear. They used 9/11 to pass the Patriot Act, creating an Orwellian surveillance state. They used the Wall Street created 2008 global financial implosion to rig the financial systems in their favor, while issuing mind boggling levels of government debt and artificially suppressing interest rates to create the largest financial bubble in world history.
I do believe we are in the midst of a Fourth Turning where the mood of the masses has turned unequivocally dark. As we approach the ninth year of this Crisis period, the intensification and potential for enormous levels of domestic and foreign bloodshed ramps up by the day. With a decade or so remaining in this period of turmoil, chaos and war, the existing social order will be swept away and replaced by something new. But not necessarily better.
Whatever Deep State conspiracies are being plotted by various gangs seeking power during this Fourth Turning, they will all rot from within. Human nature never changes. Hubris and greed will lead to miscalculations and missteps which will result in another financial crash, civil chaos, and world war. Blood will be spilled in vast quantities if the wrong people make the wrong decisions. Chaos will rein for the next decade and the outcome is very much in doubt. Get prepared mentally and physically for the trials ahead.
The Last Frontier For Gun Control: Washington Court Rules In Favor Of Seattle’s “Gun Violence” Tax
Daniel Lang
Two years ago, the president of the Seattle City Council offered a rather ludicrous proposition. He wanted Seattle to place a new tax on the sale of firearms and ammunition within the city limits. Ammo would cost an additional 2-5 cents per round, and a firearm would cost an extra $25. But what was even more absurd than the tax itself, is what the money would be going toward. The tax was supposed to pay for gun violence prevention programs and research.
The way City Council President Tim Burgess explained it, this “gun violence” tax would help offset the costs the city pays to treat gunshot victims. Essentially, it was a tax levied on responsible law abiding gun owners, to pay for the actions of violent criminals.
Despite how utterly stupid that sounds, the proposal passed. However, it didn’t have the desired effect. To the surprise of no one who actually understands the relationship between private firearm ownership and crime rates, the violent crime rate in Seattle has dramatically increased since the tax was put in place. It also brought in only a small fraction of the revenue that the city council was expecting. In short, the tax was a total failure.
So it’s no surprise that the tax has faced a lawsuit over the fact that Washington has a law that prevents municipalities from regulating firearms. Unfortunately, the Washington Supreme Court recently ruled against the lawsuit on the grounds that taxes aren’t the same as regulations, and cities are well within their right to levy sales taxes.
Regardless of whether the court’s decision was right or wrong, it certainly sets a dangerous precedent. As an article from Breitbart recently pointed out, it opens a new avenue for gun control activists to hamper the Second Amendment.
On August 10 Washington’s high court sided with the City of Seattle, which adopted a “gun violence tax” in a strategy to slither around the state preemption law that placed exclusive authority for regulating firearms in the hands of the State Legislature. And this new scheme could be coming to any city that has an anti-gun rights Mayor and City Council.
In Seattle’s case, the tax is $25 on the sale of each firearm, plus two to five cents for each round of ammunition sold. This threat takes on even more sinister dimensions when one considers the potential for cities to simply up the fee. Seattle started with $25 per gun, but what if they want to raise that to $100, $500 or even $1,000?
It opens the door wide to making gun ownership prohibitively expensive for average citizens. Essentially, Washington’s Supreme Court just handed the gun prohibition lobby and its allies in government a new strategy: If they can’t ban or regulate gun ownership out of existence, they will simply tax it into oblivion.
I think deep down we all know that this is probably the real intent behind Seattle’s gun tax. The left has tried many times to regulate privately owned firearms out of existence, and in America they have failed far more often than they have succeeded. They’re always looking for a new underhanded approach to gun control and this is it. Firearm and ammunition taxes aren’t about reducing gun violence and saving lives. They’re about exploiting a legal loophole to make firearms too expensive for ordinary people to own.
Charlottesville, Barcelona, and the Left’s Nostalgia for Naziism
Within minutes of the announcement of the vehicular terror attack in Barcelona, Jim Sciutto and Wolf Blitzer of CNN were opining that the horrifying events in Spain may have been inspired by (i.e. were a copycat of) Charlottesville. The implications of this comparison are not only wrong-headed, they are reactionary and dangerous to the American public and the world.
