US Pending Home Sales Crash Most In 5 Years

ORIGINAL LINK

Following Case-Shiller's report that home price gains are the weakest in four years,  Pulte Homes' CEO admission that 2019 will be a "challenging year," and existing home sales carnage, Pending Home Sales were expected to very modestly rebound in December.

But it didn't!

Pending home sales dropped 2.2% MoM (versus a 0.5% expected rise) to the lowest since 2014...

 

This is the 12th month in a row of annual sales declines...and the biggest annual drop in 5 years...

Yet another sign the housing market is struggling amid elevated property prices and borrowing costs - but there's always hope...

“The stock market correction hurt consumer confidence, record high home prices cut into affordability and mortgage rates were higher in October and November for consumers signing contracts in December,” NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said in a statement.

But with mortgage rates declining recently and the Fed less likely to raise borrowing costs, “the forecast for home transactions has greatly improved.”

Finally,  the Realtors group forecasts a decline in annual home sales to 5.25 million this year from 5.34 million in 2018, which would mark the first back-to-back drops since the last recession.

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New Regulations Cause California Soup Kitchen to Close Its Doors

ORIGINAL LINK

For the past four years, Deliverance San Diego has been delivering hot meals to the city’s homeless population every Friday, averaging 200 donated meals on any given evening. Now, due to new guidelines passed by the State Legislature of California, the non-profit is ceasing operations and will dissolve by the end of the month.

Through their existing model, hot meals were prepared in volunteer homes and distributed on the streets.

“Volunteers from various churches gather at 17th and Commercial downtown to load four food wagons with chili, soup, cornbread, water, and other snacks,” the group’s web site explains. “…We offer prayer and spiritual support, but one of the easiest things we do is get someone’s name and remember it.”

Through the new requirements, set forth by the San Diego Department of Environmental Health, Deliverance would need to use licensed, state-approved kitchens, implement hand-washing stations, and meet a variety of other requirements.

With a yearly budget of less than $7,000, according to the non-profit’s treasurer, Deliverance determined it can no longer sustain operations without extensive and expensive organizational changes. “We’re on a shoestring budget,” explains volunteer Gary Marttila, “so working out all those logistics became too big of an obstacle to overcome.”

ABC 10 News in San Diego tells more of their story:

As the San Diego Union Tribune explains, several of the law’s backers have expressed surprise at the closure of Deliverance. According to Heather Buonomo, a program coordinator with the Department of Environmental Health, some sort of workaround may have been available or achievable. “We’re happy to work with them to find a solution that works for their charitable organization,” she said. According to Monique Limón, one of the bill’s authors, “The law would encourage more charities to provide food for the needy while also creating a level of oversight to ensure they follow proper health guidelines.”

Yet it’s unclear what exactly would or could have been done if Deliverance had have tried to negotiate with the state and find “a solution that works.” And the fact that it didn’t even try or think it could try says something about the pressure that these policies put on small and vulnerable charities and institutions who don’t feel they have political sway.

Likewise, one can make any number of arguments about food safety, as Limón does, but it’s hard to imagine a scenario in which more burdens, more requirements, and tighter regulations will somehow encourage “encourage more charities to provide food for the needy.”

The reality is that the state’s dream of regulated soup and sandwiches is taking precedence over the bottom-up activity of neighbors who are passionate about loving their neighbors. Is that really an acceptable trade-off, particularly in an area that so desperately needs an intimate and personalized approach?

“We’ve sought to provide comfort to those who are going through an incredibly difficult time,” says Deliverance’s press release on the closure. “In many situations, they are without a home due to no fault of their own. This action by the state creates significant barriers to those organizations like ours who simply want to show God’s love through a hot meal and some conversation.”

Given the good—and thus far, safe—work of organizations like Deliverance, such regulations represent a prime example of the “unseen costs” of government action.

In some cases, well-intended government policies lead to trade imbalances or economic surpluses or corporate cronyism or community inequities—all of which yield their own forms of social corrosion. But in cases such as these, we see the ill effects of these policies on charitable activity, resulting in real and tangible barriers to human love and relationship.

Is it really worth it?

--

This article has been republished with permission from Acton Institute.

