British paratroopers are risking their lives in Afghanistan to save UK citizens from the deadly Taliban after President Joe Biden’s disastrous withdraw from the region.
While the British government is telling its citizens that “help is on the way,” Biden is telling American citizens that they are on their own.
The UK is sending paratroopers to Kabul to rescue the 4,000 stranded Brits and Afghan allies in Kabul. The paratroopers were told to “prepare for face-to-face combat.”
Biden has a much better strategy. Instead of implementing a similar plan, Biden decided to take it easy for the weekend and let American citizens figure it out on their own.
According to a new report from conservative journalist Jack Posobeic, President Biden is not sleeping well and wants to go home to Delaware after taking a separate vacation last weekend.
“Biden telling staff he wants to go back to Delaware. Hasn’t been sleeping well all this week. Thinks he will be more functional if he stays over at home in Wilmington,” Posobeic reported.
Just an hour after Posobiec dropped this tweet, WMAL News reported that Biden would in fact be going home to Wilmington, Delaware for a long weekend.
“President Biden, who has spent the last few days traveling between the White House and Camp David, is scheduled to head to Delaware for a long weekend,” WMAL News tweeted. “That’s according to the FAA’s website.”
Do not worry! While Biden is catching up on sleep, his State Department is ensuring Americans trapped in Afghanistan that they may not be able to make it out safely.
On Wednesday afternoon, the Biden State Department delivered devastating news when they announced that they “cannot ensure safe passage” to the Kabul airport for Americans trapped in Afghanistan.
“U.S. government-provided flights are departing. U.S. citizens, LPRs, and their spouses and unmarried children (under age 21) should consider traveling to Hamid Karzai International Airport. You should plan to enter the airport at Camp Sullivan. From the HKIA Airport South Traffic Circle, head east for 1km and turn right on to Camp Sullivan. Please note that gates may change frequently and that we will provide updates as necessary.”
“THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT CANNOT ENSURE SAFE PASSAGE TO THE HAMID KARZAI INTERNATIONAL AIRPORT,” the statement concluded in all caps.
Yahoo News reports on the escalating situation:
The US “cannot ensure safe passage” for trapped residents trying to flee to Hamid Karzai International Airport in Kabul, according to a State Department security alert released on Wednesday.
Thousands have attempted to escape Afghanistan through the international airport in Kabul since the Taliban seized power on Sunday, delaying many planes from leaving due to runway blockages. Several Afghans appeared to cling to the sides of departing planes in an attempt to flee the Taliban.
The security alert said that the embassy is prioritizing US citizens and legal permanent residents who have corresponding documentation and noted that it will assist Americans and LPRs without documents “to the best of our ability.”
The security alert does not mention what steps US officials are taking to help military translators, helpers, and local Afghans attempting to flee the country. US Rep. Andy Kim shared an email on Wednesday saying that any passports stored at the US embassy were destroyed while the embassy was evacuated. The passports likely belonged to Afghans attempting to get approved for visas.
“Visa and passport appointments at the Embassy have been canceled, and passports that were in the Embassy’s possession have been destroyed. Currently, it is not possible to provide any further visa services in Afghanistan,” Kim wrote.
The White House said Tuesday that the Taliban agreed to let civilians leave Afghanistan without incident or else would be met with “overwhelming force,” however there are reports from journalists in Kabul of gunfire, whippings, and attacks with sharp objects by Taliban members toward crowds outside of Kabul’s airport.
The Demise of the Gold Standard
This is the fiftieth anniversary of the demise of the gold standard and the beginning of the current fiat paper standard. Many will say “good riddance” to gold and “thank goodness” for the “good ole greenback”! Reflection, however, produces an alternative conclusion.
To be sure, the opinion of current experts places great weight on paper money. Economists, bankers, and central bank bureaucrats are so universally in support of paper and in opposition to gold that a person would be hard pressed to think otherwise. However, Larry White has shown that monetary and macroeconomists are biased by the professional incentives they face.
In contrast, history has much to say in support of commodity monies, such as gold. Paper monies have lost value over time, with price inflation, as more and more paper money has been created. Paper money economies have also experienced instability in the form of business cycles and economic inequality, including the Great Depression and the post-1971 experience. In the limit, economies have resulted in hyperinflation or have facilitated war, most especially World War I and subsequent wars.
