Kushmonster

Kushmonster

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Trade War Farce

If the current brouhaha over the 20%+ undervaluation of the Chinese Yuan (renminbi) versus the world reserve currency and the looming prospect of a "trade war" between the US and China sounds familiar, it is and nauseatingly so. On June 30, 2005 a proposal to impose a 27.5% tariff on all Chinese goods was voted on in the US Senate with a resulting tally in favor of the measure of 67-33. At this point secretary of the Treasury John Snow and the Federal Reserve Chief Alan Greespan "assured" senators of Chinese plans to revise exchange rates and by July 21, 2005 Snow welcomed a senate measure to derail the proposed legislation with the Chinese instead floating a demand from the US Congress to "revaluate immediately" the Yuan 10% or face "contrary legislation". The Chinese, with the able lobbying of Snow and Greenspan, outmaneuvered the congressional request by immediately embarking on a 2.1% revaluation followed by, well...nothing. The 2005 G-8 summit in Scotland produced only a deafening silence on the issue solidifying the Chinese position and when the IMF, responding to a US appeal to the WTO for arbitration, ruled that the Renminbi was not undervalued, the whole issue was quite unceremoniously mothballed. The sovereign interests of the US Congress through the agency of its own Treasury secretary and the head of the Federal Reserve had been effectively overruled by the WTO, the IMF and not lastly the Chinese themselves. This was largely due to an agreement by the US Treasury to enter into consultation with the IMF as stipulated by OTCA 188 to determine whether foreign currency manipulation was taking place and if so what effective actions to take regarding Balance of Payments and unfair trade advantages due to an undervalued currency.

The empty posturing of the US Congress and its ultimate capitulation to the Treasury, The Federal Reserve, the IMF, the WTO, and finally the Chinese government left little to the imagination as to who was really in charge of the ballooning US trade and budget deficits and balance of payments. And five years later we find the same stage management and actors on the same set, Lindsey Graham and Charles Schumer engaging in the same stale and tired posturing. Little mentioned is the obvious fact that any devaluation of the Yuan/Renminbi runs headlong into economic complexities which disallow any so simple a solution as a mere currency revaluation. First of all, as one commentator recently averred, "the Chinese own the United States" and there will most likely be no appreciable revaluation of the Chinese currency due as well to the endemic Chinese propensity for resisting foreign pressure and influence in its domestic affairs, especially when it holds all the trump cards, mostly in the way of $2.27 T in foreign reserves , a majority of which are in the form of US Treasuries. Secondly as spoken of above, according to 1979 IMF article IV, the IMF itself is the enforcer on any issue of exchange rates through the mechanism of its SDR (Special Drawing Rights). Any IMF country is bound to seek IMF approval if the country in question desires to change par value compared to the US$ with the establishment of SDR "freely" determined exchange rates.

Of course the now rapidly deflating US housing bubble could not have been effected without the intervention by Mr. Greenspan and the Federal Reserve in the way of the now infamous Greenspan Put and aggressive loose monetary policies accomplished by the Maestro during his tenure at the Federal Reserve but most dramatically from the dawning of the new millennium onwards with the critical participation of the Chinese and their massive purchase of US Treasury bonds and the "vast recycling of insupportable US deficits by China and other creditor nations" In effect Greenspan exported US inflationary policies into the international markets and in the process fueled globalization and helped create the new economic engine in China and SouthEast Asia. Without the acquisition by China of US$ through US securities, higher interest rates would be inevitable and with that the end of the Greeenspan housing bubble. It has been suggested that Greenspan and Federal Reserve's interest rate manipulation concommittant with massive injections of liquidity have radically disrupted the natural K-Wave cycles, artificially extending the summer cycle with drastic and dire consequences for the US and World economies which are now plunging headlong into a grotesquely exaggerated and horrendously distorted K-Wave winter cycle. See Prophets, Profits and Loss on Kushmonster.

