Meanwhile in the US, the National Guard has been deployed 

First, Biden officially endorsed Nikki Haley!

She’s a democrat … here is  why.

Kamala Harris impression is all too accurate … 

Ed. note: Pretty good analysis except for one fundamental question: Who are “THEY”?!

We want to know names and how they are managing all of this assault on the rest of us. We only see the designated, hired impersonators, the holograms (in Tucker Carson’s word) of the real villains. But who are the villains, some 267 families, or 36 families? Is there a Don Corleone at the head of the clan? If so, who is the Don Corleone of the cabal? What does the oligarchs’ organizational chart look like? Are the Rothschilds that powerful? Or the British Royal House ? How does Soros, the Rockefellers or Israel fit into this scheme?

Until we know that, anything else is just academic speculation, beating around the bushes.

Authored by Pepe Escobar,

Emmanuel Todd, historian, demographer, anthropologist, sociologist and political analyst, is part of a dying breed: one of the very few remaining exponents of old school French intelligentsia – an heir to those like Braudel, Sartre, Deleuze and Foucault who dazzled successive young Cold War generations from the West to the East.

The first nugget concerning his latest book, La Défaite de L’Occident (“The Defeat of the West”), is the minor miracle of actually being published last week in France, right within the NATO sphere: a hand grenade of a book, by an independent thinker, based on facts and verified data, blowing up the whole Russophobia edifice erected around the “aggression” by “Tsar” Putin.

At least some sectors of the strictly oligarch-controlled corporate media in France simply could not ignore Todd this time around for several reasons. Most of all because he was the first Western intellectual, already in 1976, to have predicted the fall of the USSR in his book La Chute Finale, with his research based on Soviet infant mortality rates.

Another key reason was his 2002 book Apres L’Empire, a sort of preview of the Empire’s Decline and Fall published a few months before Shock & Awe in Iraq.

Now Todd, in what he has defined as his last book (“I have closed the circle”) allows himself to go for broke and meticulously depict the defeat not only of the US but of the West as a whole – with his research focusing in and around the war in Ukraine.

Considering the toxic NATOstan environment where Russophobia and cancel culture reign supreme, and every deviation is punishable, Todd has been very careful not to frame the current process as a Russian victory in Ukraine (although that’s implied in everything he describes, ranging from several indicators of social peace to the overall stability of the “Putin system”, which is “a product of the history of Russia, and not the work of one man”).

Rather, he focuses on the key reasons that have led to the West’s downfall. Among them: the end of the nation-state; de-industrialization (which explains NATO’s deficit in producing weapons for Ukraine); the “degree zero” of the West’s religious matrix, Protestantism; the sharp increase of mortality rates in the US (much higher than in Russia), along with suicides and homicides; and the supremacy of an imperial nihilism expressed by the obsession with Forever Wars.

The Collapse of Protestantism

Todd methodically analyses, in sequence, Russia, Ukraine, Eastern Europe, Germany, Britain, Scandinavia and finally The Empire. Let’s focus on what would be the 12 Greatest Hits of his remarkable exercise.

1. At the start of the Special Military Operation (SMO) in February 2022, the combined GDP of Russia and Belarus was only 3.3% of the combined West (in this case the NATO sphere plus Japan and South Korea). Todd is amazed how these 3.3%, capable of producing more weapons than the whole Western colossus, not only are winning the war but reducing dominant notions of the “neoliberal political economy” (GDP rates) to shambles.

2. The “ideological solitude” and “ideological narcissism” of the West – incapable of understanding, for instance, how “the whole Muslim world seems to consider Russia as a partner rather than an adversary”.

3. Todd eschews the notion of “Weberian states” – evoking a delicious compatibility of vision between Putin and US realpolitik practitioner John Mearsheimer. Because they are forced to survive in an environment where only power relations matter, states are now acting as “Hobbesian agents.” And that brings us to the Russian notion of a nation-state, focused on “sovereignty”: the capacity of a state to independently define its internal and external policies, with no foreign interference whatsoever.

4. The implosion, step by step, of WASP culture, which led, “since the 1960s”, to “an empire deprived of a center and a project, an essentially military organism managed by a group without culture (in the anthropological sense)”. This is Todd defining the US neocons.