To resurrect the potential of gold, one only needs to reflect on the current use of the term “gold standard.” While we can no longer rely on gold for money, companies often attach the “gold standard” label to their products and services to advertise the quality, consistency, and reliability of their business. It could be protein shakes, delivery companies, or security systems; everyone knows what the term means even though they have no personal experience with gold itself.
President Richard Nixon ordered the “gold window” closed, preventing other nations’ central banks from exchanging their US dollars for our government’s gold hoard at $35 per ounce, as agreed under the post–World War II international agreement known as the Bretton Woods system. Why did he do so? Why in 1971, and why has this temporary dictate lasted fifty years?
Money came into existence thousands of years ago when people started trading, for example, grain for silver and then trading silver for a tool, rather than trading grain for a tool. Gold and other metals have served as money, or the medium of exchange, for thousands of years. Humans have risen from an animalistic hunter-gatherer society to their modern existence through trade, specialization, and entrepreneurship that was spawned by a good form of money.
Governments have intervened in this process, created monopolies, and inflated the money supply by various means, with often disastrous results. However, little more than a century ago, money was still a commodity that was traded internationally and was beyond the strict control of governments.
That changed with the advent of central banks around the world before World War I. The Bretton Woods system was meant to mimic a gold standard for international trade, but it was doomed to a miserable failure, because in it the US, and only the US, could, in effect, print gold to pay its bills.
What is the real gold standard and what is it not?
The gold standard is the phrase for the international system of money that developed over thousands of years. It replaced self-sufficiency, economic primitivism, barter, and early commodity monies, such as grain, salt, and shells. The quality of money improved hand in hand with economic development and improved living conditions.
Eventually, people adopted monetary metals, such as silver, copper, and gold for exchanging goods and services. The gold standard is simply the near-universal use of these metals in trade, but history shows that early adopters were the economic success stars of their times. The value of the monetary unit was simply a measure of weight and purity, and its purchasing power and international flows were governed by markets, not governments. The key distinguishing feature of the system was that the metals were private property and not a mere symbol or representation of ownership.
Rulers were not blind to this goose that laid golden eggs. Government monopolies, the replacement of state images for minter’s marks, and eventually paper replacements debased the system. Government central banks were established in the major economies by 1920. This in turn fed the devastation of the world wars. Nixon’s closing the gold window should be seen as the end of the last remnant of the gold standard, not some kind of internal breakdown. Governments controlled most of the gold and set its price.
The gold standard does not mean that governments decide what is money, how it shall be produced, and what is its market value. In the absence of centuries of government intervention, money could have morphed into an even more sophisticated system. The emergence of bitcoin and cryptocurrency is a reminder of this potential and the turmoil of problems that government can cause.
Returning to the gold standard will be difficult, not because of its profound benefits and miniscule cost, but because of the political roadblock governments will place in its way as well as the revelation of the harms that have been imposed in its absence. Here are some of the benefits of a renewed gold standard.
The most obvious benefit would be a rollback of price inflation around the globe and relative price stability. Although there are no guarantees, stable money will encourage saving and economic growth. Stable purchasing power of money will allow entrepreneurs and consumers to better calculate and plan for the future. Market- instead of Fed-determined interest rates might very well be more volatile in the short run, but that would also make the timing of investments more efficient and less prone to error. With constant high price inflation, paper assets depreciate and often lose their function while physical assets appreciate. Monetary stability would remove that divide and restore the viability of long-term assets like corporate bonds and life insurance.
The destruction of wealth that occurs with central bank paper money is bad enough, but this money also skews the distribution of income in favor of high incomes (wealth and capital) and reduces the relative incomes of lower incomes (labor and pensions). Historians have long noted that these effects occur during inflationary periods. Austrian economists have more recently tried to demonstrate this paper disturbance in more modern times. Even Thomas Piketty has unknowingly showed that the increase in inequality in the US occurred after Nixon’s dirty deed in 1971.
