Friday, January 31, 2014

The Limits of Turkey's Interest Rate Hike

from  STRATFOR

 

The Limits of Turkey's Interest Rate Hike

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The Limits of Turkey's Interest Rate Hike
A Turkish man stands in front of a foreign exchange shop on Jan. 28 in Istanbul. (GURCAN OZTURK/AFP/Getty Images)

Summary

With a dramatic hike in Turkey's overnight lending rate from 7.75 to 12.5 percent announced on Jan. 28, Turkish Central Bank Gov. Erdem Basci followed through on his earlier promise to use interest rates as a weapon to defend Turkey's currency, the lira. While the hike is a bolder-than-expected move designed to jolt investor interest, Basci is still, in effect, using a sword to fight off a barrage of artillery as a wrenching political crisis continues to erode investor confidence.

Analysis

Turkey has been desperately trying to stem the plunge of the lira, which has declined about 10 percent against the U.S. dollar since the start of the year. Like several other once-celebrated emerging economies, Turkey has seen a rapid outflow of short-term portfolio investment that Ankara had been heavily relying on to help cover its burgeoning current account deficit, totaling $60.8 billion, or roughly 7 percent of gross domestic product, for January to November 2013.
The capital flight has been driven in part by the U.S. Federal Reserve's withdrawal of stimulus measures, which has limited Turkey's access to cheap liquidity. With the Federal Reserve's Jan. 29 announcement that it would again reduce its monetary stimulus, Turkey is now applying all of its tools to stabilize the lira, even with the knowledge that the move is unlikely to have a lasting impact. This is because Turkey's financial troubles have been greatly exacerbated by a deep-rooted power struggle that is only going to intensify in the lead-up to local elections in March, presidential elections in August and parliamentary elections in 2015.
Foreign investors have been chiding Turkey's government for its unorthodox method of defending the currency, until now consisting mostly of foreign exchange auctions and withdrawals from the central bank in order to avoid raising interest rates, a move the government feared would limit growth. But Turkey's government has also been operating under heavy political constraints, resulting in swings in both its economic and political behavior. In this particularly volatile election season, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has been loathe to turn to measures that would slow economic growth and thus undermine his party's standing.
In the days leading up to the central bank decision to raise the interest rate, Erdogan remained publicly defiant, urging the central bank to stand strong and not give in to the so-called interest rate lobby, which he charged with trying to undermine Turkey's growth. When nationwide protests spun up from a Gezi Park demonstration in 2013, Erdogan declared war against the same nebulous interest rate lobby, which he accused of fanning the demonstrations out of greed and desire to topple the government.
Erdogan's distrust of high interest rates stems from a much deeper political paranoia. Perhaps the defining moment of Erdogan's political career was the 1997 military coup that ousted the Welfare Party, the predecessor of Erdogan's Justice and Development Party, from power. Erdogan, who was mayor of Istanbul at the time, was sentenced to prison for 10 months for reciting a poem that criticized the army. This was also a very volatile period for the Turkish economy, with the country facing chronic double-digit inflation and staggeringly high interest rates on foreign loans to cover a soaring budget deficit. Members of Turkey's traditional secular elite who ran the country's largest banks were accused of being debt profiteers during the crisis, making Erdogan all the more determined to write off debt, contain inflation and raise a new economic power elite when he came into power in 2002.
In vilifying high interest rates against the prevailing economic consensus on how to deal with the problem, Erdogan is (rationally or not) trying to warn against a repeat of the past that would empower his old adversaries. The crop of economic elites that Erdogan worked hard to empower over the past decade now find themselves targeted by a cutthroat corruption probe launched by his own party's former allies, jeopardizing years of work and with it, Erdogan's legacy. The Gulen movement, whose powerful network in Turkey's judiciary, police forces, media and government was once instrumental in bringing the Justice and Development Party to power, is intent on seeing Erdogan cut down to size in upcoming elections.
Exacerbating Erdogan's fears is a concern that the Gulenists will quietly forge an alliance of convenience with Turkey's old secular elite to weaken and fracture the ruling party. Even as the central bank is straying from Erdogan's line to pursue a more conventional monetary policy, this is a power struggle that will only intensify in the coming months and thus continue to undermine investor confidence in Turkey.

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The Establishment Smokescreen

The Establishment Smokescreen
 
by John Pugsley
 
"One difficulty about prescribing for inflation is that we don't entirely know how serious the disease is…..The argument made by those who demand very low rates [of inflation] has simply been inconclusive." (Paul McCracken, former Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors.)
John Pugsley
Let's scrutinize the above statement…
The history of civilization is, in reality, the history of a series of societies, or nations, as you might call them. The people in each nation have come under the control of the leaders of a state or government by force or by vote. In either case, the leaders of the country (with the cooperation of the bankers) have always and in every case found it necessary to increase their funds beyond the amount they could collect through taxation. This is almost always done through some form of currency debasement.
Whether the state borrowed from banks and monetized the debt, clipped coins, or simply ran printing presses to print new issues of notes, the results have always been the same: rising prices. As the state monetized debt and consumed the products and services purchased with those I.O.U.'s, the community as a whole was deprived of that production.
The fact that the community felt it was receiving tangible wealth back in the form of "money" only served to confuse it. In the end, the confusion that resulted from this illusory wealth caused a fatal cycle of events that ultimately ended in the collapse of each of those states.
As the individuals in society attempt to react to the symptom (rising prices), the trouble begins.
If you, as an individual, borrow money from someone and never repay that person, you have stolen from him. You are a thief. He is worse off; he has lost some of his wealth. When a state monetizes debt either by printing bank notes directly or by borrowing such notes from a bank without intention of repaying, it is just as much a thief of the society. The difference is that the victim becomes twice remove from his enemy. He can't tell by whom he has been victimized.
The real loss falls on the population as a whole, and in such a camouflaged pattern that the results defy surface analysis. In other words, the theft is translated into rising prices, and the rising prices do the dirty work. When the victim feels the threat and tries to protect himself, he usually flails out at the symptom rather than the cause. The theft occurs when a person borrows money and does not repay it. The symptom is the rising price. As the individuals in society attempt to react to the symptom (rising prices), the trouble begins.
When the Congress votes to increase the national debt, as they have done periodically for years, how do you feel? Do you realize that what they're doing is borrowing money directly from you with no intention of ever paying it back (Borrowing it from you, if you're a producer. of course, if you're on welfare or unemployed, you have nothing to lend them.)
Would you consider loaning someone money knowing that they had a long history of debt repudiation, and know that you may not agree with what they will do with the money once they've borrowed it? Of course, you wouldn't. But you're doing it anyway.

