The All Red Line - Updates from Gordon White

[Cara]

Gordon White is a writer on chaos magic (see his website, http://runesoup.com/).

He has a regular podcast on topics esoteric and magical and mostly writes from this perspective. Recently, he has begun writing a weekly update that deals more with geopolitics, which he calls TARL - The All Red Line (you can sign up to receive this on his website).

Although I do not really understand the world of magic, let alone chaos magic, I do find his weekly reports on the geopolitical situation interesting and often insightful. I thought I would share a few here.

*WARNING to readers - Gordon White uses strong language*

This week's update:



Rolling Snake Eyes

What is the purpose of archonology? I mentioned it during the series but it is worth revisiting.

It is not to tally up a list of crimes and march on Washington, Brussels or London and expect some sort of change. That has never happened and will never happen. (In Washington’s case, the last attempt to do so in any real fashion resulted in the army firing upon war veterans and an attempted coup by Grandpa Bush and his fascist cronies, which was only thwarted thanks to Smedley “war is a racket” Butler. Now cast your eyes to Dakota.)

Rather, archonological excavation is intended to extract the most accurate data points about what is ‘really’ going on from underneath the now complete fabrications that pass for official narrative so as to position one’s life accordingly. It is to listen to the weather forecast when on the open sea, rather than the box office weekend takings.

And with that, we return to Europe to metaphorically visit a Monaco craps table. It sounds obvious but the ‘secret’ to craps is to stay at the table long enough to roll a seven or eleven but leave before rolling snake eyes.

These are the dice rolls the EU is looking at over the next twelve months:

• Italy is threatening to veto the EU budget over the refugee crisis.
• The Pirate Party may actually win the Iceland election. (Which would be amazing.)
• Austria: A rigged election in April that stole victory from a Eurosceptic candidate, led to a high court overturning of the result, led to a proposed rerun on October 2nd which was then postponed because of ‘faulty glue on postal votes’ (the Eurosceptic party had widened its lead) which is now scheduled for December 4th.
• Italy again: An election in which the incumbent Renzi is currently neck and neck with Grillo’s Eurosceptic party.
• The refusal of a growing number of Eastern European countries to accept any Syrianish refugees because of the outright political disaster it will cause for ruling parties at home.
• An election in France, where the incumbent Hollande is polling in single digits -making him probably the least popular leader of any western country ever. Do not rule out an outright win by the Front National. Even without it, an EU membership referendum will be negotiated as part of whatever conditions the eventual winner will be forced to make with Le Pen.
• Rajoy versus Catalonia: Round 537,000
• An election in Germany which Merkel will surely lose, likely to a coalition of increasingly Eurosceptic parties. (Armstrong things Merkel's latest deflationary real estate policies are a tacit admittance that the Euro will fail, which will trigger an on-rush into German real assets. Which, of course, it will.)
• A banking crisis either in Italy or Deutsche Bank will lead to bail-ins of savings accounts and will tear through European banks' derivate positions and capital ratios like shrapnel through sponge cake. (There are ten times as many non-performing loans in Europe as there are the US.)

And now we have NATO putting more troops on Europe's eastern border than at any time during the Cold War. That is a lot of dice rolls. We do not need to know which roll turns up the snake eyes for the sixteenth tarot trump to land on Brussels. (To mix gambling metaphors.)

How does Brexit look now, then?

Actually, let's look at it. Liberal Twitter shat the bed when the FTSE briefly dropped after the vote, but it is now at record highs so they've stopped using it as 'proof' that 'Brexit' is a disaster. The Pound is at multiyear lows -and heading lower- which is mostly the same thing as record FTSE highs -asset price increases are the same thing as currency depreciation- except now Liberal Twitter is using the weak Pound as 'proof' of their so-called disaster. (It does make weekend Easyjet visits to Berlin more expensive for Hoxton hipsters, but both places are identical to Brooklyn now anyway, so why bother with the trip at all?)

Yes, some of that weakness is Bank of England policy response to Brexit, most of it is the strengthening USD -which was happening anyway. On balance, the British are provably wealthier since Brexit, even when you account for currency weakness. And from a trade perspective, it is looking better and better for the UK and worse for its grumbling EU 'partners'. (There will be no hard Brexit because it would be financially disastrous for Europe. This is the real thinking behind the delayed Article 50 notification. By the time the exiting starts, France will be in no position to dictate terms. Welcome to the Balance of Power, kids. London has a thousand years of experience playing this game.)

And yes, the current Prime Minister, Theresa May, is not exactly covering herself in glory. But this is entirely expected on the wrong side of the 2015.75 peak in government. No one is anywhere because the sky is falling.

I also surmise there is a 'deep throne' connection to her inexplicable confidence. It looks like a 'command performance'. The Queen -who was pro-Brexit- probably had a very interesting discussion with May when she was first invited to the Palace. Consider this: The safest -possibly only- way to keep Scotland in the kingdom is to have the Eurozone collapse before Nicola Sturgeon gets another referendum. A few MI5 phone calls to the Financial Times -headquartered on the Thames- would be enough to keep Deutsche Bank on the front cover for a week for all the wrong reasons. That's about all it would take. Don't think the Queen thinks like that? Well, ask yourself if Scotland is more important to her than Europe. (And if she appoints her feckless son, Andrew, to a Brussels negotiation team you will know that she's moved from 'this is expedient' to 'I hate those guys'.)

A centralising, technocratic boondoggle that has destroyed southern Europe and sold the Continent's dwindling number of young people up the river -to the tune of a 55% unemployment rate in some countries- will begin its end with one of the above dice throws. And that is great news. Because the destruction of southern Europe will come to an end.

In most of the most developed countries in the world industrial production has grown in volume since 1990, although a great deal of manufacturing capacities have been moved from the West to the emerging markets. Moreover, in countries like the USA, Israel, Switzerland, Austria and Germany the output has surpassed the 2008 pre-crisis levels. However, if we take a look at the euroarea or the Group of Seven (G7), then numbers are still lower than in 2008 but definitely higher than in 1990. [More.]

Italy, France, Greece and Portugal are not producing in the same volumes today that they were in 1990 -almost 30 years ago. According to OECD data, the steep drop began with the introduction of the Euro in 2002. On the other side of the dice roll, these economies will have restored to them the capacity to have their currencies increase or decrease in value according to internal conditions and requirements.