[Image Credit: U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Bryan Reckard]

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If Half of Facebook Accounts Are Fake… What Is Facebook Worth?

ORIGINAL LINK

Add up the clone accounts and the fake accounts, and one wonders if the total number of fake accounts is more than half of all Facebook accounts. The question that naturally arises is: what’s Facebook worth if half or more of its 2.2 billion accounts are fake?

What’s Facebook worth when it can’t even weed out the most obvious cloned and fake accounts? What’s it worth if perhaps it doesn’t want to eliminate all those fake accounts?

http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/?p=274131&preview_id=274131&preview_nonce=2c7cddf619&preview=true

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Dershowitz: Why Was Stone Arrested Instead Of Being Asked To Surrender?

ORIGINAL LINK

Authored by Alan Dershowitz via The Gatestone Institute,

• If there was no legitimate reason for the arrest and handcuffing of this presumed innocent defendant, what was the illegitimate reason? The illegitimate purpose of the arrest was to intimidate the potential witness -- namely Stone -- into not invoking his constitutional right to remain silent, rather than to testify as a government witness.

• As Judge T.S. Ellis, III, who presided over the Manafort trial observed: "You don't really care about Mr. Manafort's bank fraud – what you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment."

• The ACLU has been absolutely silent in regard to the questionable tactics employed by Mueller. They, too, would have been up in arms had these tactics been employed against their favorite candidate and mine, Hillary Clinton. Their silence speaks volumes about their partisanship and lack of neutral standards of civil liberties.

• Congress must act to prevent these abuses from recurring.

Judge T.S. Ellis (right), who presided over the first Manafort trial, observed that flipped witnesses sometimes have an inducement not only to "sing" but to "compose" -- that is, to embellish. (Image source: Fox News video screenshot)

The reasons given thus far for Roger Stone's pre-dawn arrest by armed FBI agents are utterly unconvincing. He was not a flight risk, as evidenced by the low bail and easy conditions of release set by the judge without objection from the government. Stone knew he was going to be indicted and if he wanted to flee, he had plenty of time to do so. The same is true of destroying evidence, wiping his electronics or doing anything else that would warrant an arrest rather than a notice to his lawyer to appear in court at a specified time. A search was conducted of various residences pursuant to a search warrant. No arrest was necessary to conduct these searches.

So, if there was no legitimate reason for the arrest and handcuffing of this presumed innocent defendant, what was the illegitimate reason? To paraphrase the indictment against Stone, the illegitimate purpose of the arrest was to intimidate the potential witness -- namely Stone -- into not invoking his constitutional right to remain silent, rather than to testify as a government witness.

The arrest was nothing more than a show of toughness -- a foretaste of what Stone could expect if he did not cooperate with Mueller. Police do this all the time: "Look, we can do this the easy way or the hard way." The tough arrest with handcuffs and shackles was a demonstration of the hard way.

Prosecutors have enormous power and discretion whether and how to use it. All too often they use it the way Mueller has been using it during this investigation: to pressure witnesses to testify against Trump. As Judge T.S. Ellis, III, who presided over the Manafort trial, observed:

"You don't really care about Mr. Manafort's bank fraud -- what you really care about is what information Mr. Manafort could give you that would reflect on Mr. Trump or lead to his prosecution or impeachment."

Judge Ellis also pointed out the dangers of this tactic:

"This vernacular to 'sing' is what prosecutors use. What you got to be careful of is that they may not only sing, they may compose."

If Hillary Clinton had been elected president and if a special prosecutor had arrested one of her associates in the rough and demeaning manner by which Stone was arrested, civil libertarians would be up in arms. They would correctly argue that to marshal dozens of armed FBI agents to arrest an elderly man accused of non-violent crimes is an abuse of authority and a waste of FBI resources. They would complain that it constitutes intimidation and violates the spirit, if not the letter, of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments. But because the arrest is of a Trump associate and the purpose is to get evidence against President Trump, we have not heard from fair-weather civil libertarians who use civil liberties and constitutional rights as tactics to serve their partisan political agendas.

