Looking for the Exit

As we've discussed many times, the US system is broken. The government has been captured and the pols are owned by corporate oligarchs and do their bidding, not the people's business. Is there a way out of this situation? Similarly, the US is creating endless war with arms manufacturing in about every district in America to insure compliance. Is there even a way off the war treadmill? I've been looking, but I can't find the exit.

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When I checked into the site on Friday after a long and busy week, things were wonky...old essays from past participants dominated. I thought the site might have been hacked. I dropped a pm to JtC, and within minutes had a response, and soon discovered he spent the day installing some new software. I don't know about you, but I hate formatting new stuff.

• So, first a personal thank you from me, JtC for keeping the lights on and providing us this open platform to research, explore, and share our findings.
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What put me on to the idea of exits was an interview Jimmy did with an independent running for the house as a republican in the Vermont election. He at least offered some creative ideas. One was to create district level electronic forums which would require the representatives to reflect the peoples concerns and interests based on forum polling outcomes. Another was the concept of "fluid democracy", which would allow you to give your forum vote to others who you find more qualified to make judgements on certain topics. For example on some legal issue, I might give my vote to OTC because she understands law better than me. Jimmy was skeptical, but I'm glad to entertain any ideas which might shift this system to reflect the peoples' interest. I must admit I don't think TPTB would allow such reforms to even be introduced much less voted upon.

Fake Republican Wins Vermont Republican House Primary (33 min)
Liam Madden is not your typical Republican House candidate. For one thing, the former Marine from Vermont has refused to pledge to caucus with Republicans if he wins, and the party has returned the favor but refusing to support him in his run. Yet Madden won the Republican primary and is facing a progressive Democrat in November while running against the two parties, against the oligarchy and against the sclerotic political system that squelches voices representing everyday Americans in favor of the wealthy, the powerful and the well-connected.

It is not just the legislative system which is broken. The US in-Justice system is also in shambles. Robert Barnes was a guest on the Duran this week. He is a high profile lawyer. They had a wide ranging interesting conversation.
Timing is everything w/Robert Barnes (1.8 hours)
In the first few minutes, Robert encouraged people to support the Duran. I want to encourage all of you to support JtC and C99, and draw your attention to the upper left hand donation corner. Give what you can. We need to support our community.

Jeffery Sachs has been making the rounds. He appears on Tulsi's second show. (45 min excerpt)

Tulsi is joined by world-renowned economics professor and foreign policy expert, Jeffrey Sachs, to discuss how we arrived at the doorstep of nuclear war and what the Biden administration has done to make matters worse.
Jeffrey David Sachs is an American economist, academic, public policy analyst, and former director of The Earth Institute at Columbia University, where he holds the title of University Professor. He is known for his work on sustainable development, economic development, and the fight against poverty.

Irish MEP has been telling it like it is. Clare Daly is my kind of hero. A legislature full of reps like her might provide an exit.

We can't seem to get off the war treadmill, as if we don't have enough on our plate, we're stirring the pot in Haiti and Thailand.

SO it begins, U.S. starts INVASION of Haiti with military force | Redacted with Clayton Morris

"The United States is moving forward with military missions in Haiti and Canada is considering getting involved too. The coast guard has sent ships with machine guns, which signals some kind of special, covert operation. Life in Haiti is in chaos and increasingly so by the day. Protestors are calling for the resignation of Prime Minister Ariel Henry and are blocking imports of critical infrastructure such as gasoline imports. Banks and grocery stores are operating on limited schedules. What is the U.S.'s interest in this? We break it down with independent journalist Dan Cohen from Uncaptured Media.

The Last Thing Haiti Needs Is Another Military Intervention
Waves of invasions have prevented the country from securing its sovereignty and have prevented its people from building dignified lives, writes Vijay Prashad.

Thailand: US-backed Opposition's Violence Intimidates Critics, Paves Way for Regime Change

The US-backed opposition in Thailand replicates in many ways the violence and intimidation the US sponsored in Ukraine from 2014 onward - just as Ukraine is meant as a proxy against Russia - a US client regime in Thailand would transform the country into a proxy against China.