A couple of weeks ago, cracked.com -of all places- had a surprisingly cogent piece about why so many people are voting for Trump. It's not racism. It's urban elites telling regional populations they are getting richer as they have got poorer and poorer -and then accusing them of racism when they are angry about it. This is precisely what is going on behind the rising Euroscepticism across Europe -including Britain. It is amazing to me that people can publicly support -well, tweet support anyway- an extractive system that has destroyed the economies and futures of the young people in the literal home of western magic by siding with technocrats who receive tax-free salaries and negotiate secret trade agreements that surrender European sovereignty to American corporations.

Calling these Eurosceptic Europeans racist is perpetuating a class warfare that just drives them into the arms of racists. Which makes the urban elites shout "racist" ever louder. Which makes the regional populations who have been harvested by centralisation angrier, which drives them further toward the political edges, in the dictionary definition of an unvirtuous circle.

So that's how we all got here. Waiting for our turn to roll the dice. The casino is large. Let's try a new game.
TARL Cable

//

[Cara]

And here is this week's The All Red Line from Gordon White at Runesoup (http://runesoup.com/):



The Deep Breath Before The Plunge

We come to the final All Red Line before the election! I have to say the experiment of keeping a para-political discussion going on a weekly basis via newsletters has been a success. It's self-selected for people who are willing to push themselves to follow these discussions and lines of evidence without histrionically over-reacting to challenges to a worldview they mistakenly think of as their own (but is, in fact, an off-the-shelf number).

There isn’t a whole lot more to be said regarding the election at this point in the timeline. This tsunami wave has been generated, we just need to wait and see where it makes landfall.

The other reason why there isn’t a whole lot more to be said is that the reality is minds rarely change. the next few days are a matter of simply picking which blizzard you would like to sit in. If you sit in the Fox News blizzard, then all you hear about is Hillary. If you sit in the CNN blizzard, then all you hear about is Trump. In either case you are probably better off just going inside and sitting by the fire.

Let’s take a look at our ongoing newsletter examination of this deliberately interminably long process, self-evidently designed to wear down the will and outrage of the American people.

There is a war in heaven: This one turned out to be bang on the money. The recent decision by the FBI to actually do its job can only be interpreted as a revolt by the sane against the many tentacles of the war party. (St Michael be praised!)

Trump is going to win: I have stuck by this call through thick and thin, through the litany of his behavioural outrages, despite any number of people telling me that they just don’t see how it is possible. And I am sticking to this call, here, a few days out from the election. The demography is what it is at this point. Making a call does not constitute an endorsement. It's amazing how few people understand this.

Inventing Russian tensions: I’ve mentioned before that there is something very “Tower of Babel” about the rise of each presiding archon. The closer it reaches the top, the more absurd -the more top-heavy- its tactics become. We see this with the Clinton camp’s declaration that the FBI director is in league with Trump, is in league with Putin. This statement is so far through the looking glass that even the deranged minority that believed Clinton’s invented Russian conspiracy theories have been pushed a step too far so that the whole worldview negates itself.

I view this is a good thing, of course. Medium-term scenarios have opened up that no longer include the increased risk of war between the world’s two great nuclear powers. Comey’s move shows that it will be extremely difficult for the war party and its preferred candidate to crack the whip over the Washington infrastructure and lead it coherently to war. It does mean that the otherwise natural operations of state will be a farcical mass next year. But they were always going to be, anyway. This is what happens at this point in the timeline, regardless of who wins. Obviously this is not an ideal or even preferred outcome but, as mentioned a couple of weeks ago, it is better than world war. And it is just what's going to happen. Whining about it is infantile. Managing your own life in advance of it is brave.

And so I want to wish everyone good luck and humbly provide a little piece of advice to see you through the next few days: A lot of people, particularly on social media, are going to be experiencing one hell of an ice cream headache as the variance between their “official reality” worldview and what is actually happening in “reality” will be at its widest and most painful.

So do not engage. Quietly look to your own coherence. This entire clown show has been very successfully engineered to get the people hating horizontally rather than vertically. People will work this out in their own time or they will be destroyed by it. Do not let the gravity of their implosions suck you in.

You can do this. We can do this. Short-term bad. Medium-term good. Stay frosty, stay coherent.

TARL Cable
//

[Cara]

And here is this week's (11 November 2016) The All Red Line from Gordon White at Runesoup (http://runesoup.com/):

*WARNING to readers - Gordon White uses strong language*



What If There Is Also Good News?

It is worth considering why you signed up to this newsletter in the first place. It was because of your intention to wrangle some very tough thoughts into useful arrangement, and to muddle through some even tougher challenges.

So… Let's wrangle some thoughts.

I opened The Chaos Protocols with a Terence McKenna quote. "The problem is not to find the answer, it is to face the answer." As of now, we are very much in a facing phase. That's the first piece of good news. A problem has been solved. At the very least, we have a clearer picture of the shape of the battlefield than we did last week. I will return to this statement.

There is even more good news, however: This is not quite the American apocalypse you ordered or feared.

Firstly, and most importantly, if we can make it to January without World War Three erupting then we will likely not see World War Three.

Secondly, it looks very much like the TPP is dead on arrival. This is universally good for those who believe in the rule of law and democracy above the whims of global corporations. (On a personal basis, this also means that the hard-won native title access and custodianship rights of Australian aborigines are no longer directly at risk from American mining companies - a potential outcome that was causing me no small amount of anxiety.)

There is yet more good news. And for this good news, once again we turn to demography for succour: America is not the fetid wasteland of racist maniacs you are likely hearing about on Twitter. I am about to prove that with numbers, but before I do we need to have another discussion about coherence and ice cream headaches.

The reality is that every single person who voted this week did so out of the belief that their vote and their choice of candidate would bring about a better tomorrow. That is a tremendously unifying thought to hold in one’s head. Obviously, I was slightly alarmed at the widespread inability to parse genuine macro risk from all the electioneering and fear mongering garbage, to say nothing of the liberal intelligentsia’s singular refusal to admit the prefix "Neo" is, by definition, permanently painted on their parade float of Arab children’s skulls –and that no amount of on-campus, non-gendered bathrooms will ever wash it off. Ever.