The ACLU has been absolutely silent in regard to the questionable tactics employed by Mueller. They, too, would have been up in arms had these tactics been employed against their favorite candidate and mine, Hillary Clinton. They would have demanded an explanation as to why the extraordinary power of arrest, which is supposed to be reserved only for cases warranting this use of force, was employed in this case. Their silence speaks volumes about their partisanship and lack of neutral standards of civil liberties.

The American public is entitled to an honest explanation of why Stone was arrested. We have not received the truth. Congress should hold a hearing and call as witnesses those who ordered the arrest and demand they explain and justify it. It is unlikely that a plausible and credible explanation will be offered, but Mueller and his FBI agents should at least have an opportunity to set the record straight. Maybe there is a good reason for why the arrest was necessary, but if so, we have not heard it and it is unlikely that the reason involves national security or other secrets. These hearings should lead to legislation setting enforceable standards for when the kind of arrest to which Stone was subjected should be permissible. The power to arrest, using armed FBI agents, handcuffs and shackles must not become a tactic to be used by law enforcement for impermissible reasons. Nor should it become routine. Congress must act to prevent these abuses from recurring.

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‘Perfect accuracy’: WikiLeaks hits back at ‘neocon’ app NewsGuard, which labeled it untrustworthy — RT World News

https://www.rt.com/news/448875-wikileaks-newsguard-red-rating/

Censoring 2020 Has Already Begun As Big Tech ‘Pulls Out All The Stops’ To Prevent Independent Media From Countering The ‘Official Narrative’

ORIGINAL LINK

by Stefan Stanford, All News Pipeline: As more and more Democrats throw their hat in the ring, already announcing they’ll be running for president in 2020, big tech has begun to pull out all the stops to prevent Independent Media (IM) from bypassing the mainstream media narrative by not only limiting the reach of IM […]

The post Censoring 2020 Has Already Begun As Big Tech ‘Pulls Out All The Stops’ To Prevent Independent Media From Countering The ‘Official Narrative’ appeared first on SGT Report.

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NewsGuard: A Neoconservative Contrivance Which Promotes an Establishment View

ORIGINAL LINK

There’s a new thought policeman in town. He calls himself NewsGuard and he promises to restore “Trust and Accountability” to what one reads online. His website elaborates that “NewsGuard uses journalism to fight false news, misinformation, and disinformation. Our trained …

The post NewsGuard: A Neoconservative Contrivance Which Promotes an Establishment View appeared first on Global Research.

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Kavanaugh hearings, through the eyes of a British psychiatrist | Theodore Dalrymple, City Journal

https://www.city-journal.org/html/gladiatorial-soap-opera-16466.html

Japan Data Scandal: Tokyo Admits 40% Of Its Economic Data Is "Fake News"

ORIGINAL LINK

When it comes to the biggest monetary experiment in modern history, namely Japan's QE which has seen the BOJ buy enough Japanese bonds to match the GDP of Japan, there is nothing more important than the BOJ having accurate metrics to determine if its "inflation targeting" is working, i.e., if wages and broader inflation are rising. Alas, the recent news that Japan's labor ministry published erroneous statistics for years, has raised doubt about not only the accuracy of economic analysis released by the Bank of Japan, but prompted investors to doubt absolutely every economic report published by Tokyo.

For those who are unfamiliar with the latest economic fake news scandal, on Wednesday Japan's labor ministry revised its monthly labor survey for the period between 2012 and 2018 admitting it had overstated nominal year-on-year wage increases by as much as 0.7 percentage point between January and November of last year, to take just one example.

Unfortunately, there are many other examples, and according to an Internal Affairs Ministry report released late Thursday, nearly half of Japan’s key economic government statistics need to be reviewed with 22 discrete statistics, or roughly 40% of the 56 key government economic releases, turning out to be "fake news" and in need to be corrected.

This is a major problem for Kuroda and the Bank of Japan which uses statistics from the labor ministry to compile two key pieces of economic data, in making its ongoing decisions whether to continue, taper or expand QE.

One, according to Nikkei, is the quarterly output gap which compares the nation's supply capacity with total demand. Supply capacity is derived from elements such as labor and capital spending. Data from the labor ministry survey, such as the number of hours logged by the workforce, is used to compute the output gap.

