150 Years Of Bank Credit Expansion Is Near Its End

Authored by Alasdair Macleod via GoldMoney.com,

The legal formalisation of the creation of bank credit commenced with England’s 1844 Bank Charter Act. It has led to a regular cycle of expansion and collapse of outstanding bank credit.

Erroneously attributed to business, the origin of the boom and bust cycle is found in bank credit. Monetary policy evolved with attempts to control the cycle with added intervention, leading to the abandonment of sound money.

Today, we face infinite monetary inflation as a final solution to 150 years of monetary failures. The coming systemic and monetary collapse will probably mark the end of cycles of bank credit expansion as we know it, and the final collapse of fiat currencies.

This article is based on a speech I gave on Monday to the Ludwig von Mises Institute Europe in Brussels.

Introduction

So that we can understand the financial and banking challenges ahead of us, this article provides an historical and technical background. But we must first get an important definition right, and that is the cause of the periodic cycle of boom and bust. The cycle of economic activity is not a trade or business cycle, but a credit cycle. It is caused by fractional reserve banking and by banks loaning money into existence. The effect on business is then observed but is not the underlying cause.

Modern banking has its roots in England’s Bank Charter Act of 1844, which led to the practice of loaning money into existence, commonly described as fractional reserve banking. Fractional reserve banking is defined as making loans and taking in customer deposits in quantities that are multiples of the bank’s own capital. Case law in the wake of the 1844 Act, having more regard to the status quo as established precedent than the fundamentals of property law, ruled that irregular deposits (deposits for safekeeping) were no different from a loan. Judge Lord Cottenham’s judgment in Foley v. Hill (1848) 2 HLC 28 is a judicial decision relating to the fundamental nature of a bank which held in effect that:

“The money placed in the custody of the banker is to all intents and purposes, the money of the banker, to do with it as he pleases. He is guilty of no breach of trust in employing it. He is not answerable to the principal if he puts it into jeopardy, if he engages in haphazardous speculation….”

This was undoubtedly the most important ruling of the last two centuries over money. Today, we know of nothing else other than legally confirmed fractional reserve banking. However, sound or honest banking with banks acting as custodians had existed in the centuries before the 1844 Act and any corruption of the custody status was regarded as fraudulent.

This decision has shaped global banking to this day. It created a fundamental flaw in the gold-backed sound money system, whereby the Bank of England, as a prototype central bank, could only issue extra sterling backed entirely by gold. Meanwhile, a commercial bank could loan money into existence, the drawdown of which created deposit balances. The creation of these deposits on a system-wide basis meant that any excesses and deficiencies between banks were easily reconciled through interbank lending.

Bankers’ groupthink and the credit cycle

While an individual bank could expand its balance sheet, the implications of all banks doing the same may have escaped the early banking pioneers operating under the 1844 act. Thus, when their balance sheets expanded to a multiple of the bank’s own capital, there was little cause for concern. After all, so long as a bank paid attention to its reputation it would always have access to the informal interbank market. And so long as it can call in its loans at short notice, the duration mismatch between funding by cash deposits and its loan book would be minimised.

Since the Bank Charter Act, experience has shown the expansion of bank credit leads to a cycle of credit expansion, over-expansion, and then sudden contraction. The scale of bank lending was determined by its management, with lenders tending to be as much influenced by their own crowd psychology as by a holistic view of risk. Of course, the expansion of bank credit inflates economic activity, spreading a warm feeling of improving economic prospects and feeding back into increasing the bankers’ confidence even further. It then appears safe and reasonable to take on yet more lending business without increasing the bank’s capital.

With profits rapidly increasing due to lending being a multiple of the bank’s own capital, confident bankers begin to think strategically. They reduce their lending margins to attract business they believe to be important to their bank’s long-term future, knowing they can expand credit further against a background of improving economic conditions to compensate for lower margins. They begin to protect margins by borrowing short from depositors and offering businesses term loans, reaping the benefits of a rising slope in the yield curve.

The availability of cheap finance encourages businesses in turn to enhance their profits by increasing the ratio of debt to equity in their businesses and by funding business expansion through debt. By now, a bank is likely to be raking in net interest on loan business amounting to eight or ten times its own capital. This means that an interest margin of a net two per cent is a 20% return to the bank’s shareholders.

There is nothing like profitable success to boost confidence, and the line between it and overconfidence is naturally fuzzed by hubris. The crowd psychology fuelled by a successful banking business leads to an availability of credit too great for decent borrowers to avail for themselves, so inevitably credit expansion becomes a financing opportunity for poorly thought out loan propositions.

Having oversupplied the market with credit, banks begin to expand their interests in other directions. They finance businesses abroad, oblivious to the fact that they have less control over collateral and legal redress generally. They expand by entering other lines of banking-related business, assuming their skills as bankers can be extended into those other business lines profitably. A near-contemporary example was Deutsche Bank’s failed expansion into global investment banking and principal trading in foreign securities and commodities. And who can forget Royal Bank of Scotland’s bid for ABN-Amro, just as the credit cycle peaked before the last credit crisis.

At the time when their balance sheets have expanded to many multiples of their own capital, the banking crowd then finds itself with lending margins too low to compensate for risk. Bad debts arising from their more aggressive lending decisions begin to materialise. One bank beginning to draw in its horns, as it perceives it is out on a limb, can probably be weathered by the system. But other bankers will stop and think about their own risks, bearing in mind operational gearing works two ways.

It may be marked by an unexpected event, or just an apparent loss of bullish momentum. With bad debts beginning to have an impact, groupthink quickly takes bankers from being greedy for more business to fearful of it. Initially, banks stop offering circulating credit, the overdraft facility that lubricates business activity. But former lending decisions begin to be exposed as bad when the credit tap is turned off and investments in foreign lands begin to reflect their true risks. Lending in the interbank market dries up for the banks with poor or marginal reputations, and banks begin to report losses. Greed turns rapidly to fear.

The cycle of bank credit expansion then descends into a lending crisis with increasing numbers of banks exposed as having taken on bad loans and becoming insolvent. A slump in business activity ensues. With frightening rapidity, all the hope and hype created by monetary expansion is destroyed by its contraction.

Before central banking evolved into acting as the representative and regulator for licensed banks, the credit cycle described above threw up some classic examples. Overend Gurney was the largest discount house in the world, trading in bills of exchange before it made long-term investments and became illiquid. When the railway boom faltered in 1866 it collapsed. Bank rate rose to 10% and there were widespread failures. Then there was the Baring crisis in 1890. Poor investments in Argentina led to the bank’s near bankruptcy. The Argentine economy slumped, as did the Brazilian which had its own credit bubble. This time, a consortium of other banks rescued Barings. Nathan Rothschild remarked that if Barings hadn’t been rescued the entire banking system in London would have collapsed.

Out of Barings came the action of a central bank acting as lender of last resort, famously foreseen and promoted by Walter Bagehot.

In the nineteenth century it became clear that crowd psychology in the banks, the balance of greed and fear over lending, drove a repeating cycle of credit boom and slump. With the passage of time bankers recovering their poise from the previous slump forgot its lessons and rhymed the same mistakes all over again. Analysts promoting theories of stock market cycles and cycles of economic activity need look no further for the underlying cause.