So -whisper it- but a global conflagration is now less likely. And -shout it- what future generations will certainly describe as an Arab genocide may finally come to an end.

That said, what lies before us can hardly be considered utopia. (It's almost as if we should have some sort of word that means 'opposite of utopia' or 'delivered utopia that is anything but'.)

Picture yourself standing on a rickety, single rail bridge with a train barrelling toward you and a treacherous, rock strewn, icy river down below. We have just leapt from the bridge. Gravity has yet to find us but it certainly will soon.

Ice cream headaches are not cured by repeating this metaphor, over and over, in the vain hope that others will believe it. Coherence is not restored by convincing those trapped in the neoliberal hologram that this is so.

Coherence is restored by demonstrating that their cartoon villain vision of America is quantifiably incorrect. It relies on two cognitive errors, currently caught in an infinite loop:

1. A vote for anyone but Clinton -be it Stein, Trump or Johnson- makes one a thundering racist/sexist/homophobe.
2. Now that she has lost, the whole country must be thunderingly racist/sexist/homophobic.

Let’s break that down:

1. 132 million Americans voted. Clinton got less of a turnout than Obama. And if you add non-voters to non-Trump-voters what do you get? A better barometer of the sanity of non-tweeting Americans. You still live in the same country which, like anywhere, has many flaws and many good points. (It was a high turnout year overall, which further suggests it is a repudiation of the corrupt Establishment rather than the rise of the racists.)
2. The country is not actually as divided as the Twitter teeth-gnashers would have you fear:
   1. The percentage of Latinos voting Republican is up from 2012. Up!
   2. Obama got a higher percentage of the female vote than Clinton.
   3. It strains credulity to suggest that an unending horde of racist hillbillies decided to wait out two terms of a black presidency before demonstrating their racism by refusing to vote for a white woman. The demography simply does not match this assertion. Certainly, people vote for racist reasons. It is, however, a very poor singular explanation. More likely:
   4. The reality is a huge percentage of Trump voters voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012. Seems unusual behaviour for racists. Unless it was, you know, economically motivated behaviour?
   5. As Michael Moore has said, Clinton won the popular vote. Now, the popular vote is not the same thing as receiving the majority of votes because it is a side effect of the electoral college system but it is still a grateful reminder that the America you are afraid of is actually the same America it was last week, filled with the same Americans –many of whom share your commitment to social justice (for other Americans, anyway).
   6. Yes, Clinton received more of the <$30K household income vote –as do basically all Democrats running for the top spot. But within this demographic, there was a 16-point swing to Trump, which is unprecedented and -again- suggests the real issues were economic ones. (And in particular, and entirely justified fear that, after a 30 year career of dismantling the working class, she will somehow turn around and restore it.)
3. Geography: As we saw with Brexit, the benefits of centralisation flow to major cities while the negative impacts of that same centralising process flow to regional areas. This is a defining characteristic of the neoliberal project. It is literally how it works. How all empires work. Just look at an election map. Two blue coastal enclaves separated by a hollowed-out heartland. Breathlessly looking under beds in Brooklyn or West Hollywood for hate criminals is the very height of self-centricity when the majority of your fellow citizens have been economically harvested -with the fruits of this harvest being on clear display as you stroll down the street to purchase at turmeric latte. If the Clinton machine hadn't torpedoed the one Democrat willing to have this discussion in the primaries then we would be having this discussion in a healthier arena where hard-won social justice and equality goals were not at risk. Because, one way or another, we are about to have this discussion. Your fellow citizens deserve coherence and dignity. Talk to them.

See? It is still the same America. It is the same America with the same national blindspot it has always had: a complete inability to talk about class. It is filled with precisely the same number of bigots as it had last week. The failure to have this discussion about class will mean that both you and these bigots will fall for precisely the same data interpretation trap: Assuming there are a lot more bigots than there really are.

From the wonderful Sam Kriss:

Clinton’s media foot-rubbers are presenting this result as a victory for prejudice: Trump won on a platform of racism, sexism, ableism, misogynoir, homophobia, transphobia, Islamophobia; the American people are hateful beyond reason, and they elected a knight of the kyriarchy to turn their roiling incoherent psychopathologies into government policy. Of course these people are right; it would be incredibly stupid to discount the role of outright bigotry, especially in a country that has fuelled itself on bigotry for three hundred years. But it’s not enough; if the only problem was too many bigots the whole elections collapses into a question of tribes and demographics, and you don’t have to think about why Clinton lost.

Trump won among voters who ticked the box for Obama in 2008 and 2012, he won decisively among white women, he picked up a far bigger share of ethnic minority voters than anyone would have reasonably expected, he won because the standard formula of American liberalism – eternal war abroad coupled with rationally administered dispossession at home and an ethics centred on where people should be allowed to piss and **** – is a toxic and unlovable ideology, and his candidacy turned it from an invisible consensus to one option among others.

Look at who else lost: the biased media, pundits, pollsters, both political parties, AngloAmerican warmongers, the corporatocracy, pay-to-play grifters -and George Soros! What an absolute king-hit on the establishment! Put it this way: if I were a Saudi prince, I would be hurriedly packing all my Michael Jackson CDs into my garish Versace luggage and calling down for my pindick supercar to take me to Riyadh International for a one-way flight to the Knightsbridge apartment. Game's up, 'your highness'.

Those in power are now aware that the Anti-Establishment trend is permanently in play -which is what I have been saying all along. It is moronic to suggest that simply changing the colour of the Establishment could ever be the solution. And the Establishment is years too late to this realisation for them to do anything about it. They’re SCARED OF YOU NOW. Politicians, the media -you name it. Right. Across. The world. They're scared. Because this is what happens at this point in the timeline.

President-Elect Trump has said some of the most appalling things any candidate for high office has said in almost a century. It remains to be seen how many of them he actually believes and how many of them were said to shore up what he perceived to be the Republican base. But a lot of the ‘softer’ verbal atrocities are quite possible to deliver upon. The bad news is we're about to ****ing find out which is which! The two pieces of good news are:

1. The worst of these statements are literally impossible to deliver upon.
2. He has shown his hand. We are playing poker against someone who has shown all his cards.

