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Welcome to The Daily Wrap Up, a concise show dedicated to bringing you the most relevant independent news, as we see it, from the last 24 hours (7/2/18).
As I discussed in a previous show, these lies that we tell ourselves about this country — which were entirely created and perpetuated by those seeking to keep us pacified and unaware of the reality of our situation — must be overcome if we are to see real change occur. Just as addicts must come to grips with their own self-delusions before they can truly begin to heal, we too must begin to recognize the lies we are told, and accept that we have been misled, before we can actually start to take back control of this country, as the American people. If we fail to do so, as we have seen many times in the past (such as the 2016 election), we will be pulled right back into the deception of our divide; this keeps us from seeing the strings, and the puppeteers behind them, and instead turns us upon ourselves. The first and most important delusion, is that we have any control at all over the direction of this country:
America Is “One Dollar One Vote”, Not Really “One Person One Vote”
The only comprehensive and scientific study which has ever been done of whether the U.S. is a democracy or instead a dictatorship, was published in 2014. It studied the period during 1981 through 2002, and it found that, “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”
And this is quoting now directly from the study itself:
“The preferences of the average American appear to have only a minuscule, near-zero, statistically non-significant impact upon public policy.”
A study published two years later (in 2016) reviewed the entire relevant scientific literature and found that “responsiveness [to the American public’s preferences] seems to have declined during the late twentieth century” and might be getting worse yet than that:
“The picture appears to be even more ominous — that is, opinion and policy are negatively related — on highly salient issues that attract media attention.” (Consequently: the more media-attention, the less that the Government’s policy will reflect the public’s preferences on the given issue. This is indirect proof that the media which the public are being exposed to are controlled by the aristocracy and thus focus on and propagandize for, whatever the aristocracy most want to fool the public about.) This scientific report stated, in its “Conclusions,” that, “the trends seem to be moving in the wrong direction from the standpoint of democratic theory — that is, people seem less and less likely to get what they say they want from government.”
The basic problem in America, isn’t Democratic versus Republican; it is instead democracy versus dictatorship. And this problem exists within each Party: each Party is controlled by its billionaires, not by its voting-public.
From Trade War To Hot War (via Global Economic Collapse)
America is in a funk. Slipping into an economic and cultural morass and at risk of losing its footing on the global chessboard, American workers find themselves working harder than ever and still falling further and further behind. How can this be?
Flailing for an answer, they find it in the mouth of a politician who tells them he can make America great again! The problem is a trade imbalance. Americans are getting hammered by their foreign competition, the politician says, and they need strong tariffs to save the economy and restore the might of the USA. These tariffs outrage even friendly nations and provoke retaliatory measures that spiral into an all-out trade war.
2018? Donald Trump?
No. 1930. Senator Reed Smoot.
It is so very important that we begin to see how these same ideas and talking points are recycled over and over again throughout the years. This country has an impossibly short memory of its own history, and that is also largely by design. As Corbett makes so very clear, even the “Make America Great Again” concept, is nothing new, and just as we are seeing replayed today, it led us into ruin under the guise of revitalization, likely so those behind the scenes could wildly profit from both sides of war that followed, just as they have from every war before it.
Smoot-Hawley Act of 1930 which went down as one of the most extensive pieces of protectionist legislation in the history of America. The act raised tariffs on over 20,000 goods. The average price raise was 59.1% and, when the bill was signed into law by President Hoover on June 17, 1930, the price of some goods quadrupled overnight.
They however at the time insisted that it would usher in “a renewed era of prosperity” (MAGA). It did not to this, and is instead universally blamed today for exacerbating, lengthening and deepening the Great Depression.
These policies, the same tit for tat trade policies and retaliatory tariffs we are seeing today, and the economic destruction that they wrought contributed in a significant way to the outbreak of World War II, proving the dictum usually attributed to French economist Frédéric Bastiat: “When goods don’t cross borders, soldiers will.”
Worst of all, the utterly false notion that World War II “saved us from the Great Depression” has made it that much more likely that a 21st century depression will lead a gullible public to believe that world war will be their only escape from outright economic annihilation.
After pointing out how this will inevitably lead to a global economic derailing as it did in the last, (which may the point) Corbett ends by asking the rhetorical question:
How long do you think it would take for the political puppets to blame such a global economic derailing on their geopolitical enemy and start the next war?
US Army Inks $193 Million Deal To Buy Invisible Futuristic Missile Shield
In part of a modernization program the Pentagon is preparing its main battle tank for the next evolution of hybrid wars, expected to start in the mid-2020s, or before.
According to The Times of Israel, Rafael Advanced Defense Systems announced that the U.S. Army awarded a contract worth $193 million for Israel’s TROPHY Active Protection System (APS) for its Abrams tanks “in support of immediate operational requirements,”
Designed to block incoming anti-tank missile threats, the Trophy system has four radar antennas and fire-control radars to track incoming threats such as anti-tank-guided-missiles (ATGMs), and rocket-propelled grenades (RGPs). Once the system detects a projectile, it will automatically fire a shotgun-type blast to neutralize the threat.