5. The US as a “post-imperial” entity: just a shell of military machinery deprived of an intelligence-driven culture, leading to “accentuated military expansion in a phase of massive contraction of its industrial base”. As Todd stresses, “modern war without industry is an oxymoron”.

6. The demographic trap: Todd shows how Washington strategists “forgot that a state whose population enjoys a high educational and technological level, even if it is decreasing, does not lose its military power”. That’s exactly the case of Russia during the Putin years.

7. Here we reach the crux of Todd’s argument: his post-Max Weber reinterpretation of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, published a little over a century ago, in 1904/1905: “If Protestantism was the matrix for the ascension of the West, its death, today, is the cause of the disintegration and defeat.”

Todd clearly defines how the 1688 English “Glorious Revolution”, the 1776 American Declaration of Independence and the 1789 French Revolution were the true pillars of the liberal West. Consequently, an expanded “West” is not historically “liberal”, because it also engineered “Italian fascism, German Nazism and Japanese militarism”.

In a nutshell, Todd shows how Protestantism imposed universal literacy on the populations it controlled, “because all faithful must directly access the Holy Scriptures. A literate population is capable of economic and technological development. The Protestant religion modeled, by accident, a superior, efficient workforce.” And it is in this sense that Germany was “at the heart of Western development”, even if the Industrial Revolution took place in England.

Todd’s key formulation is undisputable: “The crucial factor of the ascension of the West was Protestantism’s attachment to alphabetization.”

Moreover Protestantism, Todd stresses, is twice at the heart of the history of the West: via the educational and economic drive – with fear of damnation and the need to feel chosen by God engendering a work ethic and a strong, collective morality – and via the idea that Men are unequal (remember the White Man’s Burden).

The collapse of Protestantism could not but destroy the work ethic to the benefit of mass greed: that is, neoliberalism.

Transgenderism and the Cult of the Fake

8. Todd’s sharp critique of the spirit of 1968 would merit a whole new book. He refers to “one of the great illusions of the 1960s – between the Anglo-American sexual revolution and May 68 in France”; “to believe that the individual would be greater if freed from the collective”. That led to an inevitable debacle: “Now that we are free, en masse, from metaphysical beliefs, foundational and derived, communist, socialist or nationalist, we live the experience of the void.” And that’s how we became “a multitude of mimetic midgets who do not dare to think by themselves – but reveal themselves just as capable of intolerance as the believers of ancient times.”

9. Todd’s brief analysis of the deeper meaning of transgenderism completely shatters the Church of Woke – from New York to the EU sphere, and will provoke serial fits of rage. He shows how transgenderism is “one of the flags of this nihilism that now defines the West, this drive to destroy, not just things and humans but reality.”

And there’s an added analytical bonus: “The transgender ideology says that a man may become a woman, and a woman may become a man. This is a false affirmation, and in this sense, close to the theoretical heart of Western nihilism.” It gets worse, when it comes to the geopolitical ramifications. Todd establishes a playful mental and social connection between this cult of the fake and the Hegemon’s wobbly behavior in international relations. Example: the Iranian nuclear deal clinched under Obama becoming a hardcore sanctions regime under Trump. Todd: “American foreign policy is, in its own way, gender fluid.”

10. Europe’s “assisted suicide”. Todd reminds us how Europe at the start was the Franco-German couple. Then after the 2007/2008 financial crisis, that turned into “a patriarchic marriage, with Germany as a dominant spouse not listening to his companion anymore”. The EU abandoned any pretense of defending Europe’s interests – cutting itself off from energy and trade with its partner Russia and sanctioning itself. Todd identifies, correctly, the Paris-Berlin axis replaced by the London-Warsaw-Kiev axis: that was “the end of Europe as an autonomous geopolitical actor”. And that happened only 20 years after the joint opposition by France-Germany to the neocon war on Iraq.

11. Todd correctly defines NATO by plunging into “their unconscious”: “We note that that its military, ideological and psychological mechanism does not exist to protect Western Europe, but to control it.”

12. In tandem with several analysts in Russia, China, Iran and among independents in Europe, Todd is sure that the US obsession – since the 1990s – to cut off Germany from Russia will lead to failure: “Sooner or later, they will collaborate, as “their economic specializations define them as complementary”. The defeat in Ukraine will open the path, as a “gravitational force” reciprocally seduces Germany and Russia.