As with most of you, I am completely out of alignment with Trump’s perspective on culture and social justice. (But then I was also out of alignment with anyone who thought a Clinton was somehow on the side of the angels there, too.) A lot of essential social policies may now be at risk. If we had managed to have the discussion about class and poverty without accusing the victims of neoliberal centralisation of racism then these policies wouldn't be at risk -they'd be expanding under a Sanders regime. But here we are. At least we can say with crystalline clarity that it is up to us. I have more confidence in you than in any state actor. We now know -far further in advance than is usually the case- where the battlegrounds will be. We should take that win.

Over the coming weeks we will look to lay out a lot of what's coming, to kick around some strategy, and to explore some of the options -many of which are actually brighter than you might currently suspect. But for now, look to your own coherence and stand willing to extend it to those who are emotionally ready to be re-cohered.

Soon, we will do as Conner says:

And if you like that, I storyified a couple of his absolutely stellar rants here. They are this week’s one good thing.

I ****ing love you weirdos. Every last one of you. Please feel free to forward this newsletter to anyone whose re-coherence may be aided by it. Hold off if they're not there yet.
TARL Cable

//

[Cara]

Here is the latest from Gordon White in his The All Red Line. His website at: http://runesoup.com/.

*WARNING to readers - Gordon White uses strong language*


The Dog Whistle of Empire

If you expect Hitler and get Thatcher then you will lose everything.

And I am operating under the assumption that readers of this newsletter prefer winning to expressing their displeasure at losing in a place where others can see them doing it.


Safety pins, identity politics panics attacks, being the only one stupid enough to not be paid for protesting -these are all dog whistles of Empire designed to line you up behind the candidate for Empire.

They are all the wrong thing to do at this point in the timeline. (Do you even know where the safety pin meme originated? Funny how these things just sort of show up, hey?)

Let's stay with the Thatcher analogy. One of the things that surprised her about the Brixton riots was why the "oppressed" were destroying their own neighbourhood instead of rioting in, say, Westminster. And at least the Brixton rioters were actually from Brixton. Shades of Charleston, but not only were the majority of Oregon protesters who were arrested from out-of-state, but they were also majority nonvoters. Throw in the videos emerging of the lines of 'Soros buses', the (currently unverified) Craigslist advertisement for paid protesters, the Clintons' curious 'matchy matchy' purple colour scheme, their continued refusal to condemn this widespread criminal activity, and the dozens of supposed "hate crimes" seen on social media that have subsequently turned out to be fake and you simply cannot tell me with a straight face that you know what is going on -or that this is an authentic movement.

We need to have better ideas than lining up for the Empire's dog whistle. Which isn't to say that the formation of movements or protest is not without its value, of course. Whilst they are entirely without value if their aim is to overthrow democracy for the likes of Hillary Clinton, authentic movements can be transformative. As with Britain, the DNC has devolved from a party -because the party is ideologically bankrupt- into a movement. Which is fine if this is done:

a) With full awareness and a strategy for doing so.
b) Only temporarily.
c) With a subsequent plan to re-cohere.

And will full awareness that you are playing on the same board as Soros’s MoveOn/Open Society agents provocateurs.

Identity politics failed. But identity politics were designed to keep those harvested by Empire from unifying around a class consciousness:

Clinton aides blame everyone but themselves:

“[I]n general, Bill Clinton’s viewpoint of fighting for the working class white voters was often dismissed with a hand wave by senior members of the team as a personal vendetta to win back the voters who elected him, from a talented but aging politician who simply refused to accept the new Democratic map. At a meeting ahead of the convention at which aides presented to both Clintons the “Stronger Together” framework for the general election, senior strategist Joel Benenson told the former president bluntly that the voters from West Virginia were never coming back to his party.”

And look what happened:

“Of the nearly 700 counties that twice sent Obama to the White House, a stunning one-third flipped to support Trump. Trump also won 194 of the 207 counties that voted for Obama either in 2008 or 2012. [More.]”

This is former-podcast-guest Charles Hugh-Smith's read on the situation:

"So when the protected class of well-paid institutional "progressives" speak darkly of "reversing 40 years of social progress," what they're really saying is we're terrified that the bottom 95% might be waking up to our Great Con of identity politics and political correctness.

To understand the Great Con of political correctness, we must first grasp the decline of the working class (self-described as "the middle class"), i.e. those who must sell their labor to earn their livelihood.

Labor's share of the national economy has been declining for 46 years:


What better way to mask the collapse of working class political agency than to distract the bottom 95% with fake-Progressive double-speak about "empowerment," "safe spaces" and "micro-aggression"?

The heart of the Great Con of identity politics and political correctness is a tragic irony: the more wealth, income and power that slip through the fingers of the bottom 95%, the more their overlords rely on social "empowerment," as if a "safe space" on campus is a substitute for real political and economic agency.

That's the Great Con of political correctness: using worthless speech acts about empowerment to distract the working class from its disempowerment in the real world. No amount of "safe space" and happy talk about empowerment can replace meaningful opportunities for economic security and advancement--precisely what is abundant for the protected technocrat/ managerial class and scarce for the unprotected 95% that's been sold down the river."

• Identity politics was used as the dog whistle to get all the victims of Empire to line up behind its candidate, Hillary Clinton, so the Empire could continue its harvest.
• Identity politics was used to accuse middle Americans of racism when they too are victims of Empire. We need a new way of discussing the structure of Empire and its impact on different cultural/ethnic groups that is not wholly racial that still allows for the discussion of race, etc. Doug Rushkoff has a very good, brief podcast about this.
• Identity politics was used by the ruling party to literally select a candidate that would generate deep and lasting divisions along identity politics lines. This John Podesta email definitively shows the DNC is responsible for Trump. Congratulations!

Speaking of the people who are responsible for Trump, if you have not yet seen Michael Moore's pre-election explanation of the Trump voter then I commend it to you now. The blame should also fall upon the media, not just for creating him, but for spending 18 months smugly declaring their superiority over Americans with legitimate reasons to vote for someone other than Clinton:

"[T]here will long be an audience for elite crowds in urban centers to have their viewpoints affirmed. There’s plenty of money to be made in making cultural elites feel morally superior. You don’t have to understand Trump or his supporters to make money and continue having the right people tell you that you are awesome. In fact, the less you know about them and more you mischaracterize them and their views, the better it is for your niche domination.