In the absence of credit expansion, businesses would come and go in random fashion. The coordinated expansion of credit changed that, with businesses being bunched into being created at the same time, and then all failing at the same time. The process of creative destruction went from unnoticed market evolution to becoming a periodic violent event. Monetary institutions still ignore the benefits of events being random. Instead they double down, coordinating their interventions on a global scale with the inevitable consequence of making the credit cycle even more pronounced.

It is a huge mistake to call this repeating cycle a business cycle. It implies it is down to the failure of free markets, of capitalism, when in fact it is entirely due to monetary and credit inflation licensed and promoted by governments and central banks.

The rise of central banking

Following the Barings crisis in 1890 the concept of a lender of last resort was widely seen to be a solution to the extremes of free markets. Initially, this meant that the bank nominated by the government to represent it in financial markets and to oversee the supply of bank notes took on a role of coordinating the rescue of a bank in difficulty, in order to stop it becoming a full-blown financial crisis. When the gold standard applied, this was the practical limitation of a central bank’s role.

This was the general situation before the First World War. In fact, even under the gold standard there was significant inflation of base money in the background. Between 1850 and 1914 above ground gold stocks increased from about 5,000 tonnes to nearly 24,000 tonnes. Not all of it went into monetary gold, but the amount that did was decided by the economic actors that used money, not the monetary planners as is the case today.

It was against this background that the US Federal Reserve Bank was founded in December 1913. Following WW1, it became a powerful institution under the leadership of Benjamin Strong. Those early post-war years were turbulent times: due to war time inflationary financing, wholesale prices had doubled in the US between 1914-1920, while the UK’s had trebled. This was followed by a post-war slump and by mid-1921 unemployment in the UK soared to 25%. In the US, the Fordney-McCumber tariffs of 1922 restricted European debtors from trading with America, necessary to pay down their dollar debts. A number of countries descended into hyperinflation, and the Dawes plan designed to bail out the Europeans followed in 1924.

While America remained on a gold standard, Britain had suspended it, only going back on to it in 1925. While the politicians decided overall policy, it was left to central bankers such as Strong at the Fed and Montague Norman at the Bank of England to manage the fallout. Their relationship was the most tangible evidence of central banks beginning to cooperate with each other in the interests of mutual financial stability.

With the backing of ample gold reserves, Strong was an advocate of price targeting through the management of money supply, particularly following the 1920-21 slump. His inflationary policies assisted the management of the dollar-sterling exchange rate, supporting sterling which at that time was not backed by gold. Strong also made attempts to develop a discount market in the US, which inflated credit markets further. One way and another, with the Fed following expansionary money policies and commercial bankers becoming more confident of lending prospects, monetary inflation fuelled what came to be known as the roaring twenties.

That came to a sharp halt in October 1929 when the credit cycle turned, and the stock market crashed. Top to bottom, that month saw the Dow fall 35%. The trigger was Congress agreeing to the Smoot-Hawley Tariff Act on 30 October, widely recognised at the time as a suicide note for the economy and markets, by raising trade tariffs to an average of 60% from the Fordney-McCumber average of 38%. President Hoover signed it into law the following June and by mid-1932 Wall Street had fallen 89%.

With such a clear signal to the bankers it is not surprising they drew in their horns, contracting credit, indiscriminatingly bankrupting their customers. All the expansion of bank credit since 1920 was reversed by 1934. Small banks went bankrupt in their thousands, overwhelmed by bad debts, particularly in the agricultural sector, as well as through loss of confidence among their depositors.

The depression of the 1930s overshadowed politics in the capitalist economies for the next forty years. Instead of learning the lessons of the destruction wrought through cycles of bank credit, economists doubled down arguing more monetary and credit inflation was the solution. To help economic sentiment recover, Keynes favoured deficit spending by governments to take up the slack. He recommended a move away from savers being the suppliers of capital for investment, with the state taking a more active role in managing the economy through deficit spending and monetary inflation.

The printing of money, particularly dollars, continued under the guise of gold convertibility during the post-war Bretton Woods system. America had enormous gold reserves; by 1957 they were over 20,000 tonnes – one third of estimated above-ground gold stocks at that time. It felt secure in financing first the Korean then the Vietnam wars by printing dollars for export. Unsurprisingly, this led to the failure of the London gold pool in the late 1960s and President Nixon suspending the fig-leaf of dollar convertibility into gold in August 1971.

Once the dollar was freed from the discipline of gold, the repeating cycle of bank credit was augmented by the unfettered inflation of base money, a process that has continued to this day.

The current position

Since the turn of the millennium there have been two global bank credit crises: the first was the deflation of the dot-com bubble in 2001-02, and the second the 2008-09 financial crisis that wiped out Lehman. It was clear from these events that the debate over moral hazard was resolved in favour of supporting not just the banks, but big business and stock market valuations as well. Furthermore, America’s budget deficits were becoming a permanent feature.

The cyclical rhythm of bank credit expansion and crisis was taking place against a background of increasing wealth transfer from the productive sector by means of an underlying monetary inflation. The beneficiaries have been the government and non-productive finance as well as large speculators in the form of hedge funds. The evidence of this transfer of wealth through the effect on the general level of consumer prices was increasingly suppressed by statistical method. While the official consumer price inflation indicator has been pegged between one or two per cent, independent analysts (Shadowstats and Chapwood Index) reckon the true figure is closer to ten per cent.

That being the case, the use of a realistic price deflator tells us that the US economy, and presumably others, in recent years have been contracting in real terms. Furthermore, GDP, nominal or real, is an appalling indicator of economic progress, being no more than a measurement of the increasing quantities of government funny-money inflating the economy. It does not tell us how that money is used and the benefits that actually flow from it, nor the degree of price distortion it generates.

It is hard to avoid concluding that manipulating the statistics to hide the evidence is the last throw of the fiat currency dice, just as the Emperor Diocletian collapsed the Roman economy by suppressing evidence of rising prices through his edict on maximum prices in 301 AD.

This brings us to the current position, which is increasing looking like being on the edge of another cyclical crisis. If so, it marks the end of a period of far greater monetary and credit expansion than seen in previous cycles, coinciding with a Smoot-Hawley lookalike in the trade war between the two largest global economies.

The following big-picture factors are relevant to the likely timing for a credit crisis:

  • Global debt has accumulated to an estimated $255 trillion, up from about $173 trillion at the time of the Lehman crisis An alarming proportion of it is unproductive, being government, consumer borrowing, and funding for financial speculation as well as owed by unviable businesses.
  • With annual debt payments already accounting for most of the US budget deficit and that deficit getting larger, any rise in dollar interest rates would be ruinous for Federal government finances. Eurozone governments are in a similarly precarious financial position. Governments are ensnared in a classic debt trap.
  • An estimated $17 trillion of global bonds are negative yielding, which is unprecedented. This is a market distortion so extreme that it cannot be normalised without widespread financial disruption and debtor destruction. There is no exit from this condition.
  • The repo market crisis in New York indicates the banking system is in intensive care. The start of it coincided with the completion of the sale of Deutsche Bank’s prime dealership to BNP. It would be understandable if large deposits failed to transfer with the business and went to rivals instead. The problem has continued, indicating senior bankers’ groupthink is already turning from greed to fear.
  • US bank exposure to collateralised loan obligations and the leveraged loan market, comprised mainly of junk loans and bonds, is the equivalent of most of the estimated $1.9 trillion sum of bank capital. It confirms this article’s thesis that the level of ignorance over banking risk is late stage for the bank credit cycle and likely to be catastrophic.
  • The share prices of Deutsche Bank and Commerzbank indicate they are not just insolvent but will need to be rescued – and soon. Banks in other Eurozone jurisdictions are in a similar situation. However, all Eurozone countries have passed bail-in laws and do not expect to bail out individual banks. The upshot is at the first sign of a bail-in being considered, a flight of large deposits will very likely be triggered and bank bond prices for all Eurozone issuers will collapse. The room for error in crisis management by central banks is considerably greater than at the time of the Lehman crisis eleven years ago.