An alarming incident of violence where a Thai opposition leader publicly assaulted his critic is dangerously being portrayed as "heroic" by Western-sponsored opposition media to encourage further violence and intimidation - creating the same division and destruction throughout Thai society that is currently consuming Ukraine.

Of course there's Taiwan as the US Asian Ukraine. (1.3 hours)
Taiwan: Washington's East Asian "Ukraine"

As the US wages proxy war against Russia through Ukraine, it is attempting the same process through Taiwan against China.
However, there are some major differences that make America’s hostility and encroachment on China even more dangerous including the fact that even Washington, officially, recognizes Taiwan as part of China while openly arming Taipei’s administration, encouraging separatism, and even placing US troops on what is internationally recognized as Chinese territory.
Besides military tensions, economic tensions continue to grow as China is positioned to surpass the collective West economically. The US has responded with growing lists of sanctions and coercive policies targeting not only China but Washington’s own supposed “allies.”
The Chip 4 Alliance seeks to assert US hegemony over the global semiconductor industry but is instead producing a similar backfiring effect as US and EU sanctions on Russian energy exports.

Brian and Angelo discuss the China story.
Brian has a shorter analysis What is Behind the Growing US-China Crisis Over Taiwan?

When Blinken is lying about the alleged 'much faster timeline' Beijing does not have, he is trying to blame China for the change in a U.S.-China relationship that has suddenly became outright hostile. But that change has come solely from the U.S. side.
https://www.moonofalabama.org/2022/10/blinken-falsely-blaims-china-for-u...

China pledges wealth redistribution, full employment, anti-corruption fight in 20th CPC national congress The Communist Party of China (CPC) pledged to redistribute wealth to reduce inequality, pursue full employment, promote gender equality, expand social security and health care, protect the environment, and fight the “cancer” of corruption. It says its goal is to "write an even more magnificent chapter for socialism with Chinese characteristics in the new era."
Carlos Martinez, Danny Haiphong, and Ben Norton discuss the importance of the party congress in this joint production co-sponsored by Friends of Socialist China, The Left Lens, and Multipolarista.

Former Egyptian President Gamal Abdel-Nasser once famously said,
“The genius of you Americans is that you never make a clear-cut stupid move. You always make complicated stupid moves, which make the rest of us wonder at the possibility that we might be missing something.”
He was right. But rest assured that most of the time, the moves are just plain stupid ones.

However, Ukraine is the big story.

from 20 Oct 2022

Westerners demand more nuanced and believable motives from their Marvel movie villains than from the propaganda narratives their media peddle about enemies of the US empire.
Caity Johnstone

George Galloway and Gonzalo Lira discuss the Ukraine war. (23 min)

Zelensky’s troops are paying a huge blood price for the empty ground that Russia hasn’t wanted, says Gonzalo Lira from the front line.

Scott Ritter is one of my go to sources. In this clip he answers questions for two hours. Eventually there will be a topic time stamp guide below the clip.

SCOTT RITTER: Nuclear High Noon in Europe

Former CIA analyst Ray McGovern addresses recent developments in Ukraine; the sabotage bombing of the Nord Stream pipelines; and how the Germans, in particular, are likely to react. He will also provide a proper burial to the notion that Russia’s attack in Feb. was “unprovoked”.

McGovern conducted the early morning briefings of the President’s Daily Brief to President Reagan’s most senior national security advisers (1981-85). Earlier, he led the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch, and chaired National Intelligence Estimates and other inter-agency efforts. After he retired, Ray co-created Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) as a corrective to the fraud that had overtaken intelligence analysis – most blatantly before the invasion of Iraq.

VIPS Memoranda turned out to be correct (but unheeded) before Iraq and Afghanistan – correct again in exposing the Russia-gate canard. VIPS has delivered four formal Memoranda to President Biden – a couple of which seem to have had some impact, but not enough.