Japan's output gap has climbed further and further into positive territory. That has partially informed the BOJ's judgement that "Japan's economy is expanding moderately." The gap is also considered a leading indicator for inflation. A sustained positive reading could lead companies to raise prices and lift wages.

Meanwhile, even as Japan's consumer price index that excludes fresh foods continues to print below 1%, the BOJ has been stubbornly saying that prices are maintaining momentum toward its 2% inflation target, with the conclusion based in part on the output gap.

In retrospect, it now appears that the BOJ may have been "mistaken" and since the underlying data was erroneous for all the years during which Japan's QE was running, the BOJ will now face pressure to rework its entire framework and estimates in light of the data scandal.

"With regard to the extent of the impact, we intend to undertake a careful examination based on upcoming results of government studies," a BOJ spokesperson told Nikkei, offering a few other details.

In addition to the output gap, the services producer price index, released monthly, is the second key BOJ indicator reliant on the labor survey. If the BOJ is forced to drastically revise either this indicator or the output gap, it could introduce uncertainty about the conclusions reached by the central bank which has bought trillions in government bonds and stock ETFs relying on... fake economic data!

"There is no telling how far the impact has spread," said a senior BOJ official, and for the BOJ to admit that economic data in Japan is now sheer chaos and that inflation had been overstated for years, is nothing short of catastrophic.

Meanwhile, adding insult to injury, Japan's latest scandal means that whereas everyone had long been making fun of China's economic data for being manipulated, fabricated and goalseeked, Japan's own "data" was far, far worse.

In the BOJ's quarterly Outlook for Economic Activity and Prices, at least eight out of roughly 60 diagrams incorporate data from the labor survey. Those include charts depicting individual income, nominal wages and consumer spending. The latest report, released Wednesday, amusingly describes a "steady improvement in the employment and income situation." Alas, it turns out the improvement was only possible because the underlying data was wrong and/or "cooked."

The outlooks are considered valuable since they are based on the conclusions about the economy and prices reached by BOJ Gov. Kuroda. The central bank may see no need to revise earlier statements, but the reliability of the body risks being thrown into question regardless.

Meanwhile, just to demonstrate how much of a circular farce "data" in developed countries has become, after Japan’s labor ministry admitted it published faulty wage data, 79% of respondents in a Nikkei poll taken between Friday and Sunday said they now can’t trust government statistics, while 14% said they can. And, making the farce complete, a separate poll found that the approval rating for PM Shinzo Abe rose 6% from last month to 53% in the Nikkei poll, with his disapproval rating falling 7%.

We wonder how long before Japan admits that all of its polls showing support for the prime minister were just as fake.

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Washington Is Proving Karl Marx’s Conclusion Correct That Violence Is the Only Effective Force in History

ORIGINAL LINK

Former UK Ambassador Craig Murray Explains Venezuela

In Venezuela a Washington stooge, Juan Guaidó, who has never been a candidate in any election for president has declared himself president of Venezuela and has sworn himself in with the support of the US government and the CIA controlled countries of Latin America. So far the Venezuelan military has stood by the elected president Maduro, but Washington is busy at work buying up the Venezuelan military.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-coup-in-venezuela-must-be-resisted/5666420

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/category/uncategorized/

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk

https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/11/assange-never-met-manafort-luke-harding-and-the-guardian-publish-still-more-blatant-mi6-lies/

The Coup in Venezuela Must Be Resisted

Amb. Craig Murray

Venezuela has elections. Juan Guaido has never even been a Presidential candidate. Despite massive CIA opposition funding and interference over years as Big Oil tries to regain control of the World’s largest oil reserves, Nicolas Maduro was democratically re-elected in 2018 as President of Venezuela.

The coup now under way is illegitimate. I opposed Maduro’s move to replace the elected National Assembly. Sometimes I read back things I wrote in the past and decide I was wrong. Sometimes I think the article was right, but a bit of a potboiler. Occasionally I am proud, and I am proud of my analysis on Venezuela written on 3 August 2017. I believe it is still valid.