The forthcoming credit crisis could repeat 1929-32

An extreme amount of monetary creation over the last ten years and the US-China trade war over the last two is horribly reminiscent of late 1929, when the combination of the end of the credit cycle and escalating trade protectionism combined to wreak financial destruction on a global scale. We face a possible repeat of the 1929-32 experience and the depression that followed. The long-term expansion of global trade has already come to a halt. The secondary impact on economies such as Germany’s is beyond question.

Even if a halt to the trade war between the US and China is agreed in the coming weeks, the crisis has been triggered and our empirical evidence suggests it will get worse. It appears that common sense on trade policies is unlikely to prevail, because the conflict is far deeper than just trade, with the Hong Kong riots as part of the overall picture.

The Chinese believe America has destabilised Hong Kong with good reason: the US Treasury has become dependent to receiving the lion’s share of international portfolio flows to support the dollar and finance the US budget deficit, and China’s own investment demands are a threat. With the dollar’s hegemony under attack and China seeking those same portfolio flows to invest in her own infrastructure projects through the Hong Kong Shanghai Connect link, Hong Kong had to be destabilised.

For this and other reasons, trade tariffs are only part of a wider financial war, which is increasingly likely to escalate further rather than abate. With his trade policies having backfired badly, President Trump is now under pressure with time running out ahead of the election in a year’s time. He is threatened with impeachment by Congress over the Ukraine affair, and his popularity ahead of an election year remains subdued. He has even appealed to Jay Powell, Chairman at the Fed, to introduce negative interest rates to boost the economy. Backing down over China is unlikely, because it would be a presidential policy failure.

What will the developing crisis look like?

Clearly, central banks will respond to the next credit crisis with an even greater expansion of money quantity than at the time of the Lehman crisis eleven years ago. The consequence of this monetary inflation seems certain to lead to an even greater rate of loss of purchasing power for fiat currencies than currently indicated by independent assessments of price inflation.

Monetary inflation is likely to be directed at resolving two broad problems: providing a safety net for the banks and big businesses, as well as funding rising government deficits. Therefore, the amount of quantitative easing, which will be central to satisfying these objectives, will soar.

The effect on markets will differ from being a rerun of the 1929-32 example in one key respect. Ninety years ago, the two major currencies, the dollar and sterling, were on a gold exchange standard, which meant that during the crisis asset and commodity prices were effectively measured in gold. Today, there is no gold backing and prices will be measured in expanding quantities of fiat currency.

Prices measured in fiat currencies will be determined ultimately by the course of monetary policy. But in real terms, the outlook is for a repeat of the conditions that afflicted markets and economies during and following the 1929 Wall Street crash. A further difference from the depression years is that today western governments have extensive legal obligations to provide their citizens with welfare, the cost of which is escalating in real terms. Add to this the cost of rising unemployment and a decline in tax revenue and we can see that government deficits and debts will increase rapidly even in a moderate recession.

This brings us to an additional problem, likely to be evident in a secondary phase of the credit crisis. As it becomes obvious that the purchasing power of fiat currencies is being undermined at a rate which is impossible to conceal through statistical method, the discounted value of future money reflected in its time preference will rise irrespective of interest rate policy. Consequently, borrowers will be faced with rising interest rates to compensate for both increasing time preference and the additional loan risk faced by lending to different classes of borrowers.

Besides closing off virtually all debt financing for businesses and increasingly indebted consumers, this will play havoc with governments accustomed to borrowing at suppressed or even negative interest rates. Prices for existing bonds will collapse, and banks loaded up with government debt to benefit from Basle regulations will find their slender capital, if they have any left, will be quickly eroded.

The world of fiat currencies faces no less than its last hurrah. Indeed, some of the more prescient central bankers appear concerned the current system is running out of road, with the dollar as the world’s reserve currency no longer fit for this purpose. They want to find a means of resetting everything, exploring solutions such as digitising currency through blockchains, doing away with cash, and finding other avenues to try to control the vagaries of free markets.

None of them will work, because even a new form of money will be required to rescue government finances and prevent financial and economic failure through inflation. The accelerating pace of monetary creation to address these problems will remain the one problem central to the failure of a system of credit and monetary creation: the impossibility of resolving the debt trap that has ensnared us all.

Just as Germany found in 1923, monetary inflation as a means of funding government and other economic liabilities is a process that rapidly gets out of its control. Eventually, people understand the debasement fraud and begin to dispose of the fiat currency as rapidly as possible. It then has no value.

The ending of the fiat currency regime is bound to terminate the repeating cycles of bank credit legitimised since 1844. The socialism of money through inflationary debasement will be exposed as a fraud perpetrated on ordinary people.

Everything You Need To Know About Trump (But Were Afraid To Admit You Wondered)

Authored by Sylvain LaForest via Oriental Review,

The timing is right for everyone to understand what Donald Trump is doing, and try to decrypt the ambiguity of how he is is doing it. The controversial President has a much clearer agenda than anyone can imagine on both foreign policy and internal affairs, but since he has to stay in power or even stay alive to achieve his objectives, his strategy is so refined and subtle that next to no one can see it. His overall objective is so ambitious that he has to follow random elliptic courses to get from point A to point B, using patterns that throw people off on their comprehension of the man. That includes most independent journalists and so-called alternative analysts, as much as Western mainstream fake-news publishers and a large majority of the population.

About his strategy, I could make a quick and accurate analogy with medication: most pills are designed to cure a problem, but come with an array of secondary after-effects. Well, Trump is using medication solely for their after-effects, while the first intent of the pill is what’s keeping him in power and alive. By the end of this article, you’ll see that this metaphor applies for just about every decision, move or declaration he’s made. Once you understand what Trump is about, you’ll be able to appreciate the extraordinary presidency he’s conducting, like no predecessor ever came close to match.

To start off, let’s clear the one aspect of his mission that is straightforward and terribly direct: he’s the first and only American President to ever address humanity’s worst collective flaw, its total ignorance of reality. Because medias and education are both controlled by the handful of billionaires that are running the planet, we don’t know anything about our history that’s been twisted dry by the winners, and we don’t have a clue about our present world. As he stepped in the political arena, Donald popularized the expression «fake news» to convince the American citizens, and the world population as well, that medias always lie to you. The expression has now become commonplace, but do you realize how deeply shocking is the fact that nearly everything you think you know is totally fake?