At the same time, this echo chamber of smuggery isn’t helping Americans have shared cultural goals, much less an ability to work together to achieve them.

Jon Stewart is known for brutally deriding a show that featured people of differing views civilly discussing issues of the day. He got that show killed and significantly strengthened the world where cultural elites engaged in groupthink mockery of those with whom they disagree.

The results include a further erosion of civility, a decrease in Americans’ ability to understand each other and their concerns, and, of all things, President-elect Donald Trump.”

Identity politics failed. Identity, however, remains important. It is better expressed and explored in culture. Politics should now be the venue for class politics. It is a trick of Empire -its final trick- to suggest they are fighting for 'your' identity (when it suits them. The rest of the time you can go back to being superpredators for all they care.). It is what they want you to discuss, it is what they insisted you be passionate about, because they have completely and utterly failed in their foundational promise to the working class.


Empire: Glass Houses and Stones

Everyone/Twitter is concerned about this 'new' dictator and the risk of extrajudicial killings based on someone’s race. This is what I mean by confusing Thatcher for Hitler. We will all end up digging our trenches in entirely the wrong place for this particular mind war and thus we will lose. What's more, it is the very height of liberal hypocrisy to suggest that this dictatorship and the apparently looming risk of extrajudicial killings is in some sense 'new'.

This is the actual Empire today:

• Obama sold more than twice as many weapons as Bush
• 90% of Obama’s drone strike deaths have been innocent victims
• Obama has deported more people than any other President
• Obama has prosecuted more whistleblowers than every other president combined.

And he's the popular one! Perhaps we should hand out safety pins to Pakistani school children? I’m sure they’ll be super effective in deflecting drone missiles.

Being outraged at what Trump might do is fine. Being outraged at things he might do that Clinton & Co have already done is pathetic and tiny-minded. You are being dog whistled.

Greenwald:

For many years, the U.S. — like the U.K. and other Western nations — has embarked on a course that virtually guaranteed a collapse of elite authority and internal implosion. From the invasion of Iraq to the 2008 financial crisis to the all-consuming framework of prisons and endless wars, societal benefits have been directed almost exclusively to the very elite institutions most responsible for failure at the expense of everyone else.

It was only a matter of time before instability, backlash, and disruption resulted. Both Brexit and Trump unmistakably signal its arrival.

The Emerging Battleground

We all need to stop pissing our pants over non-issues and fake stories of college students having their hijabs ripped off. (Yes, it was fake. She lied.) You’re not getting dragged from your bed in the middle of the night because you ‘liked’ a trans-activist comment. (You’re not going to get a gold star, either.) The battleground is shaping up to be Roe v Wade. Some good news is that is surprisingly difficult to shift these sorts of decisions. Here is a cogent analysis of the situation from Bloomberg.

Last week, I promised you a lay of the land as it emerges and continues to emerge. As with all presidents, the incoming one will seek to land a few king hits in the first 100 days. Quite a number of his campaign promises can be accomplished by executive order. Some of these will certainly exceed the first 100 days, but here is what it looks like right now:

• The TPP: Gone.
• NAFTA: Canada and Mexico will renegotiate.
• WWIII: Off the table.
• Obamacare: Gone in its current, unaffordable form. (It was an insurance company boondoggle rather than anything remotely resembling universal health care -which remains far cheaper in countries such as the UK and Australia.)
• ISIS: The Saudi/Qatari funding used to buy weapons funnelled by Clinton's state department will dry up. Putin will bomb the crap out of their brand new Toyotas (?!) and fresh-from-the-box white sneakers.
• Business tax rates will drop: this will make the rich richer but, unlike the policies of preceding administrations, it will also make the middle richer. It will also see the return of almost US$2 trillion made by American businesses abroad that has remained out of the country because of Obama's punitive tax rates. Some of this money - rather than none of it currently- will end up in the U.S. Treasury. The rest of it will end up in the real economy - where it belongs. (I know of what I speak here. I personally, financially benefited from all these US dollars unable to get themselves home: some of it was used by a large American media company to acquire the German start-up I was working for. This money will have a transformative effect. The Dow may actually double by the end of 2018.)
• The US dollar index, currently turning the 100 line from resistance to support, will climb to 120.
• Trump's cabinet and inner circle: If Bannon is anything to go by, this is going to be an absolute zoo of appalling people. That said, do not be surprised if he fills his key posts with a veritable rainbow of women, gays, minorities, etc. Reality TV stars know their optics.

Some of these things are good, some of these things are bad. I am sure we would all prefer a different and individual constellation of outcomes and priorities. But this is where we are in the timeline. Wish in one hand, crap in the other. See which one fills up first.


Imagine Greater: This Could Be Trump’s America (But You Playin’)

Two particular tweets from election night have really stuck with me. The first was from a woman telling Twitter how she had just told her adopted, Chinese daughter that she wouldn't let anyone take her away. (Sidebar: if you talk to your kid like this, pretty soon someone will actually come and take them away.)

The second was an instantly created crowd fund to pay for trans-people to either get or update their passports. This is a nice thing to do in and of itself, and getting IDs is a piece of soul destroying personal bureaucracy we should all be on top of even in the good times. But it also struck me as a good example of where we might have better ideas. The inference of the fund being, obviously, that we will have to sneak trans people out of the country like Jews out of occupied Europe.

Picture this alternate use of the passport money:

One of the genuinely exciting outcomes of this election with the addition of more states fully legalising marijuana. Imagine if those passport donations were instead equity micro-investments in an all-trans marijuana farm. Are you going to try and tell me that all of California wouldn't buy them out of every single product on a preorder basis?

Now let's consider what could happen -what could make this enterprise even more profitable- if we shifted from identity politics to identity culture. Think of the Vanity Fair photo spread. Six or seven bad bitches in ironic overalls lighting blunts with money, posing on and around a tractor, with their crop splayed out behind them in the distance. (Yes, I know you don't need a tractor on a marijuana farm. But they can afford it!) Throw in some antique, open-carry, sidearms and a large marble statue of Captain Jack Sparrow in the middle of the main marijuana field and you come very close to describing my literal utopia. (You also come very close to describing the first Reality TV show since Survivor: Australian Outback that I would watch.)