The most staggering revelation to come from a study of the economic history of past societies is that the sequence of economic events in the United States during the past fifty years has occurred repeatedly in dozens of other societies stretching as far back as early Macedonia:
  1. Government needs more money than it is able to collect through taxation, so it issues paper money (or clips coins).
  2. When the government spends this new money, business picks up.
  3. As the increased supply of money percolates down through the society, prices begin to rise and business begins to slump.
  4. To counteract the slump, the government issues more money.
  5. Business picks up again, prices begin to rise, business slumps again.
  6. People begin to distrust paper currency and begin to hoard gold and silver coins.
  7. Government points finger of blame at gold hoarders and passes laws to stop hoarding (often confiscating gold, sometimes silver.)
  8. More inflation: prices begin to rise more steeply, people demand action and government passes price and wage control laws.
  9. Shortages appear, rationing begins, black markets take over in place of regular markets.
  10. Speculation begins to replaced prudent investing as capital markets fluctuate up and down in concert with the business cycles.
  11. Hard work falls into disrepute; people get rich (or poor) speculating; the thrifty lose all to inflation more and more people go on relief as production falls and inflation forces prices out of the reach of the elderly and marginal producers.
  12. As more people go on relief, government must tax the remaining producers more heavily until they decide to stop producing, and the situation beings to compound itself.
  13. Stock markets oscillate wildly up and down, and finally drop; marginal businesses fail; prices fall to natural levels; currency is devalued to real levels; debts are repudiated; the country begins again.
The above scenario has been repeated in almost every society where the state has debased the currency. Everyone who is concerned about preserving his wealth should read Fiat Money Inflation In France by Andrew Dickson White. It is a classic chronicle of the effect that fiat money had on the economy of France subsequent to the French Revolution. The parallels between France in 1789 and the U.S. in the 20th century are both obvious and frightening.
One has to wonder if President Roosevelt had ever studied the histories of countries that tried outlawing gold and inflating the money supply to solve their temporary economic problems. When he said, "it's all right; after all, we're borrowing from ourselves," had he heard of Macedonia, or the French economy of 1789? And what of President Nixon?
When he instituted price controls, where were the scientists who said, "Let's observe the past before we act." If the saying is true that history repeats itself, could it be because no one consults history before they act? For Dr. McCracken to say that we don't really know of the seriousness of the disease called inflation is totally absurd. The disease is fatal.
Regards,
John A. Pugsley
for The Daily Reckoning
December, 1974

Jim McCanney updates on weather (important info)

 
To: undisclosed recipients:
Subject: Jim McCanney updates on weather (important info)
 
JANUARY 29, 2014 ... false solar reporting discovery ... many have heard about the "Maunder Minimum" in which there was a mini ice age in Europe during the middle ages ... one characteristic of this as well as about a dozen other minimums going back thousands of years is that the solar sun spot count dips very low for an extended period of time ... i have reported about places like the Rothschild owned spaceweather dot com web site that is continually trying to report an active sun where there is none ... but recently i discovered an amazing fact relating the current cold winters (last year and now this year) with the maunder minimum and sun spot count ... the actual sun spot count has been actually lower over past years than during the maunder minimum ... that's right ... we had over 3 years of ZERO sun spot activity which is even lower than the lowest count during the maunder minimum (which lasted about 3 years also at its lowest point) ... yet the maunder minimum cold period lasted for over 70 years ... my point is that NO ONE IN THE STANDARD SCIENCE COMMUNITY IS REPORTING THIS COMPARISON ... there are many other questions that must be answered but this is a stark realization ... as with everything else you had to come to my web page for this reporting ... jim mccanney
JANUARY 28, 2014 ... a fun winter/weather fact ... did you know that Minnesota has the widest swing of temperatures of any place on earth ... its high records beat all states and low records again beats all states .... that may seem odd but the long 18 hour summer days with lots of sun overhead with little time to cool down at night plus winds from the south drive its temps into the 100's where as the opposite happens in the winter ... short 6 hour days with low sun angle coupled with long nights and the "alberta clipper" which brings arctic air directly to your door step ... and oh yes .... minnesota mosquitoes are known for their veracity at carrying away unsuspecting visitors ... jim mccanney
JANUARY 28, 2014 ... as the northern states grip for another night of severe winter weather ... the southern states into even florida also from texas to washington DC are being hit with blizzard conditions ... this is NOT a "polar vortex" as you are being told by the evening weatherman who has no clue what is going on ... the real story as i have been reporting is that we are in a sever solar energy shortfall in both light and electrical energy ... the sun is in a low power state which we also read in a low sun spot rate ...  we are possibly heading into a solar energy shortage THE OPPOSITE OF GLOBAL WARMING ... if spring conditions maintain we could be in for severe world wide crop failures and food shortages ... jim mccanney