Economic repercussions
Dr. Nomi Prins examines the games the wealthy elites play while the 99% suffer.
Podcast and transcript.
“The World’s 10 richest men more than doubled their fortunes from $700 billion to $1.5 trillion at a rate of $15,000 per second, or $1.3 billion a day during the first two years of a pandemic that has seen the incomes of 99% of humanity fall and over 160 million more people forced into poverty.”

Then you say, “To translate that into even more sobering numbers, if these 10 men,” I guess we’re talking about Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos and so forth, “if these 10 men were to lose 99.99% of their wealth tomorrow, they would still be richer than 99% of all the people on this planet.” That is a quote from Oxfam International executive director Gabriela Bucher, and continuing to quote, “They now have six times more wealth than the poorest 3.1 billion people on this earth.” They blame that wealth gap on government politics and tax structure, which is your seven books are largely about.

A Global Monetary Reset Is Here; Countries No Longer Want to Be Held Hostage, Warns Frank Giustra

Billionaire philanthropist, Frank Giustra lays out his thesis for the global monetary reset already underway. We're at the beginning of a currency war, "and I'm absolutely certain we're heading into a global monetary system reset," warns Frank Giustra, CEO of the Fiore Group. He tells Daniela Cambone, Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese President Xi Jinping, "have made it very clear they want an alternative to the U.S. dollar," after being held hostage by the currency for so long. Predicting that the dollar will lose its status as the world's reserve currency, Giustra says China will be victorious in its efforts to solidify a new central bank currency backed by gold. "Everybody, and I mean everybody, should own physical gold," he says when asked about the increasing privacy issues posed by technology. "I think the pivot is around the corner, the [Fed's] math doesn't make any sense," claims Giustra when asked about the rate-hike cycle currently underway for the central bank. "The Fed is trying to talk inflation and something is going to break, they've ruined the American dollar," he concludes.

I don't agree with everything said, but he is correct about the coming currency reset. A new world is coming.

Just as Wall Street and many others are still reveling in the world of the rising momentum of the dollar index, the voices around the world to de-dollarize or trade around the dollar are already rising, and the dollar has long lost its trusted label, and it is clear that the U.S. has had to aggressively raise interest rates and taper after the implementation of extremely loose monetary policy due to stimulating the economy leading to a big inflation, and these only target the needs of their own economy without considering the spillover effects when will overdraw the credit and status of the dollar, forcing the world to think about the role of the dollar, so the phase of resetting the dollar as the main reserve currency has already begun just from this point, and at this juncture, the nearest to the dollar printing machine has issued a warning.

Now that the dollar's dominance has existed for more than a hundred years, it is indisputable that both the dollar's share of international reserves and the use of international payments are now declining, a sign of the erosion of outside confidence in the dollar, which is becoming clearer against the backdrop of the butterfly effect of global de-dollarization expected to intensify, and the dollar is on its way to the end.

U.S. financial crisis! Japan, Saudi Arabia and Europe sanction the dollar at the same time!

I've become enamored of Neil Oliver's analysis and commentary. He had an extended interview with Viva Frei this week. Full Interview with Neil Oliver & It's AMAZING (1.5 hours)

Neil Oliver helps answer my question in this clip...
‘….when the sovereignty & the sanctity of any individual is sacrificed there is something wrong’

His comparison of the French and Inca girl separated by 500 years led me to realize we are in large cycles that continue through time. A circle has no beginning nor end. There is no exit. All we can do is continue the ride and hope we cycle toward some better future.

Aliens will save us?
And to finish with something fun, a movie much like "The Day the Earth Stood Still" where aliens help save Earth from itself...
The 27th Day REMASTERED | Full Movie | Gene Barry | Valerie French | George Voskovec 1957

Five people from five different nations suddenly find themselves on an alien spaceship where they are each given a container holding capsules. Every person has been given the power over life and death. Any of these individuals can instantaneously launch the capsules to whatever coordinates they choose and each capsule will then eradicate all human life within a 3,000 mile radius of its designated location. What will they choose?

Perhaps it would take aliens to provide an exit ramp from the warlike nature of so many humans.

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