Yes, it's cheeky. Yes, it's ambitious. But it is also completely possible. In fact, it has never been more possible than right now, after this very election.

Now let's consider what sort of nonprofit vehicles could be created with the funding from this immensely profitable enterprise - especially with business tax rates coming down! Passports are just the beginning. Academic scholarships, access to healthcare, artist retreats, sex work advocacy groups, legal defence funds. The mouth waters!

All this talk of what Trump's America might look like. That's not up to him and his menagerie of ****nuggets. That's up to you. And the changed conditions provide new pathways -cultural, economic, whatever- that are just as available to you to use as they are to Peter Thiel. Martin Armstrong's Private Wave is arriving and it does not (only) mean the privatisation of state assets, it means an aeon in which our goals are best achieved on a private basis instead of being funded by a state with blood money paid to keep us quiet while they perpetuate total war.

This is our point in the timeline. This is what it looks like. These are the conditions under which we must have better ideas. You can Make Inclusive America Great Again.

MIAGA, b*****s. MIAGA.

TARL Cable
//

[Cara]

Here is the latest from Gordon White in his The All Red Line. His website at: http://runesoup.com/.

*WARNING to readers - Gordon White uses strong language*

//



Delivering Pizza to the Pentagon

If it is any comfort, George Soros doesn't know what's going on either. But something is going on.

“There is a huge fight happening inside the United States right now between two factions. One faction wants to sacrifice the US for the sake of the empire, and the second faction wants to sacrifice the empire for the sake of the United States.”

-The Saker. 3rd Quarter Emerging Multipolar World. Solari Report

You cannot look at the Comet Pizza Instagram feed and tell me that is normal
social media activity for a local hospitality business. you also cannot tell me that it proves Hillary Clinton likes to run with a crew of globalist, child murdering Satanists.

It is nevertheless interesting that we came to this information via a section of the FBI whose job it is to run down these lines of thinking on a full-time basis. the Justice Department’s eye of Sauron was fixed on another corner of Scully and Mulder's workplace - the one investigating the state department emails. Not that anyone who subscribes to this email list was ever so naïve as to think otherwise, but the deep state is hardly monolithic.

I do not know if the codewords in the Podesta emails refer to the things Reddit says they refer to. But they are a code. Someone whose job is communication at a federal government level -someone who is sufficiently interested in food and culture to count appalling shock artists as acquaintances- does not say "cheese pizza", he says margarita. He also says “alle noci” instead of “walnut pasta”. And what’s with the handkerchief?

We don't know what it is but it's not going to be good. For what it's worth, Catherine Fitts thinks that it was the subtext of these emails that caused the neoliberal Clinton/Soros faction to back off in the last week of the campaign. Whatever these emails "bump up against" go much further up the chain than Clinton or Soros. This is a king hit in the Mind War –perhaps literally.

It is also what all this "fake news" jibber jabber is really about. Yes, it is partially the mainstream media unsuccessfully attempting to gather up the shreds of their credibility. (A futile activity.) There has always been fake news. There are lies about Julius Caesar's sexual proclivities scrawled in graffiti on Roman walls. Fake news. Weapons of mass destruction, Iraqi soldiers taking babies out of incubators, all of it fake news, all of it breathlessly and continuously reported by the mainstream media. "Fake news" is the new official reality word for conspiracy theory, now that many of even the most lurid conspiracy theories have become conspiracy fact.

Yes, we now live in a world where Alex Jones will have a White House press pass. But I can promise you this "fake news" meme - which has spread as far as Germany this week, where Merkel started using it- is front-running further pizzagate-style revelations.

What pizzagate and the fake news meme tell us is that the cognitive dissonance ice cream headaches are not going to get better, they are going to get worse. The Soros/Clinton neoliberal faction seems hell-bent on permanent social disruption and is onboarding into the United States all the tricks they have used in previous colour revolutions in the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Paid protesters, shell charities and NGOs, whatever is left of the liberal media, and so on. The first thing they have done since the election that has impressed me is pushed the recount theme through Jill Stein - thus keeping Clinton's hands clean as the gracious loser. It seems likely that the goal here is not to overturn the election results - although if you are George Soros there is no harm in trying- but rather to erode the credibility of the systems of governance now that they cannot be fully controlled. (“If I can't have you, no one will!")

The reason I say this tactic impresses me is that it is a precise mirror of Trump’s carefully parsed words about the ongoing prosecution of Hillary Clinton. He said he’s not going to do it. Well, as President that wasn't going to be something he would ever do. This is his attempt to keep his hands clean of the prosecution, just as Clinton is trying to keep her hands clean over the recount. That hammer is still going to come down.

I rather suspect that the Soros/Clinton faction is not just fighting horizontally -with Trump- but also vertically with the secret levels above them. The war in heaven is going dark. At this point in the timeline, it is a fool's errand to build a precise model of what is going on.

Once more, we need to look to our own coherence. The historic purveyors of fake news are loudly warning us about fake news, which means some real news is imminent. Real news that will be washed in on a tidal wave of human ****. I for one would much rather let the rain clean it off a bit before putting it in my mouth.

I suggest you do the same.
TARL Cable
//

[Cara]

Here is the latest from Gordon White in his The All Red Line. His website at: http://runesoup.com/.

*WARNING to readers - Gordon White uses strong language*

//


I'll Tell You What Jill Is Doing And Why

So this recount, then. What is Jill up to? Even her most ardent supporters are confused. Check out this wrongness from Stein supporter and Progressive Radio Hour news host, Steve Lendman (from a week ago, to be fair):

Shameful! What’s going on? Why did her campaign announce its “intent to file for a recount of votes in the battleground states of Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, leading a multi-partisan effort to check the accuracy of the machine-counted vote tallies in these states in order to ensure the integrity of our election?”

Did she forget Hillary criticizing Trump’s possible refusal to accept electoral results when asked, calling it “a direct threat to our democracy?”

Does she support what war goddess, racketeer, perjurer Hillary stands for? Does she oppose Trump wanting normalized relations with Russia - crucial to prevent the threat of possible nuclear war with Hillary empowered as US military commander-in-chief.

