this is a long exploration of how the empire is defeating itself and in this case led, we're supposed to believe, by hurricane trump;

The end of America’s unchallenged global economic dominance has arrived sooner than expected, thanks to the very same Neocons who gave the world the Iraq, Syria and the dirty wars in Latin America. Just as the Vietnam War drove the United States off gold by 1971, its sponsorship and funding of violent regime change wars against Venezuela and Syria – and threatening other countries with sanctions if they do not join this crusade – is driving European and other nations to create their alternative financial institutions.

This break has been building for quite some time, and was bound to occur. But who would have thought that Donald Trump would become the catalytic agent? No left-wing party, no socialist, anarchist or foreign nationalist leader anywhere in the world could have achieved what he is doing to break up the American Empire. The Deep State is reacting with shock at how this right-wing real estate grifter has been able to drive other countries to defend themselves by dismantling the U.S.-centered world order. To rub it in, he is using Bush and Reagan-era Neocon arsonists, John Bolton and now Elliott Abrams, to fan the flames in Venezuela. It is almost like a black political comedy. The world of international diplomacy is being turned inside-out. A world where there is no longer even a pretense that we might adhere to international norms, let alone laws or treaties.

The Neocons who Trump has appointed are accomplishing what seemed unthinkable not long ago: Driving China and Russia together – the great nightm1are of Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski. They also are driving Germany and other European countries into the Eurasian orbit, the “Heartland” nightmare of Halford Mackinder a century ago............http://www.unz.com/mhudson/trumps-brilliant-strategy-to-dismember-u-s-dollar-hegemony/

engdahl always seems to have an inside source on whatever he writes about, and barring that, good insight, displayed here about hurricane trump and venezuela;

On January 23 US Vice President Pence sent a message via Twitter that Washington recognized the 35-year-old Speaker of the Venezuela National Assembly, Juan Guaido, as the “legitimate” President of the troubled country, and not elected President Maduro. The fact that it was first Pence and not the US President, who seemed forced to play catch-up, says much about the intervention. The question is whether oil was the reason as neo-con Security Council adviser John Bolton claimed or something else. The evidence suggests something else, but what something? .
The Washington “recognition” of Guaido as “legitimate” president of Venezuela is not only a blatant breach of international law. It goes back on Donald Trump’s repeated campaign promises to stop US meddling in internal affairs of other countries. The attempted coup is being run on the ground by the same criminal operators, call them the deep state, who were behind the regime change operations of repeated US Color Revolutions from Ukraine to Libya, including CANVAS and the CIA’s surrogate, National Endowment for Democracy. National Endowment for Democracy. Many are asking why, after twenty years of Chavez and Maduro versions of central socialist economics, just now Washington makes such a brazen and dangerous step. One explanation is oil, but if so, not in a simple sense some may think.
In an interview on Fox News following US claims that Guaido was the legitimate interim president, John Bolton declared that, aside from declaring Maduro was “authoritarian” as reason for the Washington move, oil was a major factor. Bolton told Fox News, “We’re looking at the oil assets…We’re in conversation with major American companies now,” he continued. Then he made this bizarre remark, all the more as the US today claims to be world number one oil producer: “It will make a big difference to the United States economically if we could have American oil companies really invest in and produce the oil capabilities in Venezuela.” How that would “make America great again,” he did not say.

World’s Largest Reserves?

It’s true that, officially, Venezuela claims to hold the world’s largest oil reserves, estimated 297 billion barrels as of 2010, larger even than that claimed by Saudi Arabia. That makes an impressive headline but is misleading..........http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO3Feb2019.php

five minutes of george carlin identifying some of the bullshit we're fed, and to some degree, accept and repeat as it they were so;




https://youtu.be/Uo-QIY7ys-k

the empire is working diligently towards making sure you only have access to the 'official' point of view, and here's another effort in that direction;