And this is for even more important reasons than the fact that Barcelona was a catastrophic attack with, as of this writing, 13 dead and over 100 wounded, many seriously. (Coordinated attacks were apparently attempted in other parts of Catalonia.)
What happened in Charlottesville?
A hodgepodge group of disgusting white-supremacist racists, including vestigial members of the barely-existent Ku Klux Klan and some random neo-Nazis who spilled off a webpage, decided to assemble in Charlottesville, VA, to protest that city’s removal of a statue of Robert E. Lee. None of these demonstrators — despite what Donald Trump alleged — were justified in this protest, because standing with the KKK and neo-Nazis automatically disqualifies you for life, no matter what your reasoning. Nevertheless, they were only a few hundred of these demonstrators, a decidedly puny showing in a country of over 325 million.
Another counter-protest consisting largely of the equally disgusting Antifa movement arrived to oppose this demonstration. The two sides, not surprisingly, got in each other’s faces violently. The police opted out, as they so often do these days. And one delusional white supremacist dope — in an act that does not seem to have been premeditated, but entirely out of blind rage — drove into the crowd of counter-protestors, killing a young woman. A tragedy…
… but nothing at all like what went on in Barcelona. Or in Nice. Or in Paris. Or in London. Or in Manchester. Or in Berlin. Or in Brussels. Or in Stockholm. Or in Orlando. Or in San Bernardino…. Obviously, I could go on. These were all — to one degree or another — planned acts of radical Islamic terrorism, designed to frighten the world into submission, not random explosions of reprehensible racist hotheads exacerbated by extremely poor crowd control.
So why — beyond the traditional Trump bashing — are such liberal-lefties, or whatever you want to call them at CNN and elsewhere, so determined to make such an equivalency? Why do they want to magnify the existence and importance of neo-Nazis and Klan members in our society when their numbers are minuscule?
We could call this a kind of nostalgia for Naziism, the yearning for a simpler time when the source of all evil was so clearly evident and so directly confronted. Perhaps more importantly, it’s a nostalgia for when all evil was supposedly on the right, even though the Nazis, so many conveniently forget, were the National Socialist Party. At least the right could be blamed. And is.
It is also a yearning for a time when the source of evil was not so treacherous and complicated. No one knows how many Islamic radicals there are or where they are, although there are apparently a lot of them, probably vastly more than there ever were Nazis, possibly in the hundreds of millions if you add up the results of this Pew poll of eleven Muslim countries. (It may even be understated, given the reluctance to answer such incriminating questions.)
Not only that, a significant percentage of the left evinces sympathy for Islamic radicals, identifying with them and justifying their cause, despite the obvious misogyny and homophobia, through such latter-day crypto-fascist inventions as “intersectionality.” The Antifa movement, in the forefront of that nauseating sympathy for Islamism, is far more prevalent and dangerous in U.S. society than those few pathetic remaining losers in the KKK and similar neo-Nazi groups. The Antifa thugs are seemingly everywhere, smashing windows and making life Hell for weak-willed university administrators across the country.
Nevertheless, overwhelmed by this nostalgia that is, in truth, a masquerade for fear of a gruesome reality, the almost non-existent neo-Nazis are the boogeymen of the hour in the eyes of our friends on the left. Again, what a convenience, because dealing with what happened in Barcelona is surpassingly difficult. It isn’t because of neo-Nazis or the KKK that it’s been decades since any of us has walked onto an airplane or entered a concert or museum without being examined or x-rayed, that our daily lives have not been the same. A vicious ideological war is obviously being waged against the West and its liberties with its end nowhere near in sight. As ISIS wrote of the Spanish terror, “We will recover our land from the invaders.” Like the Nazis of old, they mean it.
Will the left ever wake up? Or will they still be talking about Charlottesville when a runaway truck barrels across Times Square and down Broadway?
Roger L. Simon is an award-winning novelist, Academy Award-nominated screenwriter and co-founder of PJ Media. His latest book is I Know Best: How Moral Narcissism Is Destroying Our Republic, If It Hasn’t Already. He tweets @rogerlsimon.
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