I supported Stein, believed in her, wrote glowing articles about her campaign, her advocacy for world peace, equity and justice. Was I wrong? Did I misjudge her? Is she against what she claims to stand for?

Many times in articles I called Hillary the most ruthlessly dangerous presidential aspirant in US history. Does Stein support her? Want the election reversed in her favor? Why else would she want recounts in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin? Outrageous!

No Steve, no.

Dr Stein said on CNN there is no evidence of fraud. She said (correctly) that Hillary would start World War 3 so she doesn’t want her in the Oval Office. Her requests were defeated in Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Even had she been successful in her recount request in every state, the odds of overturning the results of the election were well under 10%. And not even her own party is behind this recount. Look at the letter from Senator Flowers:

The recount has created confusion about the relationship between the Green and Democratic parties because the states chosen for the recount are only states in which Hillary Clinton lost. There were close races in other states such as New Hampshire and Minnesota where Clinton won, but which were not part of the recount. And this recount does not address the disenfranchisement of voters; it recounts votes that were already counted rather than restoring the suffrage of voters who were prevented from voting.

As a candidate, Dr. Stein has the right to call for a recount. However, we urge the GPUS to distance itself from any appearance of support for either Democrats or Republicans. We are well aware of the undemocratic actions taken during the primaries by the DNC and the Clinton campaign. Greens cannot be perceived to be allied with such a party.

They’re not behind it because I don’t think they get what’s going on. Which is hilarious, because they spelled out the real motives (in bold above). The most likely outcome of any successful recount is further exposure of the corruption inside the party Senator Flowers is scared to be seen associating with. Doesn't sound very pro-Hillary to me.

There are two scenarios -the latter being more likely- but either of them end up with more or less the same outcome.

1.
Jill is using Soros money to further his colour revolution tactics of eroding what’s left of trust in governmental structures. Given the unusual way her ‘grassroots’ money accumulated, this cannot be ruled out, especially as Dr Stein’s recount efforts have received TWELVE TIMES the media coverage of her entire Presidential campaign. And as we’ve just seen, CNN and NBC only talk about what the Empire wants you to think about.

If this is what is in play then Dr Stein is in full-blown ‘ends justify the means’, deal-with-the-Devil territory. It's risky but it will still work -even if it takes her down with it. You’ll see what’s at stake below.

2.
Another Deep State faction provided the money so that the recount shows up the millions of dead and double voters who stumped for Hillary and the persistent and widespread voting fraud perpetuated by the DNC that the Greens called out in their letter to Dr Stein. It's the open secret that led to Trump's ill-advised tweet about illegal voting. (He should just re-banner his twitter page as "Trump's ill-advised tweets" at this point. It's its own parody account.)

This is why the Dems -right up to Obama- are against the recount. They know there is widespread and systemic fraud for the Hillary camp stretching right back to the California primaries race against Bernie. Hillary’s lawyer -used by Soros in separate voting ID lawsuits in the very same state- publicly called on the Republican NC Gubernatorial candidate to end his recount even though the margin there is far slimmer than any of Jill’s other recount targets. It’s the only a place a recount might actually change the outcome and they don’t want it. They don’t want anyone looking under any rocks. Can’t imagine why.

Here, then, is Jill’s motive. Sure, she’s not going to get the Greens over the 5% line THIS TIME. But in the medium term, she can’t not win by making this play:

• The country definitively ‘improves’ by having a cleaner voting system. This would be good.
• Or she further exposes the anti-democratic, corrupt war party supporting Hillary and the Establishment -and the country improves. (A Green politician wouldn’t ever want to drain a swamp because they are biodiversity hotspots, so maybe she’s… removing human garbage from a wetland?) This means that if she is getting Deep State support it is coming from the same faction that leaked Hillary’s emails to wikileaks and dropped the Wiener laptop/pizzagate bombshell.

Either of these outcomes would swell Green support -the latter one in particular. Vultures not only circle on the Right. The utter disarray that the Democrats have brought upon themselves is an opportunity for the Greens to permanently bump up their longterm support base.

And I just love that she’s using the money of Hillary supporters to do it. It feels like justice after all that moronic blaming of Third Parties:

"It’s a waste of time and money. It is not going to change anything,” said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who served as campaign manager for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign. “I think it probably was the Stein people looking for a way to stay relevant, raise some money and take the stink off of them. Instead of everybody screaming, ‘You made Trump happen,’ she is counting the votes to change that whole narrative.

No, Mr Trippi. It wasn’t “everybody” screaming this. It was YOU. Because it was YOUR antidemocratic support for the least electable candidate in American history over all other Democratic possibilities that “made Trump happen”.

The Clinton team’s involvement will likely be limited to having lawyers or other experts at recount sites to watch over the proceedings.

“My sense is that the Clinton people would have preferred this not to happen and are going to be involved only in a monitoring capacity,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist and a veteran of several presidential campaigns, including that of 2004 nominee John Kerry.

(Sidebar: You would not want to be a manual recounter with Clinton ‘monitors’ around. You may end up getting ‘mugged to death without your watch and wallet stolen’.)

There are several things to remember here. Firstly, nothing Dr Stein is doing is illegal -which is a rare thing to say for Presidential candidates this year. Second, she is/was the only moral candidate of the whole sorry lot -as evidenced by her being the ONLY nominee on the correct side of DAPL disaster. So whether she is intentionally or unintentionally falling on her sword here, whether she is being aided or unaided, I really hope she claims some scalps.

This whole fascinating incident is the perfect example of what happens at this point in the timeline. The Deep State is at war. It manifests in events such as this that have motives which are very different to what is offered to the public.

God speed, Dr Stein. God speed, my little chaos bomb.

TARL Cable
//

[Cara]

Here is this week's latest TARL (The All Red Line) from Gordon White. His website at http://runesoup.com/ where you can subscribe to receive this newsletter.

*WARNING to readers - Gordon White uses strong language*



The Flight of Fake Swans
Have you ever noticed that the people bleating the loudest about confirmation bias are usually the ones who are suffering the most from it? It is one of those ideas that is very dangerous in the hands of this stupid and utterly useless in the hands of the intelligent.