So not only is the US finding yet another avenue through which to send even more money to Israel — more than the 10 million dollars a day that it current sends — it is seemingly investing it what amounts to sensors that use shotguns that blast projectiles out of the sky. As the technology of warfare increasingly heads toward lasers and other energy based weapons, that certainly seems like a step backward; but the point is simply finding yet another way to bloat the military budget.
Even as Israel is accused of massive war crimes by the international community, the US continues to deal with and fund their efforts. Just think of what that 2 million (that will quickly morph into billions as the cost become clear for actually mass producing and installing these archaic measures) could do for the American people; for our crumbling water infrastructure, or paying our teachers, or funding Medicare or Social Security? But no, the government says we cannot afford it, while casually allotting a trillion dollars for more military spending for the following year.
The President Shouldn’t Act as an Arms Dealer to the Saudis
In May 2017, President Donald Trump visited Saudi Arabia to finalize a massive $110 billion sale of “American-made” weapons. The deal was part of his America First initiative. As Trump said “That was a tremendous day. Hundreds of billions of dollars of investments into the United States and jobs, jobs, jobs.”
Every president promotes the sale of U.S. weapons. But Trump’s push is especially vigorous and is based on a misleading claim that increased sales will create thousands of jobs in the United States. The truth, however, is that the jobs generated from selling weapons won’t be U.S. jobs but Saudi jobs.
Not counting this Saudi deal, the U.S. has sold close to $200 billion in arms since 2002. The US is the top provider in the global weapons market, responsible for a third of total worldwide arms exports, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
As SIPRI explains,
“The USA delivered major weapons to at least 96 states in 2011–15, a significantly higher number of export destinations than any other supplier.” How do we assess whether all of these countries are safe bets? A recent study by the Cato Institute provides compelling evidence that the U.S. is actually quite careless about whom it sells to. Authors A. Trevor Thrall and Caroline Dorminey produced an index of the overall riskiness of arms trade deals since 2002 that shows the United States does not discriminate between high- and low-risk customers. “The average sales to the riskiest nations are higher than those to the least risky nations,” they write. “The 22 countries coded as ‘highest risk’ on the Global Terrorism Index bought an average of $1.91 billion worth of American weapons. The 28 countries in active, high-level conflicts bought an average of $2.94 billion worth of arms.”
Many would be surprised to hear that the US government, the very entity claiming to promote peace and freedom around the world, is in fact the world’s leading arms dealer; and point of fact sells those arms to many nations widely acknowledged as the most dangerous, as well as those currently in “high-level conflicts.” This is war profiteering, plain and simple. Many of these nations later become the focus of US regime change efforts, just as we saw with Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and many others. Then the media claims to be baffled when they find troves of US weaponry littered throughout the suddenly “hostile” nation that very recently was on the receiving end of US arms deals.
The world lost an area of tropical forest the size of Bangladesh in 2017
Billions of dollars have been poured into a project called REDD+, as well as countless other projects initiated to enable tropical countries to receive money in exchange for them reducing their deforestation rates.
Norway, for instance, has invested about $2.8 billion into the program in the past decade, more than any other wealthy nation.
Yet new data from the University of Maryland (UMD) is showing how tropical tree cover loss in many countries has been ramping up in recent years, even some praised for their efforts with these projects
According to the data, tropical countries lost 158,000 square kilometers (39 million acres) of tree cover in 2017 – an area about the size of Bangladesh. The 2017 number is the second highest since UMD stared collecting data in 2001, and only a bit lower than the record high in 2016.
Those involved say that this is not a sign that effort are not working, and points it many other efforts under way. But apparently those efforts pale in comparison to pressure from the agriculture sector, which is often supported by mainstream policies and financing and which is considered the leading single cause of deforestation worldwide.
According to Frances Seymour, a senior fellow at the U.S.-based think-tank World Resources Institute:
“As long as mainstream policies and finance continue to support deforestation as usual, we’re trying to put out a house fire with a teaspoon, even while more gas are being poured on the flames.”
“There’s really no mystery to the main reason why we’re seeing tropical forests disappear. Vast areas continued to be cleared for soy, beef, palm oil and other globally traded commodities. Much of this clearing is illegal and linked to corruption.”
Whether we are discussing deforestation or geopolitics, everything has been infected by the corruption of multi-national corporations and the elite entities behind them. Worse yet, it is the very politicians who are put in place to protect the interests of the people who have sold away control to these leeches, who seek only profit and control; and they are quite willing to watch the world burn to acquire both. Until we are able to see past the division, put in place specifically to blind us to the real evil of the world that instead draws our focus to each other, these villains will continue to steal away all of our free will and all of our personal freedoms under the guise of protection, all while destabilizing the world and decimating its natural resources. All while telling you everything can change if you just get the other side to listen. Yet the reality is, there are only two sides: Us and them; the people and the rulers; the deceivers and the deceived.
Please take the information discussed in the video below and research for yourself, and come to your own conclusions. As anyone telling you what the truth is, or claiming they have the answer, is likely leading you astray, for one reason or another. Stay Vigilant.
(https://d.tube/#!/v/tlavagabond/8lijem5w)
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