Before that, and unlike virtually any Western “analyst” across the mainstream NATOstan sphere, Todd understands that Moscow is set to win against the whole of NATO, not merely Ukraine, profiting from a window of opportunity identified by Putin in early 2022. Todd bets on a window of 5 years, that is, an endgame by 2027. It’s enlightening to compare with Defense Minister Shoigu, on the record, last year: the SMO will end by 2025.

Whatever the deadline, inbuilt in all this is a total Russia victory – with the winner dictating all terms. No negotiations, no ceasefire, no frozen conflict – as the Hegemon is now desperately spinning.

Davos enacts The Triumph of the West

Todd’s ample merit, so evident in the book, is to use history and anthropology to take Western society’s false consciousness to the couch. And that’s how, focusing for instance in the study of very specific family structures in Europe, he manages to explain reality in a way that totally escapes the brainwashed collective West masses lingering under turbo-neoliberalism.

It goes without saying that Todd’s reality-based book will not be a hit among the Davos elites. What’s happening this week in Davos has been immensely enlightening. Everything is out in the open.

From all the usual suspects – the toxic EU Medusa von der Leyen; NATO’s warmongering Stoltenberg; BlackRock, JP Morgan and assorted honchos shaking hands with their sweaty sweatshirt toy in Kiev – the “Triumph of the West” message is monolithic.

War is Peace. Ukraine is not (italics mine) losing and Russia is not winning. If you disagree with us – on anything – you will be censored for “hate speech”. We want the New World Order – whatever you lowly peasants think – and we want it now.

And if all else fails, a pre-fabricated Disease X is comin’ to get you.

By Henry Johnston, an RT editor. He worked for over a decade in finance and is a FINRA Series 7 and Series 24 license holder.

The US Treasury market, essential to the functioning of the global financial system, doesn’t seem to be working

There is a mantra that has essentially become axiomatic: the US Treasury market is the deepest and most liquid in the world. And a corollary to that is: US Treasury bonds are ‘risk free.’

These once-taken-for-granted pillars of eternal truth are looking awfully shaky. The tectonic plates of the US-led global financial system have been rustling ever more frequently in recent years but the quivers are now coming more frequently. At the heart of this increasingly brittle and dysfunctional system is the US Treasury market.

Everyone has noticed the sharp rise in yields in recent months. In early October, the US 10y hit a yield of nearly 5%, the highest level in 16 years. This is, of course, entirely understandable: rate hikes by the Federal Reserve have pushed bond yields higher. But what we have been seeing is more than a manifestation of the vicissitudes of finicky markets.

As foreign buyers of US Treasuries dry up and the US government continues to run astronomical deficits at a time of high interest rates, the Treasury market is coming under increasing strain and showing ever more signs of dysfunction. The implications of this are hard to overstate.

Where have all the foreigners gone?

There was a time when Treasuries were essentially the US’ biggest export and served as the mechanism for the sort of macro-level vendor financing scheme under which the US imported goods and energy from the rest of the world in exchange for dollars – and these dollars were dutifully recycled back into Treasuries to finance the US deficit.

When deficits began to surge in the 1980s under President Ronald Reagan, many wondered how they would be financed. But starting in the middle of that decade, foreign central banks – primarily the Japanese – swooped in and started scooping up larger amounts of US Treasuries. Over 1986-2002, foreign central banks bought 28-30% of all aggregate US Treasury bonds issued; from 2002-2014, the People’s Bank of China (PBOC) had become the main buyer and the foreign purchases figure reached a whopping 53%.

Since 2014, that figure has been negative 4%, meaning foreign central banks have stopped buying on a net basis, all while US deficits have continued to grow. There are many reasons for that shift. A lot of attention has been given to the first batch of sanctions on Russia in 2014 and Moscow’s subsequently embarking on the path of dollar divestment – a process that Beijing was watching closely. But there was also a deeper realization across the globe that the US no longer would or could manage the dollar in the best interest of the world.

When the Fed unleashed its unprecedented quantitative easing program in March 2009, Chair Ben Bernanke admitted that it had “crossed the Rubicon.” Five days after the program was announced, Zhou Xiaochuan, the governor of the PBoC, released a white paper with the not very subtle title ‘Reform the International Monetary System’ calling for a remaking of the post-World War II framework. By 2014, having watched the Fed quadruple its balance sheet to some $4.5 trillion, China made the strategic decision to stop adding to its Treasury portfolio. The cavalier nature in which the Americans were printing money for purely domestic reasons – thus implicitly devaluing the existing debt of which China held a lot – surely did not sit well in Beijing.