Austrians have also led the charge against the Fed’s monetary policy as the generator of the business cycle and the social dislocations that result. This is a two-step process. First the Fed sets its target, i.e., price control on interest rates, and then it manipulates the money supply to maintain the target by manipulating the banking system.
Interest rates set below market-determined rates cause booms in long-term investment projects and an expansion in the economy. As the boom accelerates, some wages and prices increase, along with land and real estate values. The Fed then raises its target to dampen those increases and the economy falls into a contraction, with its inevitable unemployment and bankruptcies. After the contraction is recognized by the Fed, they start a new round of lower rates and expansion: the business cycle. Some people are enriched, many are harmed, and the economy is destabilized.
The current scheme has also resulted in much more government spending and deficits, which were partially controlled even under Bretton Woods. Since its demise, the national debt has exploded ever higher, accompanied by persistent and increasing trade deficits.
The gold standard as money was a tremendous bargain for humanity and an effective check on government, and its end should be sorely lamented.
Author:
Mark Thornton is a Senior Fellow at the Mises Institute and the book review editor of the Quarterly Journal of Austrian Economics. He has authored seven books and is a frequent guest on national radio shows.
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Nancy Pelosi spoke out again this morning on the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Yet, by her rhetoric, you’d assume everything was going perfectly to plan. In fact, she thinks we should all be commending Joe Biden for his “strong” leadership on this issue which has led to thousands of Americans stranded on the ground at the mercy of the Taliban.
Maybe she can take him out for ice cream later?
Yes, it was indeed decisive, but not in the way Pelosi wants you to think. Rather, it was stupidly impulsive and dangerous to do what Biden did knowing that 1) intelligence reports said this would happen and 2) we moved ahead with the full withdrawal before getting Americans out of harm’s way despite the knowledge this would happen.
There’s no excuse for needing to redeploy thousands of troops to resecure an airport that never should have been relinquished in the first place before the evacuation was done. Having people storm runways while Americans are stuck with no way to the airport was clearly not part of any plan. Rather, Biden is reacting to the events as they dictate the situation to him. That’s not leadership, that’s incompetence.
Pelosi’s claim that “this is what happens when you withdraw” is also laughable regarding the Taliban’s seizure of weapons. Yesterday, a picture was circulating from the now Taliban-controlled U.S. embassy showing a short-barrelled M4 rifle and night-vision setup leaning up against a wall. The latter is worth about $50,000. There’s no possibility that was the kit of an Afghan soldier who surrendered. It was all SOCOM gear so we know it was left there by a U.S. military member.
And while that’s one small example, there are tons of weapons — and I mean literal tons — that have fallen into Taliban hands that should have been removed from the country months ago. Vehicles, top-secret drones, piles of non-surplus M4s and scopes (i.e. the stuff we weren’t equipping the Afghans with) biometric devices, etc. have all been shown in videos as in possession of the Taliban. Again, that’s pure incompetence by the Pentagon and the president leading it.
There was a way to withdraw that didn’t end this way. Joe Biden and the military establishment had seven long months to transport equipment, American citizens, and war-time allies out of there, but by lying about the possibility of Kabul falling, they created a situation where war materials and people were left behind until it was too late. Now, a rushed, dangerous evacuation is happening while our technology is no doubt on its way to Iran and China. What’s an absolute disaster, and Joe Biden owns every ounce of it.
Living in the Age of Covid: “The Power of the Powerless”
A specter is haunting the world: the increasing prospect of a new totalitarianism under the extended covid response. Unlike the specter of communism, or the specter of “dissent” to communist dictatorship that Václav Havel ironically identified in his groundbreaking essay “The Power of the Powerless,”1 this specter originates from those in power and not from the revolutionary or the powerless.2 And rather than haunting only Europe or Eastern Europe, this specter casts its long shadow across the future of all humanity, such that one wonders how one might plan, if at all, for this future.
Mixed into this spectral fear are grave doubts promoted by some about the intentions of world leaders and a medical and technocratic elite apparently bent on new lockdowns, masking, and mandatory mass vaccinations.