In the present US/Sino totentanz, which seems to be entering into a fast paced crescendo begging for an ultimate denouément, the Chinese have once again parlayed their previous 2+% "revaluation" and once again have promised further and significant revaluations in the future. They, along with the Japanese, have pared their purchases of US Treasuries, requiring further vast monetization of the US debt by the Federal Reserve and a host of back door and shadowy buyers. Schemer and Graham's Punch and Judy show going on in Washington regarding Yuan revaluation is, as in 2005, just so much window dressing designed to impress a credulous American populace that there really is somebody at the wheel and rudder of the ship of state in control of economic policy. In reality the US government long ago ceded any authority or responsibility for credible economic policy to an international economic order predicated on the exportation of american industry and intellectual property, the subsequent decimation of its productive employment base, the devaluation and elimination of its world reserve currency in service to impossible and unsustainable levels of debt, and the employment of its endemic chauvinistic military adventurism as a mercenary police force in service to international drug cartels and global corporate interests. Trade war? The bad actors in Washington could only hope for such a sanguine outcome to what can only properly be described as an already accomplished national capitulation.



Monday, September 27, 2010

FBI Raids,CCMRF Deployments Signal October Surprise?



The recent September 24 FBI/ATF raids on the residences of anti-war activists in Minneapolis and Chicago and contingent actions in Michigan and North Carolina just ahead of the October 1, 2010, Consequence Management Response Force (CCMRF) assignment to the US Army Northern Command leads to some interesting speculations as to the nature of such brazen and obviously political provocations in the run up to the critical November 4 Congressional mid-term elections. This is especially so as the Seamurf assignment has been extended from one year to two full years. The implications of such overt government attempts to harass, intimidate, and demonize these high profile anti-war activists against the backdrop of the assignment and allocation of brigade strength Army units in service to the 20th support command of the so called CBRNE (Chemical,Biological, Radiological, Nuclear, High Explosives) are ominous and disturbing portents of momentous changes in the scope and magnitude of domestic governmental "security" operations.

Aside from the vulgar and unseemly outrage of suppressing political dissent which has been the hallmark of FBI activities for several decades, perhaps this particular egregious foray into the lives of ordinary citizens was simply an Illuminati celebration of the singular cosmic phenomenon of the exceedingly close coincidence of the Autumnal Equinox and Full Harvest Moon. These satanic agencies are well known for such shenanigans on the equinoctial points which seem to possess a special significance for them as well as the cadres of covens and societies of warlocks which form their significant esoteric political base. The idea of associating legitimate political dissent as a Constitutional and human right with the false flag provocations which the government is in the business of staging to rally the apathetic and indifferent electorate to their unholy wars is certainly the kind of devious and outright demonic stagecraft which we have grown well accustomed to. Yet the timing and convergence of the cosmic and more mundane political and strategic political affairs in the offing give us pause as to what these minions of the dark side might be brewing up in their witches cauldron in the approaching weeks leading up to the pivotal mid-term elections occurring only shortly after the requisite bloody bacchanalia on All Hallows Eve.

One of these rapidly converging vectors of crises can be graphically surveyed on the USDX where the US$ has now broken critical support at 80 and now rests just above 79. The Bank of Japan just last week created economic shock waves around the world by massively intervening to keep the yen from wildly appreciating against the US$. The FOMC of the Federal Reserve announced in thinly veiled terms that QE II has definitely set sail with a commitment to quantitative easing into infinity sending the price of gold and silver into all time highs. As if in concert the US House of Representatives passed a trade sanctions bill against China at the same time. Just possibly that SHTF moment which many have long been awaiting is in its initial stages prompting the increasingly desperate world managers to accelerate their long evolving blueprint for global chaos.

Part of that blueprint involves the systematic state repression and control which is glaringly evident in the ham-handed Brown Shirt tactics of the FBI gestapo goon squads running amuck in Minneapolis and Chicago, just a small taste of the rampant genocidal US military madness presently spreading across the Middle East and Central Asia. At this writing the Pakistani government has made bold to protest the predator drone missile strikes which have just killed more than 30 "suspected Taliban militants" in that country. This is the kind of insanity which Jessica Sundin, Meredith Aby, and Mick Kelly have been raising their voices against for decades.

