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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57540.htm

Undermining Deception

Empires stand or fall by violence and deception.  They have no other effective tools.  Deception is employed to gull, con, and enhance the natural stupidity of men.  Much of the time this is a sufficient method of control, but not by itself.  Behind the Grand Sham, the infection of subjects with poisonous falsehood, there must be the certainty of lethal brutality for rebels.  Imperial America has managed its tools to great effect for generations.

Until recently…  For decades, by honing its hegemonic chops abroad, it enjoyed great advantages at home.  It was possible, by lynching black men, crushing Indians, and exerting dominion over women and their bodies, to show the mailed fist in action to the public while feeding them an all-fat-and-sugar propaganda diet that made them morally sick and mentally impotent.  Its long, brazen, triumphant violence abroad was the anthem to which the gelded, lobotomized citizenry danced its feeble-minded reel.

Some time ago the wheels of The Empire’s military juggernaut began to come off.  It staggered in Korea, got a good country ass-kicking in Vietnam, blundered along on hi-tech and inferior cognition, beating up tiny, nondescript islands until it hit a slew of stunning, ridiculous humiliations that jammed sand in its gears and exposed it as the overhyped, overpriced, inefficient and ineffectual can or worms it really was.  Its history in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Syria, is an obscene tale of the FUBAR reminiscent of the sorry disintegration of Rome, and its ludicrous pratfalls had a deleterious effect on the droning Fairy Tale of Exceptionalism.

Military embarrassments put a terrible strain on propaganda.  It was impossible to craft PR triumphs out of ludicrous shamings that were the military equivalent of being pantsed in public.  The Empire’s answer to this was to brazen it out and—believing Americans even more brainless than they were trained to be— they ceased to apply their own smell test to the absurdities they fed them.  This dilution of believability of what they put out to homeopathic levels had the disturbing effect of undermining their credibility.  The drastic loss of status they had suffered in their imperialist flops were not offset by propaganda gains; they were as shamed in their domestic bullshit as they were militarily by lean, mean Mujahedeen, fanatic Takfiris, and cutthroat Jihadis.

There are many classic examples of the gross imbecility of The Empire’s messaging but a few will suffice.   One act of surpassing idiocy was Biden’s first promising to destroy Nord Stream 2 and then swearing he hadn’t done it; then the baldfaced hypocrisy of throwing a grand fete for “Press Freedom” while imprisoning and abusing the most courageous journalist in western history; then, our nebbish Secretary of State’s marshaling 50 establishment whores to deny—as a “Russian plot", yes?—that Hunter’s laptop was a manual of graft and porn while preventing its examination.

The other night someone shot a bottle rocket at the Kremlin that was instantly characterized as an attempted hit on Putin, for which our geniuses at once denied responsibility.  It’s hard to say which is more contemptible: firing that puny squib or denying it.

The upshot of the disasters in both the military and PR pillars of The Empire, is that this giant engine of murder and repression now teeters on the brink of meltdown and system failure.  One might be excused for thinking this was a time for retrenchment and repair, but no.  The Empire’s stance—which violates the First Rule of Holes—is to double down on everything that created its massive, unparalleled face-plant over the last several decades. 

Most obviously perilous is the fact that after having had its clock thoroughly cleaned in Iraq and Afghanistan, and its hired killers run out of Syria, where flimflam, phony Obama swore “Assad has to go”, and having swooned into laughable impotence in failing to dominate Iran, it has decided to bait and harass the two most powerful nations on earth, and to provoke them into open war. 

It is funding and arming the pathetically depleted Ukronazis to be fed into the Donbass meat grinder solely as its proxy to infuriate Russia.  Evidently insouciant about the mortal danger of this offensive madness, it has directed its debased press to win the war on paper, which our supine ersatz journalists are doing.   

Meanwhile, with this tentative invitation to WWIII ongoing, The Empire has concluded to assault China, the source of most of what its people use and consume, in the most crudely insulting, inflammatory terms.  China has done its best to deflect the base puerilities of our clumsy buffoons and desk-jockey military hacks, but their patience—an Oriental virtue—is not infinite.  The Empire tampers with the One China policy, fifty years old, at great peril.

The Empire sees itself ready for two major wars at once and, well, if they go nuclear, what the hell.  They feel bullish because they have old ICBMs from Cold War days that may still work, bombers made of 14k gold that don’t function, missile systems that reliably fail, nuclear subs that make fine marine coffins, and huge aircraft carriers that are the military version of pinatas.  All this, to oppose an array of the most sophisticated hypersonic weapons ever devised, against which there is no defense.