Heterodoxies burgeon in the shadows. The mere mention of these heterodoxies will rank one among the heterodox. Nevertheless, I venture to name them. They include the belief that a mass eugenics program is underway and that the vaccination regime amounts to the greatest crime against humanity in world history. They include the belief that the entirety of the covid response has been nothing if not a means for increasing the power and control of the elite over the world population. And they include the more modest claim that “the science” being peddled by “the experts” has been hastily and erroneously construed and represents a grave series of errors, yet merely errors after all. Another claim is that the covid crisis, while real, has been opportunistically used by the ruling elite to further a preexisting agenda for resetting the world economic system and forever changing the shape of the social order (the Great Reset). These claims are not necessarily mutually exclusive and two or three may either be held simultaneously or all four juggled. That these and other heterodoxies are being rigorously suppressed, and that their messengers are either cancelled or vilified, or both, only lends them subterraneous force and adds to the overall anxiety, whether spoken or not. While I will not adjudicate all these claims, it is enough to say that their existence is part of the terror campaign that is the covid regime itself. It is as if the mendacity of the regime spontaneously generated them.
You may wonder why I suggest that the extended covid response poses the gravest threat to humanity, rather than believing that the real threat is covid-19 and its variants. I will address this question below. But the question underscores the fact that clear precedents for this situation are nonexistent. The world has never seen anything like it and could not have—before the age of digital communications, modern virology and epidemiology, and pharmacological technology.3 What makes the covid regime different from other totalitarian prospects is the fact that “disease” is now the stated basis for its establishment. The ideology is thus infused with the dominant narrative of protecting the population from a pestilence, rather than delivering a future worker’s paradise, for example. This claim by the authorities makes any opposition to their diktats forever fraught with having to refute “the science,” variously and inconsistently delivered by “the experts,” while demonstrating the incommensurability of the response to the perceived threat. The question of freedom becomes embroiled in the question of what freedom means in the face of a possible death sentence, for oneself and others. And yet there is the possibility that the efforts at mitigation themselves amount to a death sentence.
In seeking comparable scenarios to the covid regime, I thought it time to look to Eastern bloc exemplars of resistance. As such, my search led me to the essay that forms part of my title. However distinct the two scenarios, parallels may be drawn between what Havel called the “post-totalitarianism” of Soviet bloc Czechoslovakia and the system developing out of the covid crisis. The issue at stake is pursuing “the aims of life”4 in the face of ongoing terror. It should not matter what side of the fence you are on if pursuing the aims of life is your agenda.
By post-totalitarianism, Havel did not mean a state or condition after totalitarianism. He meant a new form of bureaucratic rule, a totalizing system in which power does not simply originate from a singular dictator and flow downward, but rather one that involves the entire society and conscripts the population into its very structure. “In the post-totalitarian system,” Havel suggested, “this line [of power] runs de facto through each person, for everyone in his or her own way is both a victim and a supporter of the system.”5 Everyone is forced to “live within the lie,” and all subjects become “agents of its automatism”—automatic receivers, messengers, and executors of the post-totalitarian logic.6
Havel provides an example of one such subject: a typical greengrocer. The greengrocer routinely puts a sign in his storefront window that reads, “Workers of the World Unite!” He does so, not necessarily because he believes in the semantic content of the slogan, although he may. But he puts the sign in his window because he would become conspicuous by the sign’s absence if he did not. By posting the sign, he consciously or unconsciously seeks to stay out of the crosshairs of severe repression.
The greengrocer’s sign is ideological because its semantic content is “noble” while its semiotic function works in an opposite direction. Its function is to ensure conformity to a system that has nothing to do with the welfare of “the workers.” (Under communism, it is the Marxist true believers who live in “false consciousness.”) The sign is just that—a semiotic syntagm that signals compliance and complicity.