Chinese purchases of US Treasuries peaked in 2014 and have been declining since © Source: Ycharts.com

If 2014 marked something of a crossroads for foreign demand for Treasuries, it was also when – and this certainly shouldn’t be seen as a coincidence – the US adopted a rule forcing large banks to hold a certain level of high-quality liquid assets. A large portion of these would of course be Treasuries. Ostensibly, this was done to ensure systemically important banks had sufficient liquidity in a short-term stress scenario. But it had the effect of forcing banks to buy more Treasuries – just as major foreign central banks were shying away.

The first inkling of a liquidity problem

Incidentally, it was also 2014 when problems with Treasury market liquidity first began to draw scrutiny. In October of that year, the market convulsed with no apparent trigger in what ended up being dismissed as merely a “flash rally.”

There have been several other significant convulsions along the way – the sudden repo crisis in September 2019, the Treasury market seizing up in March 2022, and the UK Gilt market breaking in the fall of 2022, which reverberated in the Treasury market, but we’ll fast-forward to 2022.

The nastiest bout of inflation in four decades had forced the Fed to sharply hike rates. The higher interest rates pushed bond yields up, and since bond prices move inversely with yields, US Treasuries took losses. Many US banks became deeply underwater on their Treasury positions, a fact that played no small role in the collapse of Silicon Valley Bank earlier this year. There were many specific reasons why that particular bank collapsed – practically non-existent risk management being one of them – but what that episode revealed is that many banks were sitting on large unrealized losses in their Treasury positions.

As depositors demanded their money back – both for fear of bank failures and in order to place their money in higher-yielding money market funds – banks would have had to sell their underwater Treasuries into a rapidly deteriorating market, where bids would have been few.

However, undoubtedly sensing the fragility of the entire system and not wanting a full-blown meltdown on their watch, Fed Chair Jerome Powell and colleagues decided to act – and they acted decisively.

Rolling out another acronym

But what exactly did they do? They instituted another one of those acronym bailout programs, this one called the Bank Term Funding Program (BTFP). At a time when the Fed was attempting to tighten financial conditions to fight inflation, this had the effect of adding liquidity to the market, thus proving (as if there had been any doubt) that the Fed’s macho rhetoric about fighting inflation extends only to the point where market dysfunction begins.

The BTFP allowed banks to access one-year loans from the Fed by posting bonds. There’s nothing unusual about that – pretty standard stuff. But it’s the pricing that raises eyebrows. Instead of following normal practice and forcing those bonds to be marked to market – meaning using the market value rather than the nominal value – the collateral can be posted at par, regardless of where it is trading. So a bond that, say, has a nominal value of $100 but is currently trading at $70 can be posted to the Fed in exchange for a $100 loan.

But the story is actually a lot more interesting than that. As analyst Luke Gromen pointed out, when you peer below the surface at the BTFP facility, you realize that it is basically tantamount to soft yield curve control for banks – at least for those with US branches. In other words, it was as much of a bailout of the Treasury market as a bailout of the banks.

It certainly was a bailout for banks, which were quickly being wrongfooted by a double-whammy of market moves against them and deposit outflows, and needed to cover their substantial paper losses. But the deeper implication was that this served as something of a foreshadowing of yield curve control – an unorthodox policy tool employed by central banks to target with purchases a specific interest rate level. One thing should be made explicit: yield curve control is where free financial markets go to die.

Although the Fed wasn’t targeting a specific interest rate but was rather seeking to control the flow of credit, the policy tool had the effect of essentially capping yields below the current market price – and that is an important harbinger of where things are headed.

The collapse of Silicon Valley Bank is now old news and the powers that be have provided assurances that the banking crisis is long over. But the BTFP figures seem to say otherwise: as of June 28 (the most recent data I could find), the takeup of the program by banks had reached over $100 billion – meaning that the bailouts have still been happening many months later.

The BTFP is supposed to run for just one year, but there is already talk that it will become a permanent part of the financial landscape. As the old saying goes, there is nothing more permanent than a temporary government program.

© Source: Ycharts.com

The Treasury announces buybacks….wait buybacks?