Media lies don’t just cover history and politics, but they have shaped your false perception on topics like economy, food, climate, health, on everything. What if I told you that we know exactly who shot JFK from the grassy knoll, that the foreknowledge of Pearl Harbor was proven in court, that the CO2 greenhouse effect is scientifically absurd, that our money is created through loans by banks who don’t even have the funds, or that science proves with a 100% certainty that 911 was an inside job? Ever heard of a mainstream journalist, PBS documentary or university teacher telling you about any of this? 44 Presidents came and went without even raising one word about this huge problem, before the 45th came along. Trump knows that freeing the people out of this unfathomable ignorance is the first step to overall freedom, so he started calling mainstream journalists and their news outlets for what they are: pathological liars.

«Thousands of mental health professionals agree with Woodward and the New York Times op-ed author: Trump is dangerous.»

– Bandy X. Lee, The Conversation 2018

«The question is not whether the President is crazy but whether he is crazy like a fox or crazy like crazy.»

– Masha Gessen, The New Yorker 2017

Let’s make one thing clear: to the establishment, Trump isn’t mentally challenged, but he’s definitely seen as a possible nemesis of their world.Ever since he moved in the White House, Trump has been depicted as a narcissist, a racist, a sexist and a climate-skeptic, loaded with shady past stories and mental issues. Even though an approximate 60% of the American people don’t trust medias anymore, many have bought the story that Trump might be slightly crazy or unfit to rule, and the statistic climbs even higher when you get out of the USA. Of course, Donald isn’t doing anything special to change the deeply negative perception that so many journalists and people alike have about him. He’s openly outrageous and provocative on Twitter, he sounds impulsive and dumb most of the time, acts irrationally, lies on a daily basis, and throws out sanctions and threats as if they were candy canes out of an elf’s side bag in a mall in December. Right away, we can destroy one persistent media myth: the image Trump is projecting is self-destructive and it’s the exact opposite of how pathological narcissists act, since they thrive to be loved and admired by everyone. Donald simply doesn’t care if you like him or not, which makes him the ultimate anti-narcissist, by its psychological definition. And that’s not even up for opinion, it’s a quite simple and undeniable fact.

His general plan exhales from one of his favorite motto: «We will give power back to the people», because the United States and its imperialist web woven over the world have been in the hands of a few globalist bankers, military industrials and multinationals for more than a century. To achieve his plan, he has to end wars abroad, bring back the kids, dismantle the NATO and CIA, get control over the Federal Reserve, cut every link with foreign allies, abolish the Swift financial system, demolish the propaganda power of the medias, drain the swamp of the deep state that’s running the spying agencies and disable the shadow government that’s lurking in the Council on foreign relations and Trilateral Commission’s offices. In short, he has to destroy the New World Order and its globalist ideology. The task is huge and dangerous to say the least. Thankfully, he’s not alone.

Before we get on his techniques and tactics, we have to know a little bit more about what’s really been going on in the world.

Mighty Russia

Since Peter the Great, the whole history of Russia is a permanent demonstration of its will to maintain its political and economical independence from international banks and imperialism, pushing this great nation to help many smaller countries fighting to keep their own independence. Twice Russia helped the United States against the British/Rothschild Empire; first by openly supporting them in the Independence War, and again in the Civil War, when Rothschild’s were funding the Confederates to politically break down the nation to bring it back in the British colonial Empire’s coop. Russia also destroyed Napoleon and the Nazis, whom were both funded by international banks as tools to crush economically independent nations. Independence is in their DNA. After almost a decade of Western oligarchy taking over Russia’s economy after the fall of USSR in 1991, Putin took power and drained the Russian swamp. Since then, each and every move that he has made aims to destroy the American Empire, or the entity that replaced the British Empire in 1944, which is the non-conspiracy theory name of the New World Order. The new empire is basically the same central banking scheme, with just a slightly different set of owners that switched the British army for NATO, as their world Gestapo.

Until Trump came along, Putin was single handedly fighting the New World Order who’s century-old obsession is the control of the world oil market, since oil is the blood running through the veins of the world economy. Oil is a thousand times more valuable than gold. Cargo ships, airplanes and armies don’t run on batteries. Therefore, to counter the globalists, Putin developed the best offensive and defensive missile systems, with the result that Russia can now protect every independent oil producer such as Syria, Venezuela and Iran. Central bankers and the US shadow government are still hanging on to their dying plan, because without a victory in Syria, there’s no enlarging Israel, thus ending the century-old fantasy of uniting the Middle East oil production in the hands of the New World Order. Ask Lord Balfour if you have any doubt. That’s the real stake of the Syrian war, it’s nothing short of do or die.

A century of lies

Now, because a shadow government is giving direct orders to the CIA and NATO in the name of banks and industries, Trump has no control over the military. The deep state is a rosary of permanent officials ruling Washington and the Pentagon, that only respond to their orders. If you still believe that the «Commander in chief» is in charge, explain why every time Trump ordered to pull out of Syria and Afghanistan, more troops came in? As I’m writing this text, US and NATO troops pulled out of the Kurdish zones, went to Iraq, and came back with heavier equipment around the oil reserves of Syria. Donald has a lot more of swamp draining to do before the Pentagon actually listens to anything he says. Trump should be outraged and denunciate out loud that the military command doesn’t bother about what he thinks, but this would ignite an unimaginable chaos, and perhaps even a civil war in the US, if the citizens who own roughly 393 million weapons in their homes were to learn that private interests are in charge of the military. It would also lead to a very simple but dramatic question: «What is exactly the purpose of democracy?» These weapons are the titanium fences guarding the population from a totalitarian Big Brother.

One has to realize how much trouble the US army and spying agencies have been going through in creating false-flag operations for more than a century, so that their interventions always looked righteous, in the name of democracy promotion, human rights and justice around the planet.They blew up the Maine ship in 1898 to enter the Hispanic-American war, then the Lusitania in 1915 to enter WW1. They pushed Japan to attack Pearl Harbor in 1941, knew about the attack 10 days in advance and said nothing to the Hawaiian base. They made up a North Vietnamese torpedo aggression on their ships in the Tonkin Bay to justify sending boots on the Vietnamese ground. They made up a story of Iraqi soldiers destroying nurseries to invade Kuwait in 1991. They invented mass destruction weapons to attack Iraq again in 2003, and organized 911 to shred the 1789 Constitution, attack Afghanistan and launch a War on terror. This totally fake mask of virtue has to be preserved for controlling the opinion of the American citizens and their domestic arsenal, who have to believe that they wear the white cowboy hats of democracy.

So how did Trump react when he learned that American troops were re-entering Syria? He repeated again and again in every interview and declaration that «we have secured the oil fields of Syria», and even added «I’m thinking about sending Exxon in the region to take care of the Syrian oil». Neocons, Zionists and banks were thrilled, but everyone else is outraged, because the vast majority doesn’t understand that Trump is swallowing this pill solely for its after-effects. On this single bottle is written in fine print that «the use of this drug might force American-NATO troops out of Syria under the pressure of the united world community and flabbergasted American population.» Trump made the situation unsustainable for NATO to stay in Syria, and how he’s been repeating this deeply shocking, politically incorrect position clearly shows his real intention. He destroyed over a century of fake virtue in a single sentence.