So-called confirmation bias provides a pseudoscientific veneer for those unwilling to adjust their worldview to new data. Saying "confirmation bias" is the best and perhaps only example of confirmation bias.

There is a better way of conceptualising the impact of mental constructs on an individual human or group’s operating efficiency. And inevitably it comes from Nassim Taleb:

“You will never convince someone that he is wrong. Survival does.”

Confirmation bias is an example of the childish name-calling of the defeated Imperial apologists. Another would be "populism." Your confirmation bias –as with your consent for Empire- is showing whenever you use this word. Taleb again:

[Link to a series of tweets by Nassim Taleb - included as an image in the original but linked here because it includes swear words]
https://gallery.mailchimp.com/e36b05...3b412f91b8.gif

Fake news, then. First, from Charles Hugh-Smith on why these words are being used:

Since the status quo is wonderful and America's economy is strong, dissent or populism cannot be home-grown--it must be the work of the Devil, in the guise of "foreign propaganda."

Notice the classic propaganda ploy being deployed here: since dissent is impossible in a regime as well-managed and prosperous as America's status quo, populism must be driven and controlled by evil foreign agents.

This is laughably absurd: America's populist movements, including the present one, have been revolts against the concentrated wealth and power of self-serving status quo elites.

If the mainstream media actually employed well-informed analysts rather than empty-headed politically correct parrots, you might have learned that America has a long and rich history of populism that did not lead to authoritarianism or fascism.

Probably everyone who reads this newsletter is aware that the term ‘conspiracy theory’ was created and deployed by the CIA in 1967. In April of that year, the CIA wrote a dispatch which coined the term “conspiracy theories” -and recommended methods for discrediting such theories. The dispatch was marked “psych” -short for “psychological operations”- and “CS” for the CIA’s “Clandestine Services” unit.The dispatch was produced in responses to a Freedom of Information Act request by the New York Times in 1976.

Say this for the term "conspiracy theory". At least it is elegant. "Fake news" is just so… ugly. Ugly, clumsy, monosyllabic words. it is a sad indictment of just how stupid and lazy the West has become that the official update of the Deep State’s witches mark is just so primitive. You would say fake news if you were trying to explain conspiracy theory to a four year old whose first language wasn't English.

But it is more than just clunky. It is newspeak in the original, Orwellian conception of that word. It is office sets smashed together to gaslight and de-pattern. And it is more than even that, still:

Sometime circa mid-November, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s defeat (i.e., the beginning of the end of democracy), the self-appointed Guardians of Reality, better known as the corporate media, launched a worldwide marketing campaign against the evil and perfidious scourge of “fake news.” This campaign is now at a fever pitch. Media outlets throughout the empire are pumping out daily dire warnings of the imminent, existential threat to our freedom posed by the “fake news” menace. This isn’t the just the dissemination of disinformation, propaganda, and so on, that’s been going on for thousands of years … Truth itself is under attack. The very foundations of Reality are shaking.

Who’s behind this “fake news” menace? Well, Putin, naturally, but not just Putin. It appears to be the work of a vast conspiracy of virulent anti-establishment types, ultra-alt-rightists, ultra-leftists, libertarian retirees, armchair socialists, Sandernistas, Corbynistas, ontological terrorists, fascism normalizers, poorly educated anti-Globalism freaks, and just garden variety Clinton-haters.

Fortunately, for us, the corporate media is hot on the trail of this motley of scoundrels.[..]

[W]hat we are experiencing is the pathologization (or the “abnormalization”) of political dissent, i.e., the systematic stigmatization of any and all forms of non-compliance with neoliberal consensus reality. Political distinctions like “left” and “right” are disappearing, and are being replaced by imponderable distinctions like “normal” and “abnormal,” “true” and “false,” and “real” and “fake.” Such distinctions do not lend themselves to argument. They are proffered to us as axiomatic truths, empirical facts which no normal person would ever dream of contradicting.

In place of competing political philosophies, the neoliberal intelligentsia is substituting a simpler choice, “normality” or “abnormality.” The nature of the “abnormality” varies according to what is being stigmatized. Today it’s “Corbyn the anti-Semite,” tomorrow it’s “Sanders the racist crackpot,” or “Trump the Manchurian candidate,” or whatever. That the smears themselves are indiscriminate (and, in many instances, totally ridiculous) belies the effectiveness of the broader strategy, which is simply to abnormalize the target and whatever he or she represents. It makes no difference whether one is smeared as a racist, as Sanders was during the primaries, or as an anti-Semite, as Corbyn has been, or a fascist, as Trump has relentlessly been, or peddlers of Russian propaganda, as Truthout, CounterPunch, Naked Capitalism, and a number of other publications have been … the message is, they are somehow “not normal.”

The official mouthpieces of neoliberal empire are losing money and influence. I spoke about this in a newsletter earlier this year. The trouble is these imperial apologists are not just going to sit back and wait for their own end. This brutalist, moronic term will become the moving witches mark. It will be enshrined in law and it will be eagerly taken up by media industry member bodies, mark my words.

Indeed, these coming moves are the whole reason for this newsletter in the first place. Here is what will happen next:

• Ad industry bodies, led by Google, will create voluntary ‘ad quality’ schemes that mean advertiser money will not go to displaying ads on ‘fake news’ sites. (This is that whole backdoor move I told you about that nobody believed. Well, it’s here.) Who will decide what is ‘fake news’? Well, exactly.
• The principal content discovery platforms –Facebook and Google- will continue to algorithmically hide ‘fake news’. Who will decide what is fake news? Well, exactly. in the long-term, these moves destroyed both Google and Facebook as the population becomes increasingly aware of just how biased and manipulative these platforms really are. But in the short term, you will be living in a piece of speculative fiction where the Soviet Union survived into the digital age.
• Probably starting with the European Union, actual censorship laws will be enacted criminalising the creation and sharing of this most slippery of terms. It is worth noting in passing that that blissful beacon of freedom, Communist China, is currently updating its draconian censorship laws to include the new magic words. (They’re particularly worried about accurate economic reporting on their truly ****ed situation.) That's who we are becoming.

Navigating fake news

Have you ever held or read and early newspaper? I've looked at some old copies in the British Library and they are almost unreadable. They emerge from a time