Meanwhile, more recently another firm step in the direction of yield curve control was taken when the US Treasury announced that it would be launching a buyback program next year. Somewhere along the way in the slow descent of the US Treasury market into illiquidity and dysfunction we were bound to see direct Treasury purchases of debt that nobody in the market wants to buy – and now we have it.

This tool hasn’t been trotted out since the year 2000, when it was done under very different circumstances (the government was running a surplus and was issuing Treasuries to maintain market access, with the proceeds from the new bonds used to repurchase the old ones).

Now, however, this is being done, according to comments by one Treasury Department official at a forum in New York in September to “[help] to make the Treasury market more liquid and resilient” and in a bit of cheery party-line speak, “to ensure that the Treasury market remains the deepest and most liquid market in the world.” Statements such as these made in a casual business-as-usual way and presented as a small maintenance program that will not be used to combat a potential crisis belie just how much this represents another “crossing of the Rubicon.”

If you unpack this, it means that the Treasury is preparing for the possibility that there won’t be enough buyers for the avalanche of issuance that will be hitting the market in the coming quarters. By announcing a buyback program, the Treasury is essentially laying the groundwork to become the ‘buyer of last resort’ without stating so explicitly, which would of course spook the markets. It is also pretty much exactly what Japan has been doing for the last decade or so – essentially nationalizing the debt that nobody wants.

Legendary analyst Zoltan Pozsar has described what we’re seeing as the Fed and Treasury “building scaffolding around the Treasury market” to deal with issues of illiquidity and the lack of a marginal buyer. The question that can’t be asked but needs to be asked is: why is all this necessary in the deepest, safest and most liquid market in the world?

The government is spending like there’s no tomorrow

Meanwhile, this year the US deficit is expected to hit $2 trillion, representing an astounding 8.5% of GDP and there is no sign that it is slowing down. This is a practically unheard of figure during a time of economic growth. Unsurprisingly, Treasury issuance is slated to go through the roof in the coming quarters. In addition to the separate question of how the US can afford the suddenly massively higher interest payments on this debt – now estimated to reach $1 trillion on an annualized basis this year – there is the issue of the acute lack of marginal buyers of this debt.

The 2020 and 2021 deficits were abnormally high due to pandemic-related stimulus. © Source: Ycharts.com

The Fed is engaged in quantitative tightening, meaning it is allowing bonds to mature and run off its balance sheet rather than roll them over. US commercial banks have little capacity or appetite for more Treasury purchases. They are in fact trying to take duration off their balance sheets and have been reducing Treasury holdings. JPMorgan CEO Jamie Dimon recently warned that rates could go higher still, so he’s clearly not looking to plough into Treasuries.

The US has for a long time steadfastly refused to believe it had a fiscal problem and, to be fair, in the low-interest rate era and with foreign demand for US debt ever present, perhaps it didn’t. The US was perhaps a debt addict, but a functional one.

But running huge deficits in a time of rising interest rates is a combustible mix. In some ways this harkens back to the 1940s, also a time of high deficits and rising rates due to the war – and also when yield curve control was trotted out. But really the two cases are a world apart. The still fundamentally healthy and enormously productive US economy of the post-war period got back on the proper footing quickly and such unorthodox policies were abandoned. The current highly financialized, deeply indebted US economy is a shadow of its former self, but US policymakers don’t seem to have adjusted.

Some form of outright yield curve control is coming and probably sooner rather than later. It is already creeping into the realm of mainstream speculation. But this time it will hardly resemble a temporary war-time policy; rather it will be a move of desperation far down the road toward outright dysfunction of a market at the very heart of the global financial system.

And this will spawn a banquet of consequences. A breakdown in the functioning of the Treasury market will trigger the widespread epiphany that the US has turned itself into something akin to the terrorist-rigged bus set to explode if it slows to below 50 mph in the 1994 Keanu Reeves film ‘Speed’. Politically unable to backtrack on its entitlements and military commitments but unable to afford them, it will run into the fiscal wall of excessive interest expenses and insufficient demand for its debt.

The Fed has become uncannily adept at patching up markets and, to quote Luke Gromen, employing its standard technique of “extend and pretend… then inflate” and it may continue to find ever more ingenious ways to keep the tottering edifice upright for some time. But the rot at the very heart of the global financial system is becoming increasingly apparent for those with the eyes to see it.

via Zero Hedge

Back in July, when we last looked at the unprecedented horror show that is the US budget deficit – and concluded correctly, long before the Q2 Quarterly Refunding Announcement, that debt issuance was about to explode and yields would soar – we warned that the debt Rubicon was about to be crossed and “US Debt Interest Payments Are About To Hit $1 Trillion.”