Trump is a historical anomaly

Trump is only the fourth president in US history to actually fight for the people, unlike all 41 others, who mainly channeled the people’s money in a pipeline of dollars that ends up in private banks. First there was Andrew Jackson who was shot after he destroyed the Second National Bank that he openly accused of being controlled by the Rothschild and The City in London. Then there was Abraham Lincoln, who was murdered after printing his «greenbacks», national money that the state issued to pay the soldiers because Lincoln had refused to borrow money from Rothschild at 24% interest. Then there was JFK, who was killed for a dozen reasons that mostly went against the banks and military industries profits, and now is Donald Trump, who shouted that he would «Give America back to the people».

Like most businessmen, Trump hates banks, for the formidable power that they have over the economy. Just take a peek at Henry Ford’s only book, «The International Jew» to find out how deep was his distrust and hatred of international banks. Trump’s businesses have suffered a lot because of these institutions that basically sell you an umbrella, only to take it back as soon as it rains. Private banking’s control over money creation and interest rates, through every Central Bank of almost every country is a permanent power over nations, far above the ephemeral cycle of politicians. By the year 2000, these nation looters were only a few steps away from their planetary totalitarian dream, but a couple of details stood still: Vladimir Putin and 393 million American weapons. Then came along orange-faced Donald, the last piece in the puzzle that we the people, needed to terminate 250 years of the banking empire.

Techniques and tactics

Early in his mandate, Trump naively tried the direct approach, by surrounding himself with establishment rebels like Michael Flynn and Steve Bannon, then by annoying each and everyone of his foreign allies, shredding their free-trade treaties, imposing taxes on imports and insulting them in their face in the G7 meetings of 2017 and 2018. The reaction was strong and everyone doubled-down on the Russiagate absurdity, as it looked like the only option to stop the man on his path of globalism destruction. Predictably, the direct approach went nowhere; Flynn and Bannon had to go, and Trump was entangled in a handful of inquiries that made him realize that he wouldn’t get anything accomplished with transparency. He had to find a way to annihilate the most dangerous people on the planet, but at the same time, stay in power and alive. He had to smarten up.

That’s when his genius exploded on the world. He completely changed his strategy and approach, and started taking absurd decisions and tweeting outrageous declarations. As threatening and dangerous as some of these first looked, Trump didn’t use them for their first degree meaning, but was aiming at the genuine second degree effects that his moves would have. And he didn’t care about what people thought of him as he did, for only results count in the end. He would even play buffoon over Twitter, look naive, lunatic or downright idiotic, perhaps in the hope to impregnate the belief that he didn’t know what he’s doing, and that he couldn’t be that dangerous. He’s willfully being politically incorrect to show the ugly face that the United States are hiding behind their mask.

The first test on his new approach was to try to stop the growing danger of an attack and invasion of North Korea by NATO. Trump insulted Kim Jung-Un through Twitter, called him Rocket Man, and threatened to nuke North Korea to the ground. His raging political incorrectness went on for weeks until it sank in everyone’s minds that those were not good reasons to attack a country. He paralyzed NATO. Trump then met Rocket Man, and they walked in the park with the start of a beautiful friendship, laughing together, while accomplishing absolutely nothing in their negotiations, since they have nothing to negotiate about. Many were talking about the Nobel price for peace, because many don’t know that it’s usually handed to whitewash war criminals like Obama or Kissinger.

Then came Venezuela. Trump pushed his tactic a step further, to make sure that no one could support an attack on the free country. He put the worst neo-cons available on the case: Elliott Abrams, formerly convicted of conspiracy in the Iran-Contras deal in the ’80s and John Bolton, famous first-degree warmonger. Trump then confirmed Juan Guaido as his choice for president of Venezuela; an empty puppet so dumb that he can’t even see how much he’s being used. Again, Trump threatened to burn the country to rubbles, while the world community watched in awe the total lack of subtlety and diplomacy in Trump’s behavior, with the result that Brazil and Colombia backed away and said they wanted nothing to do with an attack on Venezuela. Trump’s medicine left only 40 satellite countries worldwide, with Presidents and Prime Ministers brain dead enough to shyly support Guaido the Jester. Donald checked the box beside Venezuela on his list and kept scrolling down.

Then came the two gifts to Israel: Jerusalem as a capital, and the Syrian Golan Heights as its confirmed possession. Netanyahu whom isn’t the sharpest pencil in the box jumped of joy, and everyone yelled that Trump was a Zionist. The real after-effect result was that the whole of the Middle East united against Israel, which no one can support anymore. Even their historical accomplice Saudi Arabia had to openly disapprove this huge slap in the face of Islam. The two Trump gifts were in fact back stabs in the Israel state, whose future doesn’t look too bright nowadays, since NATO will have to move out of the region. Check again.

As reality sinks in

But there’s more! With his lack of control over NATO and the army, Trump is very limited in his actions. At first glance, the outstanding multiplication of economical sanctions on countries like Russia, Turkey, China, Iran, Venezuela and other nations look tough and merciless, but the reality of these sanctions pushed those countries out of the Swift financial system designed to keep enslaving nations through the dollar hegemony, and they’re all slipping away from the international banks’ grip. It forced Russia, China and India to create an alternative system of trade payments based on national currencies, instead of the almighty dollar. The bipolar reality of the world is now official, and with his upcoming next sanctions, Trump will push more countries out of the Swift system to join the other side, while important banks are starting to fall in Europe.

Even in the political hurricane Trump is in, he still finds time to display his almost childish arrogant humor. Look at his grandiose mockery of Hillary Clinton and Barrack Obama, as he sat down with the most straight-faced generals he could find, to take a picture in a so-called «situation room» as they faked the monitoring of the death of Baghdadi somewhere he couldn’t be, exactly like his criminal predecessors did a long time ago with the fake Bin Laden killing. He even pushed the farce to adding the details of a dog recognizing Daesch’s fake caliph by sniffing his underwear. Now that you understand what Trump is really about, you will also be able to appreciate the show, in all of its splendor and true meaning.

«We have secured the oil fields of Syria». Indeed, with this short sentence, Trump joined his voice to that of General Smedley Butler who rocked the world 80 years ago with a tiny book called «War is a racket». Looting and stealing oil is definitely not as virtuous as promoting democracy and justice. What amazes me is those numerous «alternative» journalists and analysts, who know on the tip of their fingers every technical problem about 911, or scientific reality on the absurd global warming story, but still don’t have a clue about what Trump is doing, 3 years in his mandate, because they bought the mainstream media that convinced everyone that Trump is mentally challenged.

For those who still entertain doubts about Trump’s agenda, do you really believe that the obvious implosion of American Imperialism over the planet is a coincidence? Do you still believe that its because of the Russian influence on the 2016 election that the CIA, the FBI, every media, the American Congress, the Federal Reserve, the Democratic party and the warmongering half of the Republicans are working against him and are even trying to impeach him? Like most stuff that comes out of medias, reality is the exact opposite of what you’re being told: Trump might be the most dedicated man to ever set foot in the Oval office. And certainly the most ambitious and politically incorrect.