Thursday, January 30, 2014

Why China and the Philippines are Battling Over Rocks, Reefs

Why China and the Philippines are Battling Over Rocks, Reefs

By Trefor Moss
The Wall Street Journal
Disputed-South-China-Sea.9MANILA—The Philippines cried foul this week when China announced plans to begin regular patrols of the South China Sea, known here as the West Philippines Sea. The two countries have been engaged in a tense dispute over the region since 2012, when Chinese ships took control of Scarborough Shoal, which is just one of the areas Beijing and Manila contest.
Government spokesman Raul Hernandez insisted any such patrols would be illegal because the area in question is Filipino, not Chinese, territory: Under international law, he said in a statement sent by text message to reporters on Jan. 22, China’s Exclusive Economic Zone, or EEZ, “cannot extend beyond 200 nautical miles” from the Chinese mainland and Hainan Island, a province at the southernmost end of China.
* What does that mean? Every country with a coastline has ownership of the seas immediately around it. This area of “territorial sea” extends 12 miles from the coast, and foreign ships are not allowed to enter those waters without permission. Every country with a coastline also has an EEZ. This zone stretches 200 miles from the coast, and the controlling country has exclusive rights to exploit the resources within that area. That includes fishing and undersea drilling. Foreign ships are free to sail through an EEZ.
* And beyond that? These are the high seas, and global commons: All nations have the right to sail them and to exploit their natural resources.
* Says who? The United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, or UNCLOS, is the main piece of international law that sets out maritime rules. Not all countries have ratified UNCLOS, but both China and the Philippines have. So, in theory, both are committed to respecting the system it prescribes.
* How does this apply to the small islands in the South China Sea? There are three types of features to think about – islands, rocks and reefs. An island is an inhabitable, though not necessarily inhabited, feature. Whichever country owns it also own 12 miles of territorial sea plus a 200 mile EEZ – even if the island is hundreds of miles from the mainland. That explains their great value to the claimants – a remote spec of land can potentially yield a huge EEZ, complete with all the resources it contains. Only about 20 of the 150 features comprising the Spratly Islands – a scattered South China Sea group claimed by China, the Philippines and others – can be classed as proper islands. A rock, on the other hand, is an uninhabitable feature. It gives the country that owns it 12 miles of territorial sea, but no EEZ; so rocks have limited value. A reef, or other submerged feature, provides neither territorial sea nor an EEZ – even if you build a structure on the reef that protrudes from the water (a tactic that some countries have tried).
* So are Chinese patrols in the South China Sea legal, or not? China claims about 90% of the South China Sea, even areas that lie well beyond 200 miles from the mainland. Beijing says it has controlled these waters for centuries. Other claimants, including the Philippines and Vietnam, reject that argument. If we accept China’s claim to most of the South China Sea, then of course China can patrol wherever it wants within that area, since a ‘patrol’ is an obvious way of staking claim to those waters. If we reject China’s claim, Chinese ships still have the right to sail through the South China Sea, provided they stay out of the 12-mile territorial waters surrounding any islands or rocks owned by the Philippines, or other countries. Active ‘patrols,’ however, would be seen as a statement of ownership, and therefore potentially provocative.
* Is there a way to settle whether China or the Philippines owns the disputed islands? The Philippines has taken the matter to arbitration at the United Nation’s International Tribunal on the Law of the Sea. It argues that China’s broad-brush claim to most of the South China Sea is arbitrary and unlawful, since it is based on a vague, broken line drawn around the claimed area, which Beijing has never properly defined. The Philippines says that the line is not recognized under UNCLOS, and that China’s claim therefore has no legal basis. The U.N. court is expected to rule on the case between March and September of this year. However, China has refused to take part in the process, and is unlikely to accept the verdict if it loses.
* So will the dispute just rumble on? And on, and on.
http://blogs.wsj.com/searealtime/2014/01/25/why-china-and-the-philippines-are-battling-over-rocks-reefs/

Why is the US helping China look for oil in the South China Sea?

Why is the US helping China look for oil in the South China Sea?

By Adam Pasick
Quartz
Stormy weather ahead? 
National Science Foundation
National Science Foundation
Political tensions in the South China Sea have seldom been higher, with China’s “marine identification zone” deemed a provocative threat to peace by neighboring countries and the United States. The vast area, variously claimed by China, the Philippines, Vietnam, and other southeast Asian countries, is hotly contested in part because it is thought to hold vast reserves of oil and natural gas.
It’s easy, then, to foresee some sticky scenarios emerging from an unusual joint research trip set to embark this week. Thirty-one geologists from 10 countries—including 13 from China and nine from the United States—will spend two months drilling rock samples in the South China Sea. The trip is funded mostly by China, but will take place on a US-operated drilling vessel, the JOIDES Resolution, under the auspices of the International Ocean Discovery Program.
Disputed-South-China-Sea.10If the group finds oil deposits, as a previous research expedition did in the late 1990s, it will raise the diplomatic stakes for the countries vying for control of the South China Sea waterways and islands, such as the Spratleys and Paracels.
“Oil and gas fields lie close to the coast, but the key is to open the treasure box buried beneath the basin,” Wang Pinxian, a marine geologist and member of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, told the South China Morning Post. Estimates vary widely, but the South China Sea could hold up to 17 billion tonnes (18.7 billion tons) of oil and 498 trillion cubic feet of natural gas, according to Cnooc, China’s state-controlled energy group.
South-China-Sea-continental-shelf.2The JOIDES Resolution was previously funded largely by the National Science Foundation, a US federal agency, but thanks to budget cuts last year China needed to step in to finance the South China Sea trip. “The generosity of the Chinese government—which is paying US$6 million, or 70 per cent, of the expedition’s cost—was a deciding factor,” the Post reported.
http://qz.com/170916/why-is-the-us-helping-china-look-for-oil-in-the-south-china-sea/
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RELATED STORY:

