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Arrest of Julian Assange is an Attack on Journalism, Liberty, Self-Government and Civilization Itself

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Without an unfettered press, without liberty of speech, all of the outward forms and structures of free institutions are a sham, a pretense – the sheerest mockery. If the press is not free; if speech is not independent and untrammeled; if the mind is shackled or made impotent through fear, it makes no difference under what form of government you live, you are a subject and not a citizen.

– William Edgar Borah

Agitators are a set of interfering, meddling people, who come down to some perfectly contented class of the community and sow the seeds of discontent amongst them. That is the reason why agitators are so absolutely necessary. Without them, in our incomplete state, there would be no advance towards civilization.  

– Oscar Wilde

The glimpse of Julian Assange being dragged from the Ecuadorean embassy in London is an emblem of the times. Might against right. Muscle against the law. Indecency against courage. Six policemen manhandled a sick journalist.

– John Pilger: Assange Arrest a Warning from History

I was born 80 years ago in a country called the United States of America, and now I live in a Homeland — an expression we haven’t heard since Hitler.

– Gore Vidal

The only thing I’ve been able to think about for the last few days is the mugging of Julian Assange at the Ecuadorian embassy in London. This post could go in many different directions, but given all the excellent articles already written on the topic, what seems most necessary is an explanation of what this means in the big picture of freedom in the Western world and civilization in general.

Assange’s apprehension on April 11, 2019 and the related indictment and extradition request by the U.S., has led to a level of concern and anger similar to how I felt during the financial crisis and banker bailouts a decade ago. This may seem hyperbolic, but allow me to explain.

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Trump Cares About Two Things – Empire and the Stock Market

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Though not surprising, it’s nevertheless extraordinary to watch Donald Trump publicly and shamelessly morph into a George W. Bush era neocon when it comes to foreign policy, and a CNBC stock market cheerleader when it comes to the economy. Just like Barack Obama before him, Trump talked a good populist game on two issues of monumental importance (foreign policy and the rigged economy), but once elected immediately turned around and prioritized the core interests of oligarchy.

Trump doesn’t even give lip service to big picture populist topics anymore unless they’re somehow related to the culture war, which works out perfectly for the entrenched oligarchy since the culture war primarily serves as a useful distraction to keep the rabble squabbling while apex societal predators loot whatever’s left of this hollowed out neo-feudal economy.

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Is the World Already Multi-Polar?

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A hefty case can be made that the Empire of Chaos currently has no allies; it’s essentially surrounded by an assortment of vassals, puppets and comprador 5th columnist elites professing varied degrees of – sometimes reluctant – obedience.

The Trump administration’s foreign policy may be easily deconstructed as a crossover between The Sopranos and late-night comedy.

– Pepe Escobar, in his recent Consortium News piece: Empire of Chaos in Hybrid War Overdrive

While the U.S. empire’s existed in various states of decline for much of the 21st century, I’ve been opining on the topic with far more frequency and urgency since the election of Donald Trump. This isn’t because he’s fundamentally much different from the imperial managers (aka presidents) that came before him on foreign policy, but because his personality, style and overall boorishness serve to accelerate the pace of decline.

As many astute observers have noted, what really bothers establishment types on the “NeverTrump” right and the “Russiagate conspiracy theory” left is not so much what Trump does, but how he does it. These political cliques may disagree on many issues, but what they have in common — aside from Trump derangement syndrome — is a love affair with U.S. empire and an unwavering dedication to the maintenance of American geopolitical dominance at all costs.

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Russiagate Might Be Dead, but Big Tech Censorship Is Here to Stay

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I have certain rules I live by. My first rule: I don’t believe anything the government tells me. Nothing. Zero.

– George Carlin

Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community and they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.

– Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer in a 2017 interview on MSNBC

As someone whose website was slandered by the earliest manifestations of the hysterical Russiagate mob, I could go on and on now that’s the whole spectacle’s been disproven, but I’m not going to do that. Rather, I want to highlight how despite the whole thing blowing up, we’ll be living with severe direct consequences for years to come.

First, it’s important to point out that none of Russiagate’s most irresponsible grifters will face any serious repercussions for wasting the country’s time, money and energy on a fake story for the past two years. Russiagate was as much a business model as it was a conspiracy theory, and some of it’s most shameless peddlers made out like bandits over the past couple of years.

As Glenn Greenwald noted:

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The 737 MAX Saga Is a Total Disgrace for Boeing and the FAA

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The Worship of Mammon by Evelyn De Morgan.

One of the first things to become apparent as I began reading about the deadly crash of Ethiopian Airlines’ Boeing 737 MAX 8 plane on March 10th, was the fact that nobody seemed to trust U.S. authorities.

As Fortune noted:

Ethiopia’s aviation authority is unable to read the black box recorders from the Boeing 737 Max plane that crashed Sunday, but a row is brewing over just where the flight recorders will be sent for analysis.

The U.S. National Transportation Safety Board is pushing to have its experts analyze the data and voice recorders, which were partly damaged, the Wall Street Journal reports, but Ethiopian authorities would prefer to work with the U.K.’s Air Accidents Investigation Branch to ensure that U.S. experts won’t have undue influence in the probe of the American-made plane.

At the same time, pretty much the entire world had started to ground 737 MAX planes as this was the second time this model had crashed within the span of five months. By early last week, Canada and the U.S. had become increasingly isolated in insisting the planes were safe to fly, and then Canada folded too.