It is increasingly difficult to contend that the United States is a sane or viable nation.  With a Congress of vacuous hillbillies that  does nothing for The People and shovels billions in corporate welfare to the War Machine, a court system loaded with twisted sluts for Big Money, and two of the most disgraced, degraded, baldly incompetent sockpuppets for war and privilege ever to run for President, the prospect of total breakdown begins to seem preferable to continuity of this obscene Theater of the Absurd.  

Americans are displaying, in their zany style, awareness of this: some by suicide, some pushing a false Christianity of hate, and others by shooting people at random.  Despair is the new hope. 

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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/57542.htm

The Flight From the US Dollar

On March 20, Chinese President Xi Jinping met with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Moscow. In his article in the Russian media preceding the meeting, XI enthused that "China-Russia trade exceeded 190 billion U.S. dollars last year, up by 116 percent from ten years ago." Though it has reached 190 billion US dollars, it is no longer all being traded in US dollars. In his article in the Chinese media, Putin said that "the share of settlements in national currencies" of all that trade "is growing." 65% of that massive China-Russia trade is now being conducting in their Russian and Chinese currencies.

Though the US sees Russia and China as the largest threats to its position in the world, it is not just America’s enemies that are fleeing the dollar. Its closest friends have hinted at it too. Following his meetings with XI in China, French President Emmanuel Macron likely stunned and angered the US by calling for Europe to reduce its dependency on the "extraterritoriality of the US dollar."

These calls for a flight from the US dollar are not merely economic, they are geopolitical. They are calls to reshape the world order by challenging US hegemony and advocating multipolarity. The monopoly of the dollar has not just assured US wealth: it has assured US power. Most international trade is conducted in dollars, and most foreign exchange reserves are held in dollars. That dollar dominance has often allowed the US to dictate ideological alignment or to impose economic and political structural adjustments on other countries. It has also allowed the US to become the only country in the world that can effectively sanction its opponents. Emancipation from the hegemony of the dollar is emancipation from US hegemony. The flight from the US dollar is a mechanism for replacing the US led unipolar world with a multipolar world.

As the US has recently demonstrated in Cuba, Venezuela, Afghanistan, Iran and Russia, the monopoly of the dollar allows it to be very powerfully and quickly weaponized. Countries’ funds can be held hostage, and countries can be coerced and starved into falling in line by sanctions. Recent demonstrations of that power have awoken many countries to their own vulnerability.

US Treasury Secretary Janet Yellen recently said that "There is a risk when we use financial sanctions that are linked to the role of the dollar that over time it could undermine the hegemony of the dollar.” She explained that “Of course, it does create a desire on the part of China, of Russia, of Iran to find an alternative.”

And that’s just what it’s done. But Yellen is still missing the larger effect of US dollar warfare. It is not just China, Russia and Iran that are now seeking to escape the pressure. America’s enemies, but also its friends and everything in between, are considering taking flight from the dollar.

China and Russia are doing it. NATO ally France is calling for it for Europe. Nonaligned countries are also either talking about it or already doing it.

India is a growing economic power. And, like China, India has massively increased its trade with Russia. India and Russia have now begun discussions on a free trade agreement between India and the Russian led Eurasian Economic Commission. The two countries are now engaged in “advanced negotiations” for a new bilateral investment treaty. Russia has expressed interest in using “national currencies and currencies of friendly countries” for trade. India, too, “has been keen on" moving toward leaving the dollar behind by "increasing the use of its rupee currency for trade with Russia.” And India has recently begun purchasing some Russian oil in Russian rubles.

US dollar hegemony has also been threatened right in America’s backyard. Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva has proposed escaping dollar control by "creat[ing] a Latin American currency." While in China for meetings with XI, Lula asked, “Who decided the dollar would be the [world’s] currency?” He then answered his own question. In March, Brazil and China escaped the US dollar by each assigning one of its banks to conduct their bilateral trade in the Brazilian real and the Chinese yuan.

Pakistan is now also trading with China in its own currency. Iran and Russia have taken flight from the dollar and are now settling trade in rials and rubles. They recently announced that they have circumvented the US financial system by linking their banking systems as an alternative to SWIFT for trading with each other. Saudi Arabia has said that it sees “no issues” in trading oil in currencies other than the US dollar. Robert Rabil, Professor of political science at Florida Atlantic University, says that the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and Israel have all made some movement away from the US dollar.