And the sign feeds into a wider “panorama” of compliance and complicity while compelling others to do the same. The greengrocer’s plastering of the sign is a piece within a system that enrolls its subjects in its own administration, subjects who by their participation ensure the participation of others and who together help to constitute post-totalitarianism at large:
If an entire district town is plastered with slogans that no one reads, it is on the one hand a message from the district secretary to the regional secretary, but it is also something more: a small example of the principle of social auto-totality at work. Part of the essence of the post-totalitarian system is that it draws everyone into its sphere of power … so they may become agents of the system's general automatism and servants of its self-determined goals…. More than this: so they may create through their involvement a general norm and, thus, bring pressure to bear on their fellow citizens. And further: so they may learn to be comfortable with their involvement, to identify with it as though it were something natural and inevitable and, ultimately, so they may—with no external urging—come to treat any non-involvement as an abnormality, as arrogance, as an attack on themselves, as a form of dropping out of society. By pulling everyone into its power structure, the post-totalitarian system makes everyone instruments of a mutual totality, the auto-totality of society.7
Not everyone can live the lie of ideological conformity under post-totalitarianism, however. Havel points to those who begin to “live within the truth.” They no longer feign belief and thus cease to be complicit with the system. But those who do so are promptly cancelled:
Let us now imagine that one day something in our greengrocer snaps and he stops putting up the slogans merely to ingratiate himself…. The bill is not long in coming. He will be relieved of his post as manager of the shop and transferred to the warehouse. His pay will be reduced. His hopes for a holiday in Bulgaria will evaporate. His children's access to higher education will be threatened. His superiors will harass him and his fellow workers will wonder about him. Most of those who apply these sanctions, however, will not do so from any authentic inner conviction but simply under pressure from conditions, the same conditions that once pressured the greengrocer to display the official slogans. They will persecute the greengrocer either because it is expected of them, or to demonstrate their loyalty, or simply as part of the general panorama, to which belongs an awareness that this is how situations of this sort are dealt with, that this, in fact, is how things are always done, particularly if one is not to become suspect oneself.8
Thus, the noncompliant is marked by his lack of signaling. He is isolated and demonized. He becomes a pariah and is exiled from the community. He loses his status and faces hardship, or worse. Sound familiar?
Yet such persons as the greengrocer may eventually join with others to constitute a “hidden sphere,” a counterpublic that by its very adherence to living within the truth challenges the post-totalitarian system at its core. That’s because the system is constructed from a tissue of lies and the mere existence of people who defy the lies poses a threat to this construction. They betray the mendacity of the system and may shake others’ belief in it as well.
And what is meant by living within the truth? The pursuit of the aims of life in defiance of the diktats of the ruling establishment and their agents among the population.
Havel makes clear that this hidden sphere is not a political movement per se, but rather a prepolitical formation that has no program and posits no alternative system in its place. It is not a political opposition as such. Although it may develop “parallel structures” and a “parallel polis,” its prepolitical character is necessary for its effectiveness—because of the impossibility of real political opposition under a single party system; because alternative political paradigms are utopian within the post-totalitarian context; because, given an expected cynicism, no one believes in alternative political paradigms anyway; and primarily because the hidden sphere develops organically and constitutes a concrete way of living rather than an abstract model for another world. Dissidence derives from a background of people’s attempts to live within the truth. It is not a matter of formal structures and will not emerge from, or necessarily as, political parties or institutions:
There is no way around it: no matter how beautiful an alternative political model may be, it can no longer speak to the “hidden sphere”, inspire people and society, call for real political ferment. The real sphere of potential politics in the post-totalitarian system is elsewhere: in the continuing and cruel tension between the complex demands of that system and the aims of life, that is, the elementary need of human beings to live, to a certain extent at least, in harmony with themselves, that is, to live in a bearable way, not to be humiliated by their superiors and officials, not to be continually watched by the police, to be able to express themselves freely, to find an outlet for their creativity, to enjoy legal security, and so on.9
The appeal is to “the aims of life” and not to any strictly political means and ends.
Yet Havel’s efforts and the efforts of his compatriots eventually did assume a political significance and managed to create another world. But only, he would argue, by having remained true to their original, prepolitical character. That is, they arose from the ad hoc efforts of communities to defy the lies in concrete efforts to live their lives with dignity and in the truth:
[A]re not these informal, non-bureaucratic, dynamic and open communities that comprise the “parallel polis” a kind of rudimentary prefiguration, a symbolic model of those more meaningful “post-democratic” political structures that might become the foundation of a better society?10
Havel believed that something positive and previously impossible could emerge from post-totalitarianism. Post-totalitarianism was the crucible within which this something could be forged and from which it could usher forth. This something was a more genuine way of living, which post-totalitarianism made possible and necessary.