This represented a huge rebuke to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), which continued to defend the aircraft until the very last moment. In a ridiculous stunt, Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao even rode in a 737 MAX two days after the latest crash.

Many people, including myself, saw this lack of trust in the FAA as a watershed moment. Politico noted:

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Federal Reserve Chairman Appears on 60 Minutes – Why Now?

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One of the most famous, and prescient, financial cartoons in American history is the above depiction of the Federal Reserve Bank as a giant octopus that would come to parasitically suck the life out of all U.S. institutions as well as free markets.

The image is taken from Alfred Owen Crozier’s U.S. Money Vs Corporation Currency, “Aldrich Plan,” Wall Street Confessions! Great Bank Combine, published in 1912, just a year before the creation of the Federal Reserve. 

Last night, the current high priest of money printing, asset bubbles and inequality, Jerome Powell, appeared on 60 Minutes. Interviewer Scott Pelley mentioned the fact that such discussions are rare and noted the last time a Fed head appeared for such a chat was Ben Bernanke back in 2010.

As such, what I find most interesting about this event wasn’t Powell’s boilerplate, bureaucratic propaganda about how the economy’s doing fine and how much central bankers love average Americans, but why he and the institution he heads felt a need to do this now.

There’s no doubt something has the Fed spooked otherwise Powell never would have done this. One factor is they know the economic ground’s starting to shift beneath them, and they need to push a particular narrative ahead of time so central bankers can once again do as they please when “the time to act” arrives.

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Don’t Believe the Hype – Expect a Worsening of U.S.-China Relations

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If you receive your news via Donald Trump tweet, or courtesy of proclamations by Larry Kudlow, you’d be forgiven for eagerly anticipating a groundbreaking U.S.-China trade deal to be announced imminently, and thinking such a deal will save the global economy from rolling over into a serious downturn as well as pacify geopolitical tensions between the number one and number two economies in the world. However, if you expect these things, I don’t think you’re paying attention.

Before we get a little into the weeds, let me be clear that I have no idea what Trump and Xi will, or will not, announce regarding trade. Trump seems fanatically obsessed with the stock market, and Xi’s been dealing with an economy in a tailspin. It’s certainly possible they come up with some sort of agreement they think will restore confidence in the global economy and convince people the last few months were nothing more than a “glitch.” It’s also important to understand this positive outcome appears to be assumed by the stock market and investors generally. Anything less might be seen as a colossal disappointment.

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You Can’t Stop the Cycle

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2018’s valuation records are astounding in that they show the S&P 500 to be more fundamentally over-valued than it was at the prior two historic stock market valuation peaks in 1929 and 2000, bona fide speculative manias.

– From Crescat Capital’s recent investor letter

Cycles are perhaps the most natural and common occurrence in the universe. The planets orbit the sun, seasons change, day turns to night and night back to day, humans are born, grow old and die.

Some of these cycles are more pleasant to think about than others, but their consistent occurrence remains factually unassailable. Indeed, it could be said that a human life itself consists of an endless series of encounters with various cycles. Cycles of the natural world and cycles created by humans themselves. Human created cycles are the focal point of today’s piece.

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Important Changes at Liberty Blitzkrieg

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From time to time, I think it’s necessary and healthy to take a step back and reflect on what you’re doing and why. I recently did that with regard to my work and website.

When I quit my job on Wall Street nearly a decade ago, I had no idea how life would unfold. I walked away from a highly paid position to pursue some unknown future, a simultaneously exciting and terrifying decision. I was a single guy living in NYC back then, with no pressing obligations to anyone other than myself. I’m now married with three kids in Colorado.

I decided to leave financial services upon becoming disgusted by industry practices and the unconscionable public betrayal perpetrated by the U.S. government and Federal Reserve via its massive bailout of the few at the expense of the many. In short, the most powerful players in our society sacrificed the long-term health of the U.S economy and the nation’s overall social cohesion to save a corrupt and unethical industry and reward the very people responsible for the calamity. We don’t have a meritocracy or competitive free markets, we have a rigged system based on corruption and cronyism where the most dangerous and destructive amongst us consistently fail upward.

The Wall Street bailout, including the failure to prosecute bank executives for the extreme fraud of the pre-crisis period and subsequent economic catastrophe, was the most formative event of my life. It forced me to confront the reality of the sort of country and economy I was living in, and what I saw wasn’t pretty. Since I could never look at the world the same way again, I couldn’t live my life the same way either.

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YouTube Will Determine What ‘Conspiracy’ Is and Stop Recommending Such Videos

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While the evolution of Google’s YouTube from a free expression platform into something entirely different has been underway for a while, it just took another step in a very short-sighted and restrictive direction. NBC News reports:

YouTube has announced that it will no longer recommend videos that “come close to” violating its community guidelines, such as conspiracy or medically inaccurate videos…Chaslot said that YouTube’s fix to its recommendations AI will have to include getting people to videos with truthful information and overhauling the current system it uses to recommend videos.

There’s a lot to unpack here so let’s get started. First, it appears YouTube has announced the creation of a new bucket when it comes to content uploaded to the site. It’s no longer just videos consistent with company guidelines and those that aren’t, but there’s now a category for “conspiracy or medically inaccurate videos.” This is a massive responsibility, which neither YouTube or anyone else seems fit to be judge and jury. In other words, YouTube is saying it’s comfortable deciding what is “conspiracy” and what isn’t. Which brings up a really important question.

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