Conclusion

The world will change drastically between 2020 and 2024. Trump’s second and last mandate coincides with Putin’s last mandate as President of Russia. There may never be another coincidence like this for a long time, and both know that it’s now or perhaps never. Together, they have to end NATO, Swift, and the European Union should crumble. Terrorism and anthropogenic global warming will jump in the vortex and disappear with their creators. Trump will have to drain the swamp in the CIA and Pentagon, and he has to nationalize the Federal Reserve. Along with Xi and Modi, they could put a final end to private banking in public affairs, by refusing to pay a single penny of their debts, and reset the world economy by shifting to national currencies produced by governments, as private banks will fall like dominos, with no more Obama-like servant to bail them out at your expense. Once this is done, unbearable peace and prosperity could roam the planet, as our taxes pay for the development of our countries instead of buying useless military gear and paying interests on loans by bankers who didn’t even have the money in the first place.

If you still don’t understand Donald Trump after reading the above, you’re hopeless. Or you’re might be Trudeau, Macron, Guaido, or any other useful idiot, unaware that the carpet under your feet has already slipped away.

The “Officer-Friendly” Police Fantasy

Authored by James Bovard via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

Police in Tempe, Arizona, announced plans in July for a “positive-ticketing” campaign to pull over drivers who had violated no traffic laws. A Phoenix TV station reported that the police would give the people they targeted free soft-drink coupons for Circle K as a reward for their “good driving behavior.” Police in other areas have run similar programs in recent years but the TV news report on Tempe’s plan spurred a torrent of testy Tweets:

“Keep your hands on the wheel and don’t make any sudden moves while you are being rewarded, it could cost you your life.”

“We gunned him down…. well, he refused to stop for his coupon. Self defense. Case dismissed.”

“Um, WHAT?!? They better not stop me for driving legally cause that’s illegal! #harassment”

“What if you don’t stop?”

“Cops to profile for illegal immigrants under the guise of campaign to promote good driving.”

“There goes probable cause right out the window. Police state 101.”

“I would get a panic attack. My reward for driving well is not dying. That’s all I want.”

“Unless it’s a ruse to illegally search your vehicles. And if they notice anything out of line during the mock pullover you’ll be arrested.”

“What’s next? Are they going to start walking into people’s houses to congratulate them for not breaking the law?”

One commenter suggested he could be fined for “resisting a coupon” for free drinks.

A few months before its “positive ticketing campaign” announcement, Tempe police were harshly criticized after one of their officers shot a 14-year-old boy in the back, killing him as he was running away while holding a replica airsoft pistol. An Arizona ACLU employee summarized the situation on Twitter:

“Tempe cops: the community doesn’t trust us after we shot and killed an unarmed teen (sic) what do we do

Community: stop killing us

Tempe cops: FREE THIRSTBUSTERS AND UNREASONABLE STOPS”

The Tempe Police Department responded to the uproar by issuing a statement stating that they never intended to pull over motorists without good cause. Instead, the free-coupon program would be targeted to pedestrians, bicyclists, and skateboarders. But the furious reaction of people across the nation signaled the profound distrust of police.

This is presidential campaign season, and Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg claims that he will be able to end the pervasive distrust of the police. In one of the first candidate debates, he said he is “determined to bring about a day when” any driver, white or black, has “a feeling not of fear but of safety” when he sees a police officer approaching.

And how would Buttigieg, the mayor of South Bend, Indiana, achieve this profound change? He has not yet detailed his panacea. Perhaps he believes that sensitivity training or racial consciousness-raising classes could do the trick. But Buttigieg has ignored the real source of the problem: politicians have given police so much power that citizens naturally fear them.

Arresting anyone

In 2001, the Supreme Court ruled that police can justifiably arrest anyone believed to have “committed even a very minor criminal offense.” That case involved Gail Atwater, a Texas mother who was driving slowly near her home but, because her children were not wearing seatbelts, she was taken away by an abusive cop whose shouting left her children “terrified and hysterical.” A majority of Supreme Court justices recognized that “Atwater’s claim to live free of pointless indignity and confinement clearly outweighs anything the City can raise against it specific to her case” — but upheld the arrest anyhow.

Justice Sandra Day O’Connor warned that “such unbounded discretion carries with it grave potential for abuse.” Unfortunately, there are endless pretexts for people to be arrested nowadays because federal, state, and local politicians and officials have criminalized daily life with hundreds of thousands of edicts. Capt. Steve Powell of the Colorado State Patrol commented, “Ninety percent of the cars out there are doing something that you can pull them over for. There are a jillion reasons people can be stopped — taillights, windshields cracked, any number of things.” Gerard Arenberg, executive director of the National Association of Chiefs of Police, told me in the 1990s, “We have so damn many laws, you can’t drive the streets without breaking the law. I could write you a hundred tickets depending on what you said to me when I stopped you.”

Justice O’Connor noted in her dissent that the Fourth Amendment “guarantees the right to be free from ‘unreasonable searches and seizures.’” But when politicians have enacted endless laws that make almost everyone a criminal, then the Fourth Amendment is practically null and void.

Asset-forfeiture laws give police sweeping arbitrary power over Americans’ wallets, cars, and homes. Indiana Solicitor General Thomas Fisher told the Supreme Court in 2018 that the government is entitled to confiscate cars that exceed speed limits by 5 miles per hour — a standard that would justify seizing most vehicles. Between 2001 and 2014, lawmen seized more than $2.5 billion in cash from 60,000 travelers on the nation’s highways — with no criminal charges in the vast majority of cases, the Washington Post reported.

Police have been trained to confiscate private property of drivers by absurdly claiming that “trash on the floor of a vehicle, abundant energy drinks, or air fresheners hanging from rearview mirrors” are signs of criminal activity. Blacks and Hispanics have been victimized far more often by such laws. Tenaha, Texas, police ran an operation that stopped and plundered almost anyone passing through their East Texas locale. The names of the court filings capture Tenaha’s voraciousness, such as State of Texas v. One Gold Crucifix. “The police had confiscated a simple gold cross that a woman wore around her neck after pulling her over for a minor traffic violation. No contraband was reported, no criminal charges were filed, and no traffic ticket was issued,” the New Yorker noted. If drivers “refused to part with their money, officers threatened to arrest them on false money laundering charges and other serious felonies,” an ACLU lawsuit charged. Tenaha police stopped a 27-year-old black man who worked as a chicken slicer in a Tysons plant in Arkansas and fleeced him of $3,900 after detecting him “driving too close to the white line.”

Subverting the Fourth Amendment

Police have gutted the Fourth Amendment with dogs that will give them a positive alert almost any time they seek a pretext to forcibly search someone’s vehicle. The fact that canines are sometimes trained to give false alerts is irrelevant as long as the government always wins. Canine alerts to currency are routinely used to justify seizures even though most U.S. currency has trace amounts of drug contamination. For 30 years, the courts have condemned the abuses based on currency seizures due to dog alerts. But the official robberies continue.

There is a long history of federal, state, and local officials partnering to fabricate pretexts to stop drivers. From 1992 through 2013, the Drug Enforcement Administration illegally commandeered the phone records of all Americans who called most of the foreign nations in the world, as USA Today revealed in 2015. To keep its phone-record seizures secret, the DEA partnered with local police to concoct phony reasons for traffic stops that sometimes included staging fake auto accidents and even car thefts. Why should citizens trust law-enforcement agencies that engaged in decades of systemic fraud? If bureaucrats and cops gave themselves an unlimited right to lie regarding the source of their evidence, what other lies have they permitted themselves in the war against any American who possesses substances of which politicians disapprove?