Finally, Havel suggested that the incipient world always existed within the present one:
For the real question is whether the “brighter future” is really always so distant. What if, on the contrary, it has been here for a long time already, and only our own blindness and weakness has prevented us from seeing it around us and within us, and kept us from developing it?11
It should be clear from the foregoing discussion that the covid regime resembles, in many respects, the post-totalitarian system described by Havel. Regardless of “the science,” or rather because of it, the covid regime is post-totalitarian. “The science” has proven itself to be ideological. Although continually discredited—by the exaggeration of the virus’s lethality, by the suppression of known cures so as to usher in a state of emergency and the mRNA vaccines, by the underreporting of vaccine deaths and injuries, by the institution and reinstitution of failed and unscientific lockdown and masking mandates, and more—“the science” is wielded by authorities as if a matter of fact and a matter of course, just as Marxist ideology was wielded by Soviet communists. And, as under communism, even those who know the truth are compelled to live within the lie.
Just as the greengrocer was compelled to display signs of his loyalty under Soviet bloc communism, signs transmitting semantic content to which he was indifferent, so the covid citizen is compelled to display signs of compliance and complicity under the covid regime. The signs have included donning the mask and, increasingly, displaying the vaccine passport—to take part in society. And, as under communism, these displays are compulsory rituals. What function do they serve?
Let us take note: if the covid citizen were compelled to wear a sign that said, “I am afraid, therefore unquestionably obedient,” he would not be nearly as indifferent to its semantics, even though the statement would reflect the truth. The covid citizen would be embarrassed and ashamed to don such an unequivocal statement of his own degradation, and quite naturally so, for he is a human being and thus has a sense of his own dignity. To overcome this complication, his expression of fidelity must take the form of a sign which, at least on its surface, indicates a level of credulousness in the covid regime. It must allow the covid citizen to say, “What’s wrong with the vaccine passport? The experts say that the vaccine is necessary, for my health and that of others.” Thus, the vaccine passport helps the covid citizen to conceal from himself the low foundations of his obedience, while at the same time concealing the low foundations of power. The vaccine passport hides them both behind the façade of something high. And that something is ideology.12
The italicized text above is my revision of a passage from Havel’s essay—with “the covid citizen” and “vaccine passport” of the covid regime replacing the greengrocer and the greengrocer’s sign of the Soviet regime. The point is to show, mutatis mutandis, the substitutability of terms. Although the vaccines have shown some efficacy at mitigating the effects of the virus, they neither protect their recipients from infection and disease nor prevent them from spreading it. And the dangers of the vaccines are not all known, although many short-term side effects, including death, have been documented. The vaccines may also be driving antibody-dependent enhancement, and, with the selective pressure they put on the virus, the production of mutations (variants). The vaccines are, after all, “state of emergency” measures, rushed into use before the necessary scientific testing to gauge their efficacy or ensure their safety could be done. Thus, they are anything but “science”—if by “science” we mean unhampered and open inquiry using the scientific method. The vaccine passport thus serves an ideological function, just like the greengrocer’s sign.
But just as in the Soviet bloc, some covid citizens are living within the truth. They know that masks, lockdowns, and mandated vaccines have by no means been sufficiently scientifically validated. These dissidents constitute a not-so-hidden sphere, a counterpublic. They have begun to create parallel structures and a parallel polis to resist the covid regime. As in Soviet bloc Czechoslovakia, they are not aligned with any political program and hold to no utopian idealism. Although in the United States the majority are Republicans and lowercase libertarians, many are not. They represent a prepolitical formation. Rather than needing a pollical program, these dissidents seek community in “the continuing and cruel tension between the complex demands of that [covid] system and the aims of life, that is, the elementary need of human beings to live, to a certain extent at least, in harmony with themselves, that is, to live in a bearable way … ”
Yet their efforts may eventually assume a political character and may manage to create another world, and covid post-totalitarianism may be the crucible in which this other world is forged. They may be developing a more genuine way of living. And they may find that the “brighter future” is not that distant after all. It was there all along, and only blindness and weakness had prevented it from being seen and developed.