The Eurasian Economic Union has agreed on "a phased transition" from settling trade in "foreign currency" to "settlements in rubles." 

Perhaps more surprisingly for the US was the decision at the March 30-31 meeting of the finance ministers and central bank governors of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to reduce reliance on the US dollar. ASEAN is made up of Indonesia, Thailand, the Philippines, Singapore, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar and Brunei. The meeting produced a joint statement to "reinforce financial resilience . . . through the use of local currency." But what must have been most unsettling for the US was the explanation given for the decision by Indonesian President Joko Widodo. Widodo said that the move is necessary to protect from "possible geopolitical repercussions." What did he mean by that? "Be very careful," he explained. "We must remember the sanctions imposed by the US on Russia."

Yellen was right. Widodo said that US sanctions on Russia exposed just how vulnerable countries are if they rely on US dollars and US foreign payment systems. He said that using ASEAN’s Local Currency Transaction system to trade in local currencies would help address the need for Indonesia to prepare itself for the possibility that the US could similarly sanction it.

The EEU and ASEAN are not the only organizations mapping their flight from the US dollar. BRICS is a massive international organization whose primary purpose is to balance US hegemony in a new multipolar world. Comprised of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa, it represents 41% of the world’s population. BRICS, too, is talking about conducting trade in the currencies of its members or even in a new BRICS’ currency.

Lula recently suggested that “the BRICS bank have a currency to finance trade between Brazil and China, between Brazil and other BRICS countries” so that countries are not compelled “to chase after dollars to export, when they could be exporting in their own currencies.” Russian State Duma Deputy Chairman Alexander Babakov also recently said that BRICS is working on creating its own currency.

A BRICS currency could challenge the dollar beyond the borders of BRICS. "Because each member of the BRICS grouping is an economic heavyweight in its own region, countries around the world would likely be willing to do business" in the currency, suggested a report in the Financial Post.

One such region is Africa. In July, the Russia-Africa summit will be held in St. Petersburg. Olayinka Ajala, senior lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Leeds Beckett University and the author of "The Case for Neutrality: Understanding African Stances on the Russia-Ukraine Conflict," told me in a recent correspondence that a "main focus of Russia and China at the moment is to get African countries to support the proposed BRICS currency." He says that "this will be a major topic in the upcoming conference." Ajala explains that "Africa is a consuming continent, meaning they import lots of goods and services." He says that "with a population of over 1.2 billion, if Russia and China are able to convince African countries on the need to ditch the dollar, it will be a huge blow to the US."

From Africa to Southeast Asia and Latin America, from Russia and China to India, Iran and Saudi Arabia, countries are mapping their course for a flight from the US dollar. As a mechanism for transition from US hegemony to a multipolar world, the economic effects would be great, but the geopolitical effects could be even greater.

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https://www.blacklistednews.com/article/84671/disinformation-and-the-state-the-aptly-named-restrict.html

Disinformation and the State: The Aptly Named RESTRICT Act

The RESTRICT Act (Restricting the Emergence of Security Threats that Risk Information and Communications Technology Act) has recently been making the rounds in the media, and rightfully so. The act is truly terrifying, but more than the open tyranny that it would further, the act illustrates a very clear problem from the perspective of the state.

In previous eras, either formally or informally, the state exercised a great deal of control over the information available to the wider population. This is no longer the case in the present day. With the advent of the internet and the resulting decentralization of media and other channels of information, the state has had increasingly fewer options at its disposal to control information. It is very obviously afraid of losing its position as the controller of information, and the RESTRICT Act is a desperate attempt to reassert itself as such.

What’s in the Act?

At this point, most people who have been paying attention should recoil upon seeing a large acronym under the consideration of Congress. After the USA PATRIOT Act, normal people recognized that these bills of massive overreach were, to put it lightly, misnamed. But in a move of honesty, the RESTRICT Act does exactly what it says it will do should it be enacted and enforced. The Senate’s website is remarkably up-front, saying:

Vendors from the U.S. and allied countries have supplied the world’s information communications and technology (ICT) for decades. In recent years, the global ICT supply chain has changed dramatically; a number of prominent foreign vendors—many subject to the control of autocratic and illiberal governments—have gained significant market share in a variety of internet infrastructure, online communications, and networked software markets. . . . The RESTRICT Act comprehensively addresses the ongoing threat posed by technology from foreign adversaries by better empowering the Department of Commerce to review, prevent, and mitigate ICT transactions that pose undue risk, protecting the US supply chain now and into the future.