Uncle Sam has brought the surveillance state to the nearest police car dashboard. Federal grants have enabled many states and localities to equip police cars with license-plate scanners that provide plenty of bogus pretexts to harass hapless drivers.

License-plate readers often misread plates. Brian Hofer was pulled off Interstate 80 in California and handcuffed and held at gunpoint after his rental vehicle was misreported as stolen. Hofer commented in 2019, “I’m sitting ice-cold and saying nothing because I do not want any itchy trigger fingers.” With an error rate approaching 10 percent, license-plate readers effectively generate potentially thousands of false accusations each day.

Subverting the Second Amendment

Local officials exploit surveillance data to subvert the Second Amendment. John Filippidis was driving with his family through Maryland when he was pulled over by a Maryland transportation policeman outside a Baltimore tunnel. The policeman ordered Filippidis out of his car and angrily demanded to know where his gun was. Filippidis has a Right to Carry (RTC) permit from Florida — where he had left his firearm. Police spent hours questioning him and searching his minivan before permitting him to move on, leaving his wife and daughters utterly distraught. Maryland police have targeted and rigorously searched other out-of-state drivers with RTC permits (which Maryland does not recognize). Federal grants enabled Maryland to equip hundreds of police cars with license-plate scanners that create almost 100 million records per year detailing exactly where and when each vehicle travels.

The war on drugs and its endless crackdowns and intrusions spurred far more distrust of police but politicians learned nothing from its debacles. Sixteen states have raised the smoking age to 21, and there is a push (supported by Sen. Majority Leader Mitch McConnell) to dictate a federal smoking age of 21. Why not simply issue a federal mandate for an annual additional 10 million unnecessary confrontations between police and youth? Criminalizing private vices is the surest way to make law enforcement a public menace.

Citizens are wary of police cars in their rear-view mirrors because politicians and judges made average Americans legally inferior to anyone with a badge and a gun. Police almost always receive legal immunity when they unjustifiably shoot people — it is practically a perk of their job. The existence of video footage from dashboard cams and police cameras is helping to ravage the final remnants of police credibility in many areas. The pervasive cover-ups and lies that follow dubious killings by police do more to spur wariness than a million “Officer Friendly” public-service announcements can counteract.

The best way to encourage citizens to have “a feeling not of fear but of safety” when they see a cop is to repeal legions of laws empowering police to unjustifiably accost and wrongfully subjugate peaceful citizens. But that is unlikely to happen as long as most politicians are more interested in power than in domestic tranquility.

Federal Court Rules Suspicionless Searches of Travelers’ Phones and Laptops Unconstitutional

Authored by Activist Post

In a major victory for privacy rights at the border, a federal court in Boston ruled today that suspicionless searches of travelers’ electronic devices by federal agents at airports and other U.S. ports of entry are unconstitutional.

The ruling came in a lawsuit, Alasaad v. McAleenan, filed by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), and ACLU of Massachusetts, on behalf of 11 travelers whose smartphones and laptops were searched without individualized suspicion at U.S. ports of entry.

“This ruling significantly advances Fourth Amendment protections for millions of international travelers who enter the United States every year,” said Esha Bhandari, staff attorney with the ACLU’s Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project. “By putting an end to the government’s ability to conduct suspicionless fishing expeditions, the court reaffirms that the border is not a lawless place and that we don’t lose our privacy rights when we travel.”

“This is a great day for travelers who now can cross the international border without fear that the government will, in the absence of any suspicion, ransack the extraordinarily sensitive information we all carry in our electronic devices,” said Sophia Cope, EFF Senior Staff Attorney.

The district court order puts an end to Customs and Border Control (CBP) and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) asserted authority to search and seize travelers’ devices for purposes far afield from the enforcement of immigration and customs laws. Border officers must now demonstrate individualized suspicion of illegal contraband before they can search a traveler’s device.

The number of electronic device searches at U.S. ports of entry has increased significantly. Last year, CBP conducted more than 33,000 searches, almost four times the number from just three years prior.

International travelers returning to the United States have reported numerous cases of abusive searches in recent months. While searching through the phone of Zainab Merchant, a plaintiff in the Alasaad case, a border agent knowingly rifled through privileged attorney-client communications. An immigration officer at Boston Logan Airport reportedly searched an incoming Harvard freshman’s cell phone and laptop, reprimanded the student for friends’ social media postings expressing views critical of the U.S. government, and denied the student entry into the country following the search.

For the order:
https://www.eff.org/document/alasaad-v-nielsen-summary-judgment-order

For more on this case:
https://www.eff.org/cases/alasaad-v-duke

For more about border searches:
https://www.eff.org/issues/border-searches

WWII Marshall Malinovsky

Natalya Malinovskaya, daughter of Soviet WWII-era Marshal Rodion Malinovsky, has carefully preserved her father’s archive of battlefield reports, diaries, and secret papers, handing some of them over to the Russian Historical Society this week. Speaking to Natalya, a Rossiya Segodnya journalist discovered which papers she holds most valuable.

The documents from Malinovsky’s personal archive have been uploaded to the Russian Historical Society’s website, and include translations of German documents, reports on the operation to liberate western Ukraine, Malinovsky’s communique to the commander of the Kwangtung Army, and more.

Malinovsky spent much of his adult life in combat, RIA Novosti military affairs contributor Andrei Kotz recalled. At the start of the First World War, the young Ukrainian Odessa native joined the Imperial Army at the age of only 15, convincing his superiors to enlist him as a volunteer despite his age. After two years on the Russian Front, he was sent to France to fight in the Russian Expeditionary Corps, where he was seriously wounded. Returning to Odessa in 1919, he joined the Red Army, fighting White Admiral Kolchak in Siberia. In 1937, at the rank of colonel, he volunteered for his third war, heading off to fight the fascist forces of General Francisco Franco and his Italian and German allies in the Spanish Civil War.

Paratroopers, order bearers Galina Metlyaeva and Evgenia Leonova
RUSSIAN DEFENCE MINISTRY
Russian MoD Declassifies Docs About Soviet Women’s Feats During WWII

Meeting the Great Patriotic War (the Eastern Front of World War II) as a brigade commander, Malinovsky quickly moved up the ranks, and became commander of the troops of the Southern Front in December 1941 after the latter suffered a series of devastating defeats.

Most Memorable Day

“In 1946, my father was asked by Ogonyok magazine what was his most memorable and happy day from the Great Patriotic War,” Natalya Malinovskaya said, speaking to Kotz. “I think the draft of his response (the original did not survive) is one of the most valuable documents in the whole archive,” she noted. “His answer was as follows: ‘I would very much like to say the happiest day was May 9, 1945 (Victory Day), or April 10, 1944, when my native city of Odessa was freed. But the most memorable day of the whole war for me was that bitter day when we were forced to leave Rostov-on-Don. I thought about that city every hour, every minute, and can confidently say that the first truly happy day of the war for me was February 14, 1943, when we took Rostov-on-Don back from the enemy.”