Bridges for Asia’s island disputes

Christian Science Monitor
The Monitor’s View

As China asserts stronger claims over its coastal seas, the US and others need to be more proactive in engaging Beijing. A joint research trip in the South China Sea hints at one way.
By the Monitor’s Editorial Board / January 27, 2014
Vietnamese fishing boats are seen in the Spratly archipelago Jan. 5. A group of anti-China protesters plan to gather on March 14 to mark the anniversary of the 1988 naval battle between China and Vietnam near Spratly reefs, in which 64 Vietnamese sailors were killed. Both Vietnam and the Philippines have previously complained about Chinese activity and even harassment in contested parts of the South China Sea. (Reuters)
Vietnamese fishing boats are seen in the Spratly archipelago Jan. 5. A group of anti-China protesters plan to gather on March 14 to mark the anniversary of the 1988 naval battle between China and Vietnam near Spratly reefs, in which 64 Vietnamese sailors were killed. Both Vietnam and the Philippines have previously complained about Chinese activity and even harassment in contested parts of the South China Sea. (Reuters)
If peace is not merely the absence of war, take note of this news: A research ship will depart Hong Kong on Tuesday with 24 scientists from China and the United States onboard. Its mission? To drill into the seabed of the South China Sea and gather geological information.
The joint scientific expedition will provide the subseafloor data that could lead to cooperative development of the abundant oil and gas buried under those hotly disputed waters. For now, the trip is a positive symbol of what should be happening in East Asia – a search for overlapping interests where now there are big differences.
The research trip, funded largely by China but on a US-operated vessel called the JOIDES Resolution, is the kind of goodwill step needed to cool regional tensions. China is making aggressive claims to dozens of small islands, causing the US and others to merely react, beef up their militaries, strengthen trade and defense alliances, and allow the various disputes to drift. Japan even warns that its relationship with China is similar to tensions between nations in Europe before World War I.
Of late, China has taken the Scarborough Shoal from the Philippines while sending planes and ships closer to the Japan-controlled Senkaku Islands (known as the Diaoyu in China). In violation of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, Beijing also claims ownership over vast portions of the seas and airspace off its coast. Such claims could bring it into conflict with countries from South Korea to Malaysia.
Various ways have been proposed to engage China proactively as a way to cool its maritime expansion. The US seeks regular military-to-military contact to avoid any incident at sea blowing up into a crisis, such as the near-miss of a Chinese Navy vessel and the USS Cowpens last month. Some experts propose a multilateral meeting to settle all the island disputes. Over the past decade, Southeast Asian nations have tried to get China to abide by a code of conduct in the South China Sea disputes – with little success.
One hope is to bring China into joint development of the resources in disputed areas. China has tried to negotiate such pacts in the past, such as with Japan on fisheries. And even now, it is proposing bilateral deals with individual neighbors. But the effort is sometimes seen more as divisive or inconsistent than a signal of setting aside sovereignty claims over islands.
Take China’s talks with Vietnam on joint development of offshore hydrocarbons in the Gulf of Tonkin. On Jan. 1, China shocked Vietnam and other neighbors with a new law that declares most of the South China Sea to be out of bounds to foreign fishing vessels. The US called the move “provocative and potentially dangerous.”
Such actions by Beijing are mostly incremental for now – on purpose. China seeks a slow acceptance of “facts on the water” without posing the risk of war. To counter this salami-slicing approach, the best response by the US and its allies is to find ways to engage China constructively in the region.
President Obama, who promised a “rebalancing” of US global strategy toward Asia, needs to lay out a definitive white paper along these lines. Joint development of ocean resources, if done well, is one possible path. It signals a pause in territorial disputes and puts regional economics ahead of assertive nationalism, much like the regional trade pact now in the works for Asia and the US.
One lone ship like the JOIDES Resolution isn’t a big breakthrough on such cooperation. But at least it’s a start.
http://www.csmonitor.com/Commentary/the-monitors-view/2014/0127/Bridges-for-Asia-s-island-disputes

Wednesday, January 29, 2014

The "Real" State Of The Union In Just 889 Words...

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2014-01-28/real-state-union-just-889-words

The "Real" State Of The Union In Just 889 Words...

Tyler Durden's picture
Submitted by Tyler Durden on 01/28/2014 15:42 -0500

Submitted by Simon Black via Sovereign Man blog,
Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, members of Congress, fellow citizens:
This summer we will commemorate the 100th anniversary of the start of World War I.
This senseless, destructive war was started and championed by politicians who cared nothing for the 9 million people who lost their lives.
And in doing so, they began a century of warfare which continues to this day.
Our military industrial complex is larger than ever. We have nearly 2 million troops and national guardsmen, plus 3.5 million civilians employed in the defense sector.
With such awesome capabilities, we continue to resort to violence and death to exact political goals which benefit a tiny elite.
All of this has created a police state in the Land of the Free that is a far cry from the country we all grew up in.
Your government has spawned a culture of fear and intimidation. Nearly every federal agency, including the Fish and Wildlife Service, has its own gun-toting police force to pistol-whip citizens into submission.
And we're stocking up. Your government has recently procured 1.6 BILLION rounds of hollow-point ammunition to supplement our existing supplies.
But frankly, we don't need guns to harass citizens.
Our tax authorities have become more threatening than mafia warlords. The plunder is so severe that record numbers of Americans are renouncing their citizenship and leaving the country.
There are now dozens of federal, state, and local agencies and courts which have the power to confiscate your assets without any due process.
In addition to your house, your business, and your savings, we also have the authority to take your children away from you as if they are property of the state.
We are here to tell you what you can and cannot put in your own body, or whether you can collect rainwater that falls on your own property.
In fact, on any given business day, the federal government issues hundreds of pages of new 'rules', proposed regulations, draft bills, executive orders, and/or regulatory notices.
And if you are not compliant with these rules, you may be committing a crime. Whether you know it or not.
When this nation was founded, there were four federal crimes on the books. Today there are THOUSANDS. Plus we have millions of government employees at all levels to enforce the penalties.
All of this, of course, is financed by you the tax-slave. [debt-slave]
You (plus unborn generations) are the poor suckers charged with paying off the national debt we politicians have created.
Officially the debt is just north of $17 trillion. But if you include Social Security and pension shortfalls, the figure is several times higher.
You'll never know for sure because we have become masters of deceit regarding official statistics, whether inflation, unemployment, or our liabilities.
But the situation is so dire that the Congressional Budget Office projects the Social Security Administration's disability insurance trust fund to RUN OUT by 2017.
We get by year after year by increasing the debt. And at well over 100% of GDP, we have truly reached the point of no return.
We are now in a position where we must default. Either we must default on our national debt, or we must default on our obligations to you the citizens. [Guess which one it will be???]
We may end up stealing your savings. Robbing your Social Security. Taxing you to death. Or simply inflating away the value of our debt.
Naturally, we're going to screw you in the process somehow... so be prepared for that. Especially the inflationary tidal wave that's coming.
Our central bank has expanded its balance sheet at an unprecedented pace, creating massive asset bubbles in its wake. These asset bubbles have disproportionately benefited the ultra-wealthy at the expense of everyone else.
Such wanton money printing has also been tremendously destructive to our credibility. Other nations worry about our reckless irresponsibility. That's why we keep spying on them.
Bankster Heaven
Make no mistake: the consequences of our actions are here. And the days of the United States as the world's dominant superpower are finished.
As the decline hastens, we will struggle to sell our debt to the world and to ship our dollars abroad. Fewer nations will be interested in our empty promises.
And without the generosity of other nations loaning us money at record low interest rates that fail to keep pace with inflation, you will really be screwed.
When this happens, you can absolutely count on us to clamp down even harder on the economy and control even more of your lives. For your own good, of course. [USA! USA! USA! USA!]
No, this may not be the country that you all grew up in. But it is the state of our union... whatever remains of it.
And so my fellow Americans, I urge you to grab your ankles and get ready for a little 'shared sacrifice'.
But don't worry about me, or my senior staff. We will leave government with cushy pensions, $750,000 speaking fees, board seats on public companies, and top positions in the industries that we have accommodated at your expense.
And of course I will be paid handsomely for the arrogant memoirs I will write in which I deny any responsibility for the shit I've gotten you all into.
So when I say "shared sacrifice", I really mean "your sacrifice".
Thank you. God bless you, and God bless these United States of America.
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Sex Plague: The Normalization of Deviance