As the targeted activists gather outside the FBI building in Minneapolis today in protest against the assault upon themselves, their homes and their families, it would be appropriate to quote Mick Kelly being interviewed in the video above as FBI agents ransacked his apartment. Mick states succinctly that an attack on one of us is an attack on ALL of us. Or as Paul Craig Roberts puts it in a notable article at Prison Planet entitled "The USA is a Police State":

An American Police State was inevitable once Americans let “their” government get away with 9/11. Americans are too gullible, too uneducated, and too jingoistic to remain a free people. As another Nazi leader Herman Goering said, “ The people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. Tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the peace-makers for lack of patriotism and for exposing the country to danger.”

This is precisely what the Bush and Obama regimes have done. America, as people of my generation knew it, no longer exists.


thanks to George at "Of Goats and Men" as usual for the heads up on this.


Monday, September 13, 2010

FEMA Camp In Trinidad, Colorado?

There is a considerable amount of internet scuttlebutt concerning the so-called Rex 84 program and the establishment of FEMA camps across the nation. As with so many other speculations regarding the FEMA camps, much concern, apprehension, and outright hysteria has been expressed concerning the ultimate aims of the constellation of camps supposedly arrayed in a series of renovated abandoned and derelict military and government facilities throughout the country. With chain link fences topped with barbed wire pointing inwards, adjacent railroad lines and the signature helicopter windsocks, the FEMA camps have become one of the most obvious symbols of the New World Order agenda for the ultimate takeover of the US with the declaration of martial law and the implementation of the numerous past presidential executive orders and directives designed to impose the expected NWO dictatorship. The detainment and internment of US citizens in FEMA "concentration camps" essential to such a scenario and perennially anticipated for the past few decades by the various militia entities and "patriot" organizations is of course graphically represented by the network of FEMA camps in existence or being presently constructed in all 50 states.

We recently had the opportunity to visit one of the locales of the dreaded FEMA camps on a visit to the hill country near Trinidad, Colorado. According to numerous internet sites devoted to the exposure and subsequent cataloging of the hundred of such camps arrayed across the country, Colorado has, alternately, two or three FEMA camp locations, the most obvious being the Fort Carson military base on Highway 151 near Canon City. The two others are at Granada in Prowers County on the eastern plains near the Kansas border and the old Trinidad Camp apparently once used to hold German and Italian prisoners from 1943-46. Being in the area, it was the latter which attracted our attention. And so taking a break from milking goats at a ranch west of the city and fortified with the GPS co-ordinates of the former Trinidad Camp after a visit to GoogleMaps we took one of our infrequent trips down the hill to see with our own eyes one of these much vaunted detention camps. We had already seen the Google street view of the location which appeared to be nothing more than a vacant lot traversed by a wide ditch and indeed this turned out to be the case. As it turned out, other than a small brick outbuilding of some sort, there was nothing to support the claim that the former Trinidad Camp internment facility was in the process of renovation into a FEMA camp. Indeed what presented itself to our sight was just an otherwise empty patch of land devoid of any structure save the aforementioned brick structure.

The direct implications of our discovery lead to questions as to the reality of the hundreds of other named FEMA locations scattered throughout the country. While the existence of some of the more high profile locales such as the infamous Beech Grove camp outside of Marion, Indiana are indisputable, the possibility exists that many other named locations might be little more than dirt and weeds as we found in Trinidad. In addition it was no surprise that this insignificant post immediately attracted the attention of the Department of Homeland Security in two successive visits to this site. We at Kushmonster are proud of our efforts at keeping America strong!

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After a conversation with Misu at the Trinidad State Historical Museum it was discovered that there was indeed a German-Italian internment camp called Camp Trinidad still extant and yet whose location was undetermined. Yet according to accounts in a book available on the subject, "Prisoners of War at Camp Trinidad, Colorado 1943-1946" by Kurt Landsberger, it was ascertained that the camp was well outside the borders of the Trinidad municipality. Some further conversations with some locals produced one account of an actual visit to the facility which recounted the existence of a large complex of derelict buildings which were in no obvious state of renovation or rehabilitation. After a bit of research into the matter we discovered the location of the German-Italian camp some few miles east of Trinidad near Beshoar Junction. Alas our attempts to actually view the premises were unsuccessful largely due to the remoteness of the location and its relative inaccessibility. We attempted to hike over some open range leading up to the plateau upon which the camp rests, but the presence of a large and ominous looking residence which obviously overlooks the location deterred us from proceeding. The area is circumambulated by a road which leads back to Trinidad from Beshoar Junction and approaching Trinidad on the west side of the camp there is a gate flanked by brick pillars and a road which leads up to the residence in question. What really exists out there at present remains a matter of speculation, but on the road out of Trinidad at a ramshackle gate which allows the only other entrance to the camp, a weathered sign warns that only "authorized personnel" are allowed entry. This, along with the Department of Homeland Security's interest in our posting and the erroneous or at least misleading coordinates provided by Google for the location of the FEMA camp raises further suspicions concerning the nature and purpose of the former German-Italian detention facility.

Wednesday, September 1, 2010

Yeah, It's the End.

Many of us are aware of course of the apparent imminent and cataclysmic demise of the Western World trumpeted from a wide array of internet platforms great and small each feeding off another in an unprecedented frenzy of catastrophism, shrill apocalyptic predictions, and sometimes maniacally reiterated exhortations of approaching doom. The economic debacle afflicting the US and the Eurozone looms large in the multifarious and endless speculations and prognostications revealing the acute sense of unease as to the future. While some remain blissfully unaware of the extent of the massive economic convulsions which have destroyed trillions of dollars of collective worth and transferred equally extraordinary amounts of public wealth to private hands, others feel most acutely the financial depredations which has brought the nation to the brink of an economic abyss the likes of which has not been experienced in several generations. Awash in a deluge of indebtedness and unemployment, the nation pitches blindly across a darkening and swelling sea like a rudderless vessel driven to inevitable shipwreck. As if in infernal concert with this extreme and precarious societal crossroads, the US military, garrisoned in 156 nations and overextended in thousands of forward bases, wages endless war across Central Asia and the Middle East, voraciously consuming the dwindling national wealth in the desperate and inevitably hopeless gambit of dying empire. A grotesquely and fittingly ironic horror was introduced to this attempted geopolitical strong arm expropriation of the vast natural resources of the region as the Hieronymous Bosch apocalypse of the British Petroleum Macondo Deepwater Horizon catastrophe exploded in the Gulf of Mexico creating a masssive toxic cesspool which still spreads its poisonous cocktail of heavy crude and Corexit dispersant through the North Atlantic while bringing the Gulf Stream loop current to a halt. Combined with the decades long drain of industrial production and employment to third world sweat shops and the hopelessly porous southern border with the narco state to the south, the US is experiencing an irreversible meltdown of historic proportions. Meanwhile the notoriously disengaged, apathetic, and indifferent American populace bathe complacently in the mesmerizing ELF rays of their bubblevision conditioning tubes, occasionally sporadically fulminating and spasmodically seething over the inevitable demise overtaking themselves, their families and the nation. The engineered distractions and misdirections of the domestic political falderal such as the present brouhaha over the Muslim community center at the sacred "ground zero" serve only as an escape valve for whatever evanescent swamp gases are flaring around the smoldering and decaying remnants of the national economic meltdown. All of the inherent and fatal contradictions inherent in the American Dream are now coalescing in a waking nightmare to undermine, subvert, and ultimately destroy whatever vestiges remain of the triumphalist illusions of national supremacy and empire.