Fast forward to today when the endgame has apparently arrived: according to the Treasury’s own calculations, total interest is now over $1 trillion (or $1.027 trillion to be precise).

We calculated this by multiplying the average interest rate on marketable US Treasury debt (which according to the Treasury is 3.096% as of Oct 31) by the $26.003 trillion in marketable US debt (as of Oct 31) which nets off to $805 billion, and adding to this non-marketable debt interest (which as of Oct 31 was 2.884% multiplied by the amount of non-marketable debt which is $7.696 trillion) and which in turn is an additional $222 billion in interest. Add across and you get $1.027 trillion.

Naturally, this calculation of estimated real-time interest costs – which is entirely based on Treasury data – is different than what the Treasury actually paid. Interest costs in the fiscal year that ended Sept. 30 ultimately totaled $879.3 billion, up from $717.6 billion the previous year and about 14% of total outlays, however that number is merely lagging what the pro forma print currently is, and will inevitably catch up to it, and then lag on the other side even as pro forma interest payment start dropping (once interest rates plunge after the next QE/YCC is launched).

Fans of exponential functions, we got you covered: the unprecedented surge in both interest rates and interest expense in the past two years means that total US interest has doubled since April 2022 and that’s with the inherent lag in interest catch up – as a reminder, the vast majority of 5, 7, 10 and 30 year debt is still locked in at much lower interest rates, and as such, rates will continue to rise as all of the existing debt rolls into much higher rates over the coming years.

Looking ahead, the staggering surge in both yields and total long-term Treasuries in recent months confirms the government will continue to face an escalating interest bill. As a reminder, we were the first to point out that it took just one month after US federal debt first rose above $33 trillion for the first time, to spike by another $600 billion…

… bringing the total to $33.6 trillion, more than the combined GDPs of China, Japan, Germany, and India.

And just to show you how terrifying it is about to get, BofA’s Michael Hartnett notes that “the CBO projects that US government debt will rise by $20 trillion next 10 years, or $5.2 billion every day or $218 million every hour!”

Some more context: total world debt (government, corporate & household) hit a record $227tn in Q1’23, double from $110tn in 2007 & $0.5tn in 1952.

And then there was this warning from the TBAC which very tongue-in-cheek said that “Interest rate expense, as % of GDP, is likely to rise over the medium term”, and also over every other term.

As Bloomberg’s Mark Cudmore concludes, the worsening metrics may “reignite debate about the US fiscal path amid heavy borrowing from Washington. That dynamic has already helped drive up bond yields, threatened the return of the so-called bond vigilantes and led Fitch Ratings to downgrade US government debt in August.”

An even more damning conclusion comes from Hartnett, Fiscal excess in the 2020s is adding to already high levels of government debt; until policy makers address the trajectory of government debt, investors are likely to worry that asset-bearish solutions to indebtedness such as inflation, default, currency debasement, are set to be pursued; but as likely central banks may simply bail out governments in coming years via QE & the introduction of YCC (policies that would be v US dollar negative).

by John Helmer, Moscow

@bears_with

The sudden change of US warfighting plans in defence of Israel, disclosed on Saturday by General Lloyd Austin, the US Defense Secretary, reveals the trap which Russia, China, and Iran have opened, and the desperate measures the US has taken as it falls in.

Austin announced that he has “redirected the movement of the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group to the Central Command area of responsibility. This carrier strike group is in addition to the USS Gerald R. Ford Carrier Strike Group, which is currently operating in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. It will further increase our force posture and strengthen our capabilities and ability to respond to a range of contingencies.”

“I have also activated the deployment of a Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) battery as well as additional Patriot battalions to locations throughout the region to increase force protection for U.S. forces.”

The Eisenhower’s new destination has not been announced. US military media are claiming it will be the Persian Gulf or the Red Sea, or both.

The Central Command (CENTCOM) area of responsibility (AOR) is officially the Arab and Iranian territories east of the Mediterranean shoreline, focusing on the Persian Gulf and the Red Sea, and targeting Iran, Russia, and China.