Thankfully, the state is going to defend us from information and communications technology from “autocratic and illiberal governments,” as if our own states, which locked us in our own homes, were democratic and liberal. What specifically is being targeted in the broad category of information and communications technology?

As the act has been publicly marketed, this is a move against the popular social media platform TikTok. The US government’s reasoning is simple: TikTok, and similar platforms, are owned by foreign states, and these foreign states can distribute or facilitate information that is contrary to the narratives pushed by our state.

This is an existential threat to the US government. Seeing as the goal of a state is to maintain control, as articulated by Murray Rothbard in his book Anatomy of the State, having rival states present alternative narratives to the population harms your legitimacy. This legitimacy is necessary for the state to exist. As Rothbard says of people supporting the state:

This support, it must be noted, need not be active enthusiasm; it may well be passive resignation as if to an inevitable law of nature. But support in the sense of acceptance of some sort it must be; else the minority of state rulers would eventually be outweighed by the active resistance of the majority of the public.

The state, therefore, must maintain its legitimacy to survive, and the US government is attempting just that by trying to retake control over the country’s media. As mentioned earlier, the internet rendered most of the state’s old methods of control obsolete, which is why for the last few years the US government has been on the defensive, using covert means to influence channels of information (as can be seen with the Twitter Files).

The fact that the state has had to openly announce its direct censorship and control signals the state’s weakness. If it were stronger and bolder, as it was in most of the last century, it would have just acted already and passed the action off as a mundane matter of governance. If it were on surer footing, it would have just continued its policy of covert influence. The state is threatened. It’s afraid!

In the media and wider US society, a false debate has arisen. One side is in support, and the other side rejects the RESTRICT Act as terrifyingly evil because it is consolidating power in parts of the executive branch. According to the act, the executive branch will now have the authority to

address any risk arising from any covered transaction arising from any covered transaction by any person, or with respect to any property, subject to the jurisdiction of the United States that the Secretary determines . . . poses an undue or unacceptable risk to the national security of the United States.

The popular opposition is claiming that this is tyrannical because the secretary of commerce is appointed only by the president and reports only to the president, making the secretary unelected and subject to no congressional oversight. This objection is approaching the truth, but it’s not quite there. This act is not bad because the person who gets to determine what is an “undue or unacceptable risk” is unaccountable and undemocratic.

The act is far worse because the state should not be deciding what is an “undue or unacceptable risk.” Should this go through, the United States will have its own censor under whom no ray of light, from wherever it may come, shall in future go unnoticed and unrecognized by the state or be divested of its possible useful effect, and it will be called the secretary of commerce.

Implications of the Act

As with everything pushed by the state, what will actually happen goes far beyond the written intentions. Just as the act nominally passed to defend our freedoms from terrorism is used to spy on millions of normal Americans, this act will control and censor far more than TikTok (which is obviously not the only foreign-owned media in this country). And this is written into the act itself, which provides, “The Secretary may undertake any other action as necessary to carry out the responsibilities under this Act that is not otherwise prohibited by law.”

Worse than just the focus on “foreign adversaries,” how long until this is applied to any media deemed adversarial? How long until this act, after being passed, is amended to crack down on “domestic adversaries” like conspiracy theorists and spreaders of “disinformation,” all of which, of course, will be determined by the state? We have every reason to believe the state will grab this power, being as these categories, deemed so by the state, threaten its legitimacy. As Rothbard wrote, “A ‘conspiracy theory’ can unsettle the system by causing the public to doubt the state’s ideological propaganda.”

Even though the advances of tyranny are now commonplace, and the continual infringement of our liberties is the norm, this blatant aggression in the form of the RESTRICT Act should not go unnoticed. Moreover, this fight should not happen on the state’s terms. The rhetoric surrounding the act focuses on TikTok and “foreign adversaries,” two subjects that are unpopular and, frankly, difficult to defend. However, defending them, or focusing on them at all, is missing the point. The state was not content with merely spying on you, restricting your commerce and production, drafting you, and forcing your children into state schools and subjecting them to who knows what.

No, the state also needs to control your information, for if the information is free, and people can research and discuss freely, the state’s legitimacy, and therefore its very existence, is threatened. As it has shown us by so openly and disgustingly lashing out, anyone who engages in the spreading of ideas outside the purview of the state, especially of ideas that correctly dismantle the legitimacy of the state, is contributing to the state’s peril. As the US government has just proven by its ugly reaction, the spreading of ideas is how we are to proceed ever more boldly against this evil.