Hugo Chavez’ revolutionary politics were founded on two very simple tenets:
1) People ought not to be starving in dreadful slums in the world’s most oil rich state
2) The CIA ought not to control Venezuela

Over the years, Chavez racked up real achievements in improving living standards for the poor and in providing health and education facilities. He was widely popular and both he and his successor, Nicolas Maduro, also racked up very genuine election victories. Maduro remains the democratically elected President.

But the dream went sour. In particular it fell foul of the tendency of centrally planned economies to fail to get the commodities people want onto shop shelves, and to the corruption that goes with centralisation. The latter was certainly not worse than the right wing corruption it replaced, but that does not diminish its existence.

Every revolution will always displace an existing elite who are by definition the best educated and most articulate section of the population, with most access to resources including media – and to CIA secret backing, which has continued throughout at an increasing rate. Chavez did not solve this problem in the way Robespierre, Stalin, Trotsky or Mao would have done. He embraced democracy, let them be – and largely left their private offshore billions, and thus their power, untouched.

Inevitably the day came when economic and administrative failings cracked the solidity of support from the poor for the revolution. The right then stepped up their opposition with a campaign led by corrupt billionaires, which the western media has failed to acknowledge has been throughout murderously violent.

The problem with revolutionary millenarianism is that its failure to achieve utopia is viewed as disaster by its proponents. Maduro ought to have accepted that it is the nature of life that political tides ebb and flow, ceded power to the opposition gains in parliament, maintained the principles of democracy, and waited for the tide to turn back his way – taking the risk that the CIA might not give him the chance. Instead he has resorted to a constitutional fix which dilutes democracy, a precedent which will delight the right who in the long term have most to fear from the populace. Given the extreme violence of the opposition, I am less inclined to view arrests as unquestionably a straightforward human rights matter, than are some pro-western alleged human rights groups. But that Maduro has stepped off the democratic path I fear is true. He has, bluntly, gone wrong, however difficult the circumstances. I condemn both the departures from human rights best practice and the attempt to use a part indirectly elected body to subvert the elected parliament.

But, even today, Venezuela is still vastly more of a democracy than Saudi Arabia, and a far greater respecter of human rights than Israel in its dreadful repression of the Palestinians. Yet support for Israel and for Saudi Arabia are keystones of the foreign policy of those who today are incessant in their demands that we on the “left” condemn Venezuela. The BBC has given massively more news coverage to human rights abuse in Venezuela this last month than in a score of much worse countries I could name – than a score put together.

Human rights abuse should be condemned everywhere. But it only hits the headlines when practised by a country which is on the wrong side of the neo-con agenda.
Anybody who believes that a country’s internal democracy is the determining factor in whether the West decides to move for violent regime change in that country, is a complete idiot. Any journalist or politician who makes that claim is more likely to be a complete charlatan than a complete idiot. In recent years, possession of hydrocarbon reserves is very obviously a major factor in western regime change actions.

In Latin America over the last century, the presence of internal democracy has been much more likely to lead to external regime change than its absence, as maintenance of US imperialist hegemony has been the defining factor. That combines with oil reserves to make the current move a double whammy.

It is disheartening to see the Western “democracies” so universally supporting the coup in Venezuela. The EU in particular has leapt in to support Donald Trump in the quite ludicrous act of recognising corrupt Big Oil puppet Guaido as “President”. The change of the EU into full neo-con mode -so starkly represented in its bold support for Francoist violence in Catalonia – is what led me to reconcile with Brexit and a Norway style relationship.

When I was in the FCO, the rule on recognition was very plain and very openly stated – the UK recognised the government which had “effective control of the territory”, whatever the attributes of that government. This is a very well established principle of international law. There were very rare exceptions involving continuing to support ousted governments. The pre-1939 Polish government in exile was the most obvious example, though once Nazism was defeated Britain moved to recognise the Communist government actually in charge, to the fury of exiled Poles. I was involved in the question of the continued recognition of President Kabbah of Sierra Leone during the period in which he was ousted by military coup.

But I can think of no precedent at all for recognising a President who does not have and has never had control of the country – and has never been a candidate for President. This idea of the West simply trying to impose a suitably corrupt and biddable leader is really a very startling development. It is astonishing the MSM commentariat and political class appear to see no problem with it. It is a quite extraordinary precedent, and doubtless will lead to many new imperialist adventures.