 
Great article on VETERANS TODAY.
 
          With all due respect to the author of this excellent article, it should be emphasized that GREAT works of art, be they literary, musical, or of the visual arts,   connects us with the divine.   And, anyone who has spent time reading the  poetry of William Blake knows this.  Anyone who has spent time contemplating the piano concertos of Beethoven knows this.  Anyone who has had the pleasure of viewing the magnificent baroque sculptures of Bernini or  the great renaissance art works of Rafael,  Da Vinci and  Michaelangelo, knows this.  These are the finest creations produced by the human spirit.   They are sublime.  These works of art elevate the human spirit.  And that was always the intention of these great artists.
          So, it should come as no surprise that the dark forces who seek to subvert and enslave humanity have destroyed our culture with the death rattle of rap music, the spiritual plague of pornography, and the numerous insults to the art of great English literature.   It should come as no surprise that our so-called art galleries feature exhibits such as “The Piss Christ” and “Madonna in elephant dung” and other abominations totally devoid of spirit.   And then there is the meaningless vapid distractions found on the stuporvision.  All of this serves to reduce humans to the level of non sentient beings, and thus divert us from realizing our true nature.  Our divine nature!!!!  And, above all,  this cultural sludge that is sold to the dupes and the fools as “works of art,”  serves to separate us from God. 
          Our children are being raised in a world fouled by this trash.     Is there any way to reverse this war on human consciousness?  Is it all over?  It would seem so.  We have nobody to blame but ourselves.  We looked the other way, and allowed this subversion to flourish.  
Sex Plague: The Normalization of Deviance and Depravity
kamasutra004
Is there a covert campaign to deprave and corrupt the masses?
If so, who are the Architects of Evil behind this psyop? [1]
 