Know Your Enemy

A significant portion of Marshal Malinovsky’s papers consists of German documents translated by Soviet military intelligence. Compiling a special folder devoted to ‘Knowledge of the Enemy’, Malinovsky showed great interest in the views of German officers and ordinary soldiers, including regarding the Soviet Nikopol-Krivoy Rog offensive, which he directed together with General Fedor Tolbukhin. In the space of a month, troops of the 3rd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts defeated 12 German divisions, trapped the 17th Wehrmacht Army in Crimea and liberated the strategic industrial areas of Nikopol and Krivoy Rog.

For the Motherland: Red Army on Soviet Posters
© SPUTNIK/
‘For the Motherland’: Red Army on Soviet Posters15

A report from Malinovsky’s archive by the commander of the Wehrmacht’s 16th motorized division dated January 20, 1944 reads: “At the moment, the division has been bled white…The fighting value of the division today consists only of its artillery and armored subunits. The infantry can no longer resist strong attacks.”

Another document – this one an address by 30th Army Corps Commander Holidt to the commanders of the 26th tank and 16th motorized divisions dated March 4 in the battle’s aftermath reads: “I demand a thorough investigation and punishment for the guilty commanders and their deputies by military tribunal. The measures taken must be reported to me immediately. Before March 7, the following materials must be provided: on how the enemy managed to drive a wedge through our defenses and forge a speedy breakthrough in the area of Zelenaya? What caused the disorderly retreat? Why, on the night of March 4, did the right flank of the 16th motorized division retreat in a disorderly fashion, contrary to the order of the corps? All guilty commanders are to be stripped of their posts.”

And Malinovsky closely monitored the moods not only of commanders, but of ordinary soldiers as well. In his archive is a page from a diary of a serviceman captured near Budapest. Malinovsky underlined the following excerpt with a colored pencil: “The senior staff doctor…is looking to break down the walls and install six to eight new shower units. This at a time when Ivan is capable of quickly putting an end to this bathhouse idyll. For eight days the well-equipped, perfectly functioning establishment will not be able to operate due to rebuilding, and on the ninth day when everything is completed the Russians will come and everything will be blown sky-high.”

Excerpt from a document addressed to Malinovsky.

© PHOTO
Excerpt from a document addressed to Malinovsky.

Capture the Emperor

Another document of special historical significance is an episode shedding new light on the Soviet-Japanese War of August 1945. In July of that year, Malinovsky took command of the Trans-Baikal Front, which would rapidly drive through the Gobi Desert into central Manchuria a month later in Operation August Storm. Achieving complete surprise, Soviet forces were able to encircle and completely destroy the million-strong Kwangtung Army in two weeks. Malinovsky was the first to call on the Japanese to surrender.

“The archive has two stunning documents relating to that campaign,” Natalya Malinovskaya said. “The first is the hand-written letter by my father, written on an ordinary sheet of paper, ordering the Kwangtung army to surrender. It indicates the areas where Japanese soldiers were ordered to lay down their arms.”

“The second could serve as a script for a Three Musketeers-style film,” Malinovskaya quipped. “It’s written on the same ordinary checkered notebook paper, featuring the report of Major Alexander Pritula. He and his paratroopers landed at Mukden airfield on August 19, 1945, took it under their control, and in the course of their inspection, rather unexpectedly stumbled upon Puyi, the Emperor of Manchukuo. The Soviet army had been searching for him for over a week, and he was already on a plane preparing to fly to Japan. He was captured at the last moment and put on a Soviet plane. Pritula hastily wrote a report to my father which read: ‘During the inspection of the airfield, Emperor Puyi was found. I’m sending him to you under escort.’ And a postscript adds: ‘Please quickly send the commandant of the city of Mukden and replenish our ranks. There were very few paratroopers. Are we musketeers or what?”

Puyi, emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.

CC0
Puyi, emperor of the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo.

Romans Made Up Jesus as Wartime Propaganda to Pacify Jews, US Scholar Claims

Author Joseph Atwill has steered away from the mainstream scholarly consensus that Jesus Christ did exist, suggesting that his biography was constructed, sometimes through unobvious parallels, on that of first-century Roman Emperor Titus Flavius.

Joseph Atwill, an American self-described Bible scholar, has claimed that Christianity emerged as a Roman conspiracy to quell the Jewish resistance, and that Jesus Christ was fabricated as a “psychological warfare” after conventional means proved ineffective.

“Jewish sects in Palestine at the time, who were waiting for a prophesied warrior Messiah, were a constant source of violent insurrection during the first century,” said Atwill, who authored a controversial book titled Caesar’s Messiah, which argues that the New Testament gospels were written as wartime propaganda by first-century Roman scholars.

He claimed that the goal was to conceive a peaceful Jewish sect in a bid to balance out strong pro-independence sentiment in the province of Roman Judea, which saw a series of revolts by Jewish people against Rome.

“When the Romans had exhausted conventional means of quashing rebellion, they switched to psychological warfare. They surmised that the way to stop the spread of zealous Jewish missionary activity was to create a competing belief system,” Atwill explained.

“That’s when the ‘peaceful’ Messiah story was invented. Instead of inspiring warfare, this Messiah urged turn-the-other-cheek pacifism and encouraged Jews to ‘give onto Caesar’ and pay their taxes to Rome.”

Atwill argued that Jesus Christ “may be the only fictional character in literature whose entire life story can be traced to other sources. Once those sources are all laid bare, there’s simply nothing left.”

He purported that the Romans fabricated the story of Jesus Christ sometime after the Jewish revolt of 66-73 A.D., which came to be the first of three major rebellions.

Atwill said he made the discovery when he was studying The Wars of the Jews by historian Flavius Josephus, the only known complete first-century account of the history of Judaism.

According to Atwill, the biography of Jesus, as detailed in the New Testament, was modelled on the biography of Emperor Titus Flavius Vespasianus, who destroyed Jerusalem and the Second Temple and soon suppressed the first revolt.

“I started to notice a sequence of parallels between the two texts,” Atwill recounted. “Although it’s been recognised by Christian scholars for centuries that the prophecies of Jesus appear to be fulfilled by what Josephus wrote about in the First Jewish-Roman war, I was seeing dozens more.”

“What seems to have eluded many scholars is that the sequence of events and locations of Jesus ministry are more or less the same as the sequence of events and locations of the military campaign of Titus Flavius as described by Josephus. This is clear evidence of a deliberately constructed pattern,” he said, adding that the biography of Jesus was constructed “tip to stern, on prior stories, but especially on the biography of a Roman Caesar.”

Atwill maintained that Romans left “a kind of puzzle literature… and the solution to that puzzle is ‘We invented Jesus Christ, and we’re proud of it.’”

He went on to describe Christianity as an “insidious form of mind control that has led to blind acceptance of serfdom, poverty, and war throughout history.”

“To this day, especially in the United States, it is used to create support for war in the Middle East,” he said.

The author acknowledged that his conclusions were not meant to “cause Christians any harm,” but raising awareness is important to tell “the truth about our past so we can understand how and why governments create false histories and false gods. They often do it to obtain a social order that is against the best interests of the common people.”

https://sputniknews.com/world/201907131076233501-romans-invented-jesus-us-scholar-claims/