Oh boy, Lara Logan appeared for an interview with Tucker Carlson [Full Article Here] and shouts a big trumpet. In essence Ms. Logan points out the current situation in Afghanistan is exactly the outcome those controlling the Biden administration want. There is a benefit to someone or some group in the current outcome; because if there wasn’t, the outcome would be different.
I happen to agree with this perspective because there are so many options that could have been taken before this point in the crisis was reached. We have seen this play out before [Bathtub Principle] where a crisis is created because the crisis has a purpose.
In Libya rather than Hillary Clinton and CIA Director Leon Panetta getting busted for selling surface-to-air missiles (SAMS) to al-Qaeda (Operation Zero Footprint), the State Department and CIA -essentially brother and sister agencies- helped “the Benghazi rebels” take over the Kadaffi weapons caches. If SAMS were then used elsewhere (Syria), well, they came from Kadaffi’s stores… see how that works?
Based on current political alignment, alliances, and the ideology behind who is in charge of specific U.S. government agencies, it can reasonably be assumed someone (insert Obama here) wants Pakistan and Iran to have advanced military technology via the stolen weapons we leave behind in Afghanistan. Why? Because those same people already made money selling advanced military tech to Iran and this ‘crisis’ provides cover when it shows up later in their arsenal.
Now, REMEMBER that thing about “Weird Stuff” FIRST…. then keep reading.
With Joe Biden in the White House you can expect to hear the name “Blackrock” in the headlines connected to a variety of issues from real estate purchasing to green energy projects with massive domestic and international investments.
BlackRock, Inc. (together with its subsidiaries) is a massive publicly traded multinational investment firm with over $8.68 trillion in assets under management [December 31, 2020 financial statement] in more than 100 countries across the globe. To say that Blackrock is invested in globalism, climate change and leftist politics, would be a severe understatement {See Here}. Larry Fink is the CEO and people like Cheryl Mills, Hillary Clinton’s attorney of record, are on the board.
Inside BlackRock there is a division called the BlackRock Investment Institute (BII) {See Here}.
Essentially the role of the BII is to tell BlackRock what is going to happen around the globe, and be the tip-of-the-spear in directing BlackRock where to invest money by predicting political events.
The Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute is Tom Donilon, President Obama’s former National Security Advisor (before Susan Rice), and a key advisor to Joe Biden throughout his career in politics.
You cannot get more deeply connected in the swamp financial schemes than Tom Donilon.
Donilon has been in/around government for 35+ years, deeply connected. Before joining the Obama administration Donilon was a registered lobbyist from 1999 through 2005 for O’Melvney & Myers. {Bio Here} Tom’s sole client was Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae is a government-backed private corporation that sells mortgages to investors.
Donilon took the lobbying gig because he was previously Executive Vice President for Law and Policy at Fannie Mae where he was responsible for Fannie Mae’s legal, regulatory, government affairs, and public policy issues. Tom Donilon’s BlackRock Biography reads like a who’s-who of connections to the swamp {READ HERE}
Here’s where it really gets interesting.
♦Tom Donilon’s brother, Mike Donilon is a Senior Advisor to Joe Biden {link} providing guidance on what policies should be implemented within the administration. Mike Donilon guides the focus of spending, budgets, regulation and white house policy from his position of Senior Advisor to the President.
♦Tom Donilon’s wife, Catherine Russell, is the White House Personnel Director {link}. In that position Donilon’s wife controls every hire in the Office of the Presidency.
♦Tom Donilon’s daughter, Sarah Donilon, who graduated college in 2019, now works on the White House National Security Council {link}
So let me just summarize this…. The Chairman of the BlackRock Investment Institute, the guy who tells the $8.7 trillion investment firm BlackRock where to put their money, has a brother who is the Senior Advisor to Joe Biden; has a wife who is the White House Personnel Director; and has a daughter who is now on the National Security Council.
Put another way… Tom Donilon’s literal job description for BlackRock is to: “leverage the firm’s expertise and generate proprietary research to provide insights on the global economy, markets, geopolitics and long-term asset allocation,” and his wife is in charge of White House personnel, his brother is Senior Advisor to the President, and his daughter is on the National Security Council.
You seeing this?
The only thing missing is Hunter Biden being the bag-man.
Now, I say again:.