One final thought. The right wing Government of Ecuador has been one of the first and most vocal in doing the West’s bidding. The Ecuadorean government has been colluding with the United States over the efforts to imprison Julian Assange, and at this very time has arranged for FBI and CIA personnel in Quito to take false and malicious statements manufactured by the Ecuador government in collaboration with the CIA, about Julian Assange’s activities in the Embassy in London.

Ecuadorean government documents had already been produced out of Quito, and shown to MI6 and CIA outlets like the Guardian and New York Times, purporting to show the diplomatic appointment of Julian Assange to Moscow in December 2017. I have believed throughout that these fake documents were most likely produced by Ecuador’s new CIA influenced government itself.

Today Ecuador, once a key part of the Bolivarian revolution, is simply a puppet of the CIA, voicing support for a US coup in Venezuela and working to produce fake testimony against Assange. I warn you firmly against giving credence to Luke Harding’s next “scoop” which will doubtless shortly emerge from this process. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/11/assange-never-met-manafort-luke-harding-and-the-guardian-publish-still-more-blatant-mi6-lies/

https://www.globalresearch.ca/the-coup-in-venezuela-must-be-resisted/5666420

The Vultures of Caracas

Amb. Craig Murray

We are frequently told that people in Venezuela have no food, clothing or toilet paper, and that popular discontent with the left wing government is driven by real hunger. There are elements of truth in this story, though the causes of economic dislocation are far more complex than the media would have us believe.

But I ask you to look at this photo of supporters of CIA poster-boy, the West’s puppet unelected “President” Juan Guaido, taken at a Guaido rally in Caracas two days ago and published yesterday in security services house journal The Guardian. Please take a really close look at the photo. Blow it up as big as you can. Scan individual people in the crowd, one by one. https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/category/uncategorized/

These are not the poor and most certainly not the starving. As it chances I have a great deal of life experience working amongst seriously deprived, hungry and despairing people. I know the gaunt face of want and the desperate glance of need. Look at these Guaido supporters, one by one by one. This designer spectacled, well-coiffed, elegantly dressed, sleekly jowled group does not know hunger. This group does not know want. This is a proper right wing gathering, a gathering of the nicely off section of society. This is a group of those who have corruptly been siphoning Venezuela’s great wealth for decades and who want to make sure the gravy train flows properly in their direction again. It is, in short, a group of exactly the kind of people you would expect to support a CIA coup.

Those manicured hands raised in the air will never throw rocks, or get involved in violence unless against a peasant strapped to a chair for them. It is not this crowd which will suffer as public disorder is manipulated and directed by the CIA. These wealthy ones are immune, just as Davos serves as nothing but an annual reminder of how very poorly God aims avalanches.

There is real suffering in Venezuela. The CIA is working hard to stoke violence, and the genuine poor will soon start to die, both in those egged on to riot and in the security services. But do not get taken in by the complete nonsense that this is a popular, democratic revolution. It is not. It is yet another barefaced CIA regime change coup.

UPDATE Such wisdom as this blog finds is often crowd-source, and with thanks to a commenter below here is some useful information from Jill Stein:

Elliott Abrams appointed by Trump to oversee the US coup against Venezuela “backed death squads in Latin America that murdered 1000s for right-wing dictators, lied to congress to cover up treasonous Iran-Contra affair, led 2002 US coup attemmpt in Venezuela. Still think this is about democracy & human rights?”

Elliott Abrams was Assistant Secretary of State for Human Rights and Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs in the Reagan administration. He was convicted of misleading Congress about the Iran-Contra affair but was pardoned by President George H.W. Bush.

In the George W. Bush regime Abrams was Deputy National Security Advisor for Global Democracy Strategy. Trump has now returned Abrams to the scene of his crimes. “Global Democracy Strategy” is the euphemism for US hegemony. It means the overthrow of governments that stand in the way of US interests whether private or government.

The post Washington Is Proving Karl Marx’s Conclusion Correct That Violence Is the Only Effective Force in History appeared first on PaulCraigRoberts.org.

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