Representative Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), the first Palestinian American elected to Congress, is encountering roadblocks erected by a senior Democrat and a Republican lawmaker in her bid to bring a congressional delegation to the illegally occupied West Bank.
Tlaib’s plans are meant as a rebuke of the tours of Israel sponsored by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), the leading pro-Israel lobby in the United States. The organization has, for decades, organized trips to Israel for freshman lawmakers to get a crash course in hasbara talking points. In 2017, AIPAC’s sister organization, American Israel Education Foundation, spent $2 million on lawmakers’ trips to Israel but cut down on spending during the 2018 election.
Another pro-Israel lobby group J Street, also spent more than $100K in 2017 to send lawmakers to Israel.............https://www.mintpressnews.com/rashida-tlaib-palestine-protest/254448/

here chuck baldwin shows you one more example of why the 'land of the free' isn't;


I know I am speaking for tens of thousands of my fellow Montanans and tens of millions of my fellow Americans when I write what I’m about to write.

The “red flag” laws that are sweeping the country violate every principle of liberty upon which our country was founded. There is no due process associated with “red flag” laws. A judge’s order to seize the firearms from an American citizen who has not been accused of a crime, charged with a crime, convicted of a crime—or who never even threatened to commit a crime—based on the accusation of a single individual is anything but due process.

Our accuser could be a disgruntled employee, a bitter ex-spouse or relative, a vengeful neighbor, an anti-gun liberal or even an anti-gun policeman. By definition, “red flag” laws use mere suspicion of what one “might” do as justification to seize a person’s firearms. Tactics such as these have been used in virtually every despotic regime of history. In the name of protecting society, the rights and liberties of individuals were denied. Eventually, these repressive governments included political or religious persuasion as triggering “red flags,” which led to their disarmament—all in the name of public safety, of course. 

You know as well as I do that when the rights of ONE American are abridged, the rights of ALL Americans are abridged. This is not yet a communist nation where the rights of the state—or even the rights of a majority of citizens—supersede the rights of the individual.

Furthermore, it is a fallacy to suggest that a mental health diagnosis, by itself, indicates that someone is automatically a threat to himself or others. Dr. Ann Bukacek, a highly-respected medical doctor in the community in which I live, recently wrote:............http://www.silverbearcafe.com/private/02.19/letter.html

fifty minute youtube of paul craig roberts interview;


https://youtu.be/eY9tbT9gqTE

every day i think, it can't get any more stupid than it has, and then i find i was wrong. here caitlin speaks of some of that stupid, and in this case its russia coming to get us;


When Hawaii congresswoman Tulsi Gabbard announced her candidacy for the presidency on CNN last month, I had a feeling I’d be writing about her a fair bit. Not because I particularly want her to be president, but because I knew her candidacy would cause the narrative control mechanizations of the political/media class to overextend themselves, leaving them open to attack, exposure, and the weakening of their control of the narrative.
Mere hours before her campaign officially launched, NBC News published an astonishingly blatant smear piece titled “Russia’s propaganda machine discovers 2020 Democratic candidate Tulsi Gabbard,” subtitled “Experts who track websites and social media linked to Russia have seen stirrings of a possible campaign of support for Hawaii Democrat Tulsi Gabbard.” One of the article’s authors shared it on Twitter with the caption, “The Kremlin already has a crush on Tulsi Gabbard.”
The article reported that media outlets tied to the Russian government had been talking a lot about Gabbard’s candidacy, ironically citing as an example an RT article which documented the attempts by the US mainstream media to paint Gabbard as a Kremlin agent. The article’s authors cited the existence of such articles combined with the existence of “chatter” about Gabbard on the anonymous message board 8chan (relevant for God knows what reason) as evidence to substantiate its blaring headline. Even more hilariously, the source for its weird 8chan claim is named as none other than Renee DiResta of the narrative control firm New Knowledge, which was recently embroiled in a scandal for staging a “false flag operation” in an Alabama Senate race which gave one of the candidates the false appearance of being amplified by Russian bots............https://caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/02/03/why-all-anti-interventionists-will-necessarily-be-smeared-as-russian-assets/