A recent pamphlet published by the German government contains these chilling words:
POSTER ON A CLASSROOM WALL Why are they doing this to our children?“Fathers do not devote enough attention to the clitoris and vagina of their daughters. The child touches all parts of their father’s body, sometimes arousing him. The father should do the same.” [2]
Toddlers are encouraged to indulge in “unlimited masturbation.” Their parents are expected to offer practical demonstrations if need be — the better to produce sexual precocity in their offspring.
“Children should learn there is no such thing as shameful parts of the body,” the booklet advises. “The body is a home you should be proud of.”
Children, it is suggested, should be taught the movements of copulation as soon as they reach the age of four, giving them what virtually amounts to a crash course in the Kama Sutra as soon as they have learned to walk.
POSTER ON A CLASSROOM WALL  Do our children need this?
Depravity, it seems, cannot be taught too early.
In Holland, things have gone further. Here a political party, set up by convicted pedophiles, clamors for the legalization of child pornography and intergenerational sex between children of twelve and adults old enough to be their grandparents. I forgot to mention bestiality. They want to legalize that too. [3]
Who is to blame for the sex addictions we see suppurating all round us? This licentiousness, growing by the day, thanks to the internet and the mass media, is far deadlier and more destructive than it was half a century ago, before the sexual revolution.
Those who are responsible for this sickening depravity are clearly the people who started the sexual revolution. They are the people, moreover, who control the mass media.
Who controls the media?
Who determines the imagery and attitudes drip-feeding steadily into the minds of the public? Who runs Hollywood? Who contaminates mass consciousness? Who defiles the collective mind? Who pulls the puppet strings of marionette man? Who are the Bad Shepherds leading the sheeple astray?
Who are to blame, in short, for letting the world go to hell in a handcart?
I won’t bother to answer these questions. More to the point, I dare not. If you don’t know who owns the media — lock, stock and barrel — you’re wasting your time reading this article.
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Art and Sexual Subversion: The Vaginocentric Female Artist
Feminist icon Tracey Emin: “I’ve got it all”Let me resume here my discussion of sexual depravity which formed the basis of my recent article Secret Sex Life of the Jews; and let me begin by saying a few words on art, a subject I know something about.[4] And then let me proceed to the subject of pornography and consider its deployment in the systematic demoralization of the masses. [5]
First, ask yourself this question: is there anything intrinsically admirable or aesthetically pleasing about British painter Tracey Emin’s attention-seeking leg-and-vagina paintings? When other artists offer us self-portraits, they usually show us their faces. Not Ms Emin. Her idea of a “self-portrait” is to show us her uterus. [6]
Feminist icon Tracey Emin: “I’ve got it all”
Consider only these titles by the outrageously untalented Emin and draw your own conclusions about the decadent crap being rammed down the throat of the public by the Jews who control the art world [7]: 
Everyone I Have Ever Slept With, Fucking Down An Ally (sic), Asleep Alone With Legs Open (several large-scale canvases of her splayed legs and vagina), I’ve Got It All (legs splayed again, clutching banknotes to her crotch), Weird Sex, CV Cunt Vernacular, Is Anal Sex Legal, Masturbating, Get Ready For the Fuck Of Your Life. [8]
With titles like these, Tracey Emin could hardly fail. Her rich Jewish patron, advertising mogul Charles Saatchi, knew he was on to a good thing when he decided to promote the career of this pretentious confidence trickster masquerading as an artist. [9]
As the Gadarene swine hurtle over the cliff top, Tracey Emin and her kind lead the pack on their way down into the bottomless abyss. These are the dupes of organized Jewry. By doing exactly what appeals to art patrons (almost all Jewish; see below), these infinitely corrupt and untalented opportunists know they will become rich and famous.
Jewish artist Carolee Schneemann, drawing a paper snake from her vagina and calling it “art”.The sad truth is that so many female “artists” — almost all of them rabid feminists and sexual exhibitionists — have nothing to sell but vaginas. [10]
Here are ten other vagina-obsessed females, apart from Tracey Emin and the notorious Annie Sprinkle, who use sex — especially a focus on their own vaginas — to sell their “art”:  Karen Finley, Hannah Wilke, Carolee Schneeman, Andrea Fraser, Sarah Lucas, Marlene McCarty, Vanessa Beecroft,  Malerie Marder, Katy Grannan, and Kembra Pfahler. [11]
Jewish artist Carolee Schneemann, drawing a paper snake from her vagina and calling it “art”.
Being unable to paint properly or produce objects of lasting value, these exhibitionists like to display their vaginas to the world and call it “art”. Here is one such exhibitionist, Jewish performance artist Carolee Schneeman [12], pulling a paper snake out of her vagina:
“I saw the vagina as a translucent chamber,” she says, “of which the serpent was an outward model: enlivened by it’s (sic) passage from the visible to the invisible, a spiralled coil ringed with the shape of desire and generative mysteries.” [13]
Someone who had no idea what a vagina looked like would have a pretty tough time trying to figure out its appearance from Ms Schneemann’s deathless prose.
Who helps to promote this kind of pretentious claptrap? You don’t need three guesses to answer that question.
In 2001, ARTnews listed the world’s Top Ten Art Collectors. Eight of them were Jews. Ponder these staggering statistics: A people who constitute 0.2% of the world’s population make up 80% of the world’s richest art collectors.
Out of every thousand people in the world, roughly two are Jews. To be precise, one in every 457 people are Jews. [14] Yet go to a conference at which 1000 of the world’s wealthiest art collectors have gathered and you will find, to your amazement, that 800 of them are Jewish.
Phenomenal, isn’t it? [15]
Annie Sprinkle, Jewish feminist and pornographer, practicing indecent exposure in a public venue and pretending it’s an “art form”.Some of the vaginocentric exhibitionists mentioned above, like lesbian “performance artist” Annie Sprinkle, maintain websites blocked by porn filters. The aptly named Sprinkle—a nom de porn in honor of urolagnia [16] —  is the lady who douched her vagina onstage in 1991, before lying down and opening her legs so that members of the audience, mostly male, could inspect her cervix with the help of a flashlight and speculum.
Annie Sprinkle, Jewish feminist and pornographer, practicing indecent exposure in a public venue and pretending it’s an “art form”.
Performance artist, prostitute, porn actress, feminist icon, and lesbian diva of depravity, Ms Sprinkle would like us to believe that it is a form of “art” to masturbate onstage with sex toys, her legs wide open, and invite members of a predominantly male audience to peer up her vagina with torchlight and speculum. (See picture opposite)
She was recently invited by academic officials to show her vagina off at the University of Illinois, a hotbed of Zionist propaganda and power; here she was encouraged to give students an “orgasm workshop” — all this ostensibly in pursuit of “higher education”.  [17]
To make matters worse, Sprinkle’s pathetic “look-at-my-pussy” acts were funded by the National Endowment for the Arts, a mini-empire controlled by the hidden hand of organized Jewry.  [18]
If Annie Sprinkle was to acquire fame and fortune by letting dirty old men take a peep between her legs, Hannah Wilke and Karen Finley sought variations in which the vulva was again put to good use.
The Jewish Wilke, being sadly deficient in originality, molded bits of chewing gum into vulvas and stuck them all over her body, calling it “art”.  [19]