“In a small change that could have major meaning,” Pentagon officials are tellingtheir press, “the U.S. is changing its plans for the USS Dwight D. Eisenhower Carrier Strike Group. The change could place the strike group in waters where Chinese warships have been active in recent months. Last week, Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin announced that the Eisenhower strike group would head to the eastern Mediterranean instead of Europe as had been planned. Sailing in the eastern Mediterranean would have put the strike group to the west of Israel. But that plan changed after a week in which U.S. forces in Syria and Iraq came under fire from Iran-backed militias, and a U.S. Navy ship in the Red Sea downed missiles launched from Yemen…On Saturday, Austin said in a statement the strike group will now go to the ‘Central Command area of responsibility.’ Central Command covers a vast amount of Middle East territory, including the Persian Gulf and Red Sea.”

The purpose of “these steps,” Austin said, is to “bolster regional deterrence efforts, increase force protection for U.S. forces in the region, and assist in the defense of Israel.” The priority order is a switch. Israel comes last – Iran, Russia and China come first.

For the first time too, the US command has acknowledged what President Vladimir Putin meant when he said in Beijing last Wednesday, October 18, that he has deployed MiG-31s armed with Kinzhal missiles within range of the Eisenhower.

Austin added for Sunday television viewers in the US: “If any group or any country is looking to widen this conflict and take advantage of this very unfortunate situation that we see, our advice is: don’t. We maintain the right to defend ourselves, and we won’t hesitate to take the appropriate action.”

The US doctrine of self-defence while attacking states like Lebanon, Syria, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Yemen, and Somalia isn’t new. In September 1969, when Libyan Army Captain Muammar Qaddafi took control of his country, he carefully skirted the US Air Force (USAF) base at Wheelus (Mellaha), which was stocking nuclear weapons at the time; Qaddafi then squeezed the US forces out of Wheelus over twelve months, but the USAF evacuated its nuclear weapons swiftly.

Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon don’t have time; the Israelis even less.

But Austin’s rush to change the sailing orders for the Eisenhower and fly THAADs and Patriots to US bases in the Arab territories reveals he’s short of time too. This is because the entire portfolio of US air defence systems is being defeated. The Russian Kinzhal has defeated the US Patriot batteries around Kiev; the Hamas swarms of drones and rockets defeated Israel’s Iron Dome on October 7. THAAD has been tested in combat once, against a Houthi missile, rocket and drone attack against Abu Dhabi targets in January 2022. “Several were intercepted, a few of them [weren’t].”

The USS Carney’s firing against Houthi missiles and drones in the Red Sea has exposed how vulnerable that southern line of attack against Israel would be if the Houthis try swarming instead of testing their ordnance, as they did against the Carney. Originally, in the Pentagon version of Friday, October 19, three Houthi missiles and several drones were intercepted on their way to Israel. A day later, CNN revised the story by reporting “a US official familiar with the situation” to say there had been a “nine-hour duel” and four cruise missiles and fifteen drones came down.

Tongue-biting and stammering are clinical symptoms of the mind which knows what to say but has difficulty getting it out; this usually causes loss of self-esteem. When General Austin is speaking like this, it signals the mind doesn’t know what to say, and is desperate for self-esteem.

Austin also signalled that the Pentagon is preparing rapid deployment forces for evacuation of air and ground base soldiers and airmen in Jordan, Syria and Iraq if they are swarmed by protesters. “I have placed,” Austin said, “an additional number of forces on prepare-to-deploy orders as part of prudent contingency planning, to increase their readiness and ability to quickly respond as required.” The likelihood that the Pentagon is laying plans for US ground troops to fight to keep the bases is low; secret Congressional briefings are bound to leak if that possibility is entering the US presidential race at this stage.*

Instead, these are Kabul Airport type evacuation missions. The fear in the Biden White House, and the Democratic National Committee, is that US military personnel or other officials may be taken hostage following swarm attacks by the Arabs across the region.

According to a military source near Washington, “Biden got them out of Kabul. [President Jimmy] Carter didn’t get them out of Teheran. If CENTCOM has anything in mind it’s missile defence capability, readiness and base security – and figuring what the hell the Chinese are up to.”

Left: US aircraft wreckage in Iran following the failure of the hostage-rescue mission known as OPERATION EAGLE CLAW in April 1980. Right: read the new history of US operations against the Arab world.