Not to be outdone, Karen Finley decided to smear her naked torso with chocolate syrup [20] and performed public acts — using a yam — which I won’t describe in detail in case nuns are reading this article. Rape, flatulence and menstruation formed the least offensive items in Finley’s repertoire. [21]
Like Sprinkle, Wilke and Schneemann, Finley is also Jewish, given that her mother is of Jewish ancestry. [22].
So that’s four Jewish “artists”, all playing with their pussies in front of the world and being paid to do it by a Jewish-controlled government organization called the National Endowment for the Arts.
One begins to discern a subtle pattern here; or maybe it isn’t so subtle.
Performance artist Andrea Fraser [23] — amazingly, she isn’t Jewish! — deserves first prize for sheer chutzpah. She is perhaps an illustration of the truth that however low a slutty Jewess  can sink, a slutty shiksa can sink a bit lower.
This raunchy non-Jewish performance artist, who nevertheless finds it necessary to move in Jewish circles like Madonna and so many other gentile sycophants,  arranged to meet a man at the Royalton Hotel in Manhattan, owned by Jewish hotelier Ian Shrager.
Above the bed, an overhead camera played Peeping Tom. The man was persuaded to part with $20,000 in cash for the privilege of helping to create a “work of art” with the frisky Fraser, the said work of art being a pornographic video filming the two participants copulating on a Queen-size bed. This sex video, now available for posterity, is pretentiously called “Untitled”.  [24]
It’s not “art” we’re dealing with here, of course; it’s pornography pure and simple.
The Jewish Affinity for Porn 
Jews are famously known to dominate [25] the world’s $100 billion a year porn industry, roughly 90 percent of which is generated within the United States. As many as 260 new porn sites go online daily, more than 10 “CHRIST SUCKS!” — Jewish pornographer Al Goldsteinsites an hour. [26]
Since Jews are known to dominate the porn industry and comprise only 2% of America’s population, it is reasonable to suppose that most of the new sites being started up every hour are being started up by Jews.
“CHRIST SUCKS!” — Jewish pornographer Al Goldstein
It is even more alarming to note how sex is now deployed by many American Jews as a weapon against Christianity with its socially cohesive and family-friendly values.
Jewish pornographer Al Goldstein’s infamous words — “The only reason that Jews are in pornography is that we think that Christ sucks” — surely tell us all we need to know about the bitter hatred felt by so many Jews for the Western countries that have harbored them and given them hospitality for so long. [27]
Jewish hatred for Christianity is legendary, spanning the Jewish political spectrum, from the far left [28] to the neoconservative right [29].
This can hardly be doubted, as the ugly picture of the Jewish pornographer (see opposite) makes only too clear.
The arrogance and sense of entitlement of so many Jews, whose values Al Goldstein seems to have imbibed with his mother’s milk, never cease to astonish me.
“The difference between a Jewish soul and the soul of non-Jews,” Rabbi Kook assures us, “is greater and deeper than the difference between a human soul and the soul of cattle.” [30]
Given that Rabbi Kook would be the first to agree that rabbis form the intellectual and spiritual backbone of Jewry, one is tempted to ask what makes a man become a rabbi in the first place. Is it the thirst for God? Is it the wish to save one’s soul and help others along the path to salvation?
Here is Jewish actor Richard Pacheco who couldn’t quite make up his mind whether to become a rabbi or a porn star:
“Five years before I got my first part in an adult film … I went to an audition for an X-rated film with my hair down to my ass, a copy of Wilhelm Reich’s Sexual Revolution under my arm and yelling about work, love and sex, which were Reich’s three principles. These things have got to be in balance or your life is going to be fucked.” [31]
Note that Pacheco had signed on to the radical left-Freudian views of Wilhelm Reich — the wackiest and most extreme of the subversive sexual ideologies that emerged from psychoanalysis.
Jewish devotees of psychoanalysis typically saw it, first and foremost, as a blow against Christian sexual mores; hence, as a sneak attack on Christianity itself.
For Jews, psychoanalysis placed Western culture on the couch. It was an assertion of Jewish contempt for Christian culture: the culture of the outgroup now destined for the dustbin of history. [32]
Pacheco didn’t get the job, but he kept on auditioning, since all he really wanted was to screw gorgeous blonde shiksas — doubtless an atavistic expression of Jewish hatred for the goyim, every act of sex being an act of revenge:
“Five years later I auditioned for another X-rated film. That very day, I also interviewed at Hebrew Union Seminary to do rabbinical study. I made the choice that the kind of rabbi I would be, if I became one, was one that could have been performing in sex films as part of his experience.” [33]
Mindboggling, isn’t it?
This dupe of the sexual revolution couldn’t make up his mind whether to sing hymns to God or kiss the devil’s ass!
In the end, it’s the devil who won out.
Porn star Richard Pacheco: he also wanted to be a rabbi.Pacheco decided to build a career in pornography — with the full blessings, incidentally, of ADL chairman Abe Foxman who said that porn offered American Jews a valid and worthy way “to pursue the American dream.” [34]
Porn star Richard Pacheco:  he also wanted to be a rabbi.
Richard Pacheco (born 1948) was the scion of an orthodox Jewish family from Pittsburg [35] From an early age, bizarrely, he was attracted to the rabbinate and to pornography in equal proportions.
He had wrestled for years with the decision whether to become a rabbi or a porn actor, praying in the morning for guidance and masturbating in the evening for fun, when it occurred to him one day that he could up his number of orgasms per day if he chucked all the spiritual stuff and concentrated on raw sex.
So he did. And a porn star was born.
Featuring in over 100 X-rated films and winner of countless awards for his sexual prowess in front of the cameras, Pacheco was lucky to receive the loyal support of his wife Ashley.
Managing somehow to juggle  a career in porn with a commitment to family life, Pacheco later had sex with his wife — so we are told in Wikipedia — “considerably less often after they had children and AIDS became a threat, but he credits his pornography career for giving him the opportunity to continue sexual encounters for a time without endangering his home life.” [36]
Here is Pacheco being interviewed after his retirement from porn. If you are a nun or under eighteen, I would advise you to skip the next bit:
As a young husband, I had no idea how to ask my beloved wife to be my “fuck-your-ass whore”.
Yeah, I wanted some of that kind of sex, some very, very selfish lust with a sex kitten. A “fuck-me-fuck-me” woman. There’d be corsets and leathers, high-heeled boots laced up to crotchless panties, breasts spilling out of nippleless bras in lush bordello bedrooms filled up with sex toys. Like blindfolds and vibrators, handcuffs and paddles. 
Richard Pacheco. a recent photo. Ain't he cute? Yeah, and there’d be me with a genuine tarted up won’t-say-no-woman. All the best drugs and oils in the world and plenty of time. And there’d be no “I love you” in any of it! 
I would meet this X-rated woman at the hotel where they were holding the auditions…and I would have sex with her right there in the hotel elevator! And then I would go gome to my wife.” [37]
Richard Pacheco. a recent photo.  (Ain’t he cute?)
Asked if he still watched adult movies now that he was a Senior Citizen, the former rabbinical student replied: “Not much. Occasionally I’ll toss one on for masturbation if my wife ain’t around.” [42]
One has to hand it to Pacheco. His neo-Marxist mentor, Wilhelm Reich, would have been proud of him. Because he managed to turn shamelessness into a virtue. Still, it couldn’t have been much for his poor wife having a guy like this prowling round the house.
In 1984, Pacheco won the Best Couples Sex Scene (video) with porn star Nina Hartley. [38] In 1999, he was inducted into the AVN Hall of Fame   with feminist porn diva Annie Sprinkle. [39] In 2000, along with Sprinkle, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Free Speech Coalition [40], an organization that had given Nina Hartley an award only a few months earlier. [41]
Note that these three luminaries of lust — Pacheco, Sprinkle and Hartley — are all Jewish pornographers and that the impressively named “Free Speech Coalition” is in fact a trade association set up in 1991 to safeguard the interests of “adult entertainers” —  pornographers who for the most part are Jewish and are based largely in the Jewish enclaves around Hollywood. 
So make no mistake: this sleazy industry, built on a foundation of onanistic lust and sexual libertinism, is Jewish through and through.
The “Free Speech Coalition” naturally rejects all claims that pornography is addictive, given that they themselves are directly responsible for nurturing that addiction and making money out of it.
It also refuses to consider the possibility that serial killers and rapists could in any way be influenced by inflammatory erotica, though the evidence for this is enough to convince anyone except those engaged in the AMERICA, 2050peddling of the same poisons.
For compelling evidence that pornography plays a significant role in the crimes of serial killers, see my earlier essay on this subject, “Masters of Porn: The Systematic Promotion of Sexual Deviance”. [43]
AMERICA, 2050
In an important court case in 2002, Ashcroft v. Free Speech Coalition, the US Supreme Court decided in the Coalition’s favour, thereby making it easier for pornographers to demoralize Americans, corrupt their children, and promote a general debasement of values — all this in accordance, incidentally, with the Frankfurt School agenda [44] of producing a “culture of pessimism” designed to foster anarchy and promote impotent anger and despair.  [45]
Our new elite is clearly engaged in the business of mind manipulation and mass demoralization, nor will it rest until it has rebuilt the world in the image of a new Sodom and Gomorrah — a dystopic nightmare.
Conclusion
I have said before in an earlier artiicle, and I will say it again:
A great storm is brewing and only a military coup or revolution can now save America. Save it from what?  From the spiritual cancer that is consuming it from within, and from the foreign wars into which it is being lured — Afghanistan, Iraq, and soon perhaps Iran — on behalf of another nation and its indefatigable agents in America.
Unless a miracle soon occurs and some charismatic leader comes to our rescue, an unimaginably bleak future surely awaits us: a future in which the only consolations left to us will be mindless entertainment, THE CITY OF DREADFUL NIGHT drugs, alcohol, sexual intoxication — and suicide. [46]
Depravity appears to have no limits, as those who have surfed the internet have often discovered to their cost. The most appalling sexual addictions now render even children helpless. Many a marriage is blighted and ends in ruins amid these terrifying toxins.
And yet we are only at the beginning. We have many a slime-green step to go before we reach rock bottom. Abyss yawns below bottomless abyss and even to peer into these black moral chasms is to make us giddy with vertigo.
There is indeed no end to man’s depravity or the deadly machinations of the Architects of Evil.
THE  BECKONING DARKNESS
“If a Jew is tempted to do evil, he should go to a city where he is not known and do the evil there.” — The Talmud, Moed Kattan, 17a  [47]
A revised and updated version of an article originally published here
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Endnotes
[1]  For an answer to these questions, see also: The Frankfurt School: Conspiracy to Corrupt, by Timothy Matthews.  [2] Masters of Porn: The Systematic Promotion of Sexual Deviance, by Lasha Darkmoon.  [3] Child Pornography in the Classroom. (Presented by Noor al Haqiqa, snippits and snappits).
An academic correspondent writes: “Though one ethnic group, the Jews,  is demonstrably to blame more than any other for the sexual demoralization of the masses in Western countries, it would be disingenuous to pretend that they are solely responsible. The primary corruptors could never have succeeded so spectacularly but for the enthusiastic collaboration of degenerates within the corrupted societies.”
3.  Ibid.
4.  See Lasha Darkmoon, [1] The Plot Against Art (Parts 1 and 2)  and Spitting Mad Jews and Angry Artists (Parts 1 and 2).
5.  I have tackled the subject of mass demoralization through pornography — a planned psyop of the New World Order —  in greater detail elsewhere, particularly in Masters of Porn: The Systematic Promotion of Sexual Deviance.
6.  See Tracey Emin: Self-portraits. Don’t worry, you are unlikely to be shocked by these crude, cave-wall sketches of Ms Emin’s nether regions!
7.  Lasha Darkmoon, The Plot Against Art.
8.  Tracey Emin, typical titles.
11.  Ibid.
13.  The full Schneemann quote describing the vagina may be read here.
15.  Lasha Darkmoon, The Plot Against Art, Part 2.
16.  Urolagnia: a sexual perversion  in which sexual excitement is associated with urine. Its basis lies in sadomasochism and usually involves a woman urinating on a man, his pleasure consisting in the humiliation of being “pissed on” by a domineering woman — as in this 19th century illustration of a woman urinating into a man’s mouth.
18.  Jeff Jacoby,  How the NEA pollutes American culture (The Boston Globe, January 24, 1995).
19.  Hanna Wilke, Wikipedia. Here you can see a picture of the bare-breasted Jewess  covered with blobs of vulva-shaped chewing gum.
22.  Karen Finley … “her mother of Jewish ancestry.”
24.  Jerry Saltz, Critiqueus Interruptus. (Broken Angel Artnet Magazine).
25.  The locus classicus for the “canard” — no longer a canard today — that Jews control the porn industry is this jaw-breakingly entitled article, “Triple-exthnics“, by Jewish academic Dr Nathan Abrams. This was published in the winter 2004 edition of the prestigious Jewish Quarterly. What the title means is anyone’s guess. Suffice to say that Dr Abrams tactlessly let the cat out of the bag in this article, much to the embarrassment of organized Jewry. As a result, no one can be in doubt any longer as to who controls the world’s porn industry. We now know it is the usual suspects: the Jews.
26.  For the figure $100 billion as being the total revenues per annum from world porn,  see Family Safe Media’s  “Pornography Statistics.” (The figure mentioned here is $97 billion, but that is a 2006 figure. Since then, the figure has topped the $100 billion mark.) For the other figures cited in the paragraph, see Michael Arrington’s Internet Pornography Stats.
29.  Link lost.
36.  Richard Pacheco . . . “the opportunity to continue sexual encounters for a time without endangering his home life.”
37.  Richard Pacheco . . . “and then I would go home to my wife.”
42.   Rishard Pacheco . . . “Occasionally I’ll toss one on for masturbation if my wife ain’t around.”  (See here)
43.  Lasha Darkmoon, Masters of Porn: The Systematic Promotion of Sexual Deviance. Scroll down to the section entitled “The link between pornography and sex crime”; for further confirmation, scroll down to the section entitled “The Cases of Ted Bundy and Gary Bishop, Serial Killers” in Dr Victor Kline’s classic academic paper “Pornography’s Effects on Adults and Children. See also Pornography and Sexual Crime and Pornography and sex: Ted Bundy’s fatal addiction.
44.  Frankfurt School agenda. This is hugely important subject and there is a vast amount of material available to the internet reader. Those who wish to know more about the philosophical milieu of modernity — i.e., the cultural swamp of sexual bolshevism in which the benighted masses are forced to flounder today — are advised to make a careful study of the following eight core articles:
45.  See Lasha Darkmoon’s The Plot Against Art (Part 1) and Goodbye America (Part 2).