Russia and China are saying little, doing more.

By redeploying the Eisenhower from the eastern Mediterranean to the Persian Gulf and Red Sea, the US has moved the aircraft carrier out of range of Russian Kinzhals in the Black Sea. However, in the Persian Gulf, the Eisenhower will be within shooting distance of MiG-31s and the Kinzhal in the Caspian Sea, as well as other long-range Russian missiles.

Left: According to a US state propaganda agency, Russia has fired long-range ballistic missiles from the Caspian to targets in the Ukraine, including Kiev, between May and October of 2022; flight distance was about 1,800 kilometres. Right: The red line from international waters and airspace of the Caspian to the mid-Persian Gulf is about 1,700 kms. 

In the Red Sea, the US fleet will be within range of several types of Iranian ballistic missiles against which there have been no US combat tests to date. Click here to review the Iranian missile armoury, including estimated range, payload and accuracy. There is ample evidence that the general staffs of Russia, China, and Iran are currently coordinating in the Persian Gulf, where there was a visible surface navy exercise in March, and since then much that is invisible in intelligence-gathering and sharing, targeting, early-warning systems, and the like.

According to this source, the anti-air and land target capabilities of the DC-10 missile arming the Chinese Navy’s Type-052D destroyer now in the Persian Gulf “poses a number of security challenges for the United States. The DH-10 has a low flight altitude that increases its stealth capabilities against the air defense radars. The DH-10 can also be updated during its flight with new targeting data, allowing it to change targets. The stealth capabilities employed by the DH-10 allow it to confuse or outmaneuver the radars and defenses around ships in the region.”

In March 2023, Reuters reported from Beijing on the naval exercise in the Gulf of Oman with vessels from Russia, China and Iran: “The 2023 edition of the ‘Marine Security Belt’ exercises will help ‘deepen practical cooperation among the navies of participating countries’, China’s Defense Ministry said.” Source: https://www.reuters.com/

A Moscow military reporter comments: “in my view, Russians and Chinese should cut to the chase and say, you can try sorting it out with Israel, but here is the red line. Obviously, that red line has no meaning if it is not with the capability to deliver on the threat.”

“Hanging out with or near Israel just became very dangerous,” according to a US military source familiar with the situation. “I think the Houthi firing, trap or not, scared the shit out of them [Pentagon]. The number of drones and missiles the Carney ‘shot down’ keeps going up. It’s not just the missiles they are worried about. Iranian drone technology, and their capacity to get them into the hands of their allies, must be causing alarm. What scares them about the Chinese task force is the range of its cruise missiles as well as its capacity to link up with Iranian and (I assume) Russian air defence radar and targeting networks. They’ve all been practicing together.”

“Every American and allied base in the region is now under a joint, mutually supportive, Russian, Iranian and Chinese umbrella. In short, a trap.”

[*] American voter disapproval of President Biden’s foreign policy performance is growing; the current negative spread of 19 points is approaching the worst it has been in Biden’s term. His trip to Israel and unqualified support for the Israeli war against the Palestinians have gained nothing for him from American voters.

Source: https://www.realclearpolitics.com/

NOTE: on Israel’s southwestern front, Egypt is bringing up armoured forces to the El Arish-Rafah area. Media reports from Qatar suggesting the reason is to combat Palestinians moving into the Sinai from Gaza are false.

“Urgent Local sources and eyewitnesses reported to the Sinai Foundation the arrival of large military reinforcements to the Rafah border area on Thursday afternoon [October 19]. The sources said that the reinforcements included officers, soldiers, military vehicles, jeeps, and tanks.” — source: https://twitter.com/

Biden just announced the results of the upcoming war, World War Three, for which the US just gave the go-ahead:

“We spent 50 years in the post-war period where it worked pretty damn well, but now the steam has kind of run out. Looks like the steam has come out. We need a new, new world order,”

To which Russia responds NYET: Kremlin spokesperson Dmitry Peskov states:

“Whatever new world order the US envisions, it means an American-centric world order. A world revolving around the US. This will not be anymore.”

“It’s almost a religious fervor that you’re finding on the part of the US National Security Council and the CIA, the deep state. They really believe that God is on their side”, Prof. Michael Hudson, economist and former Wall Street analyst, told the New Rules podcast.

Watch the full episode of our show on Rumble

Listen to more of Hudson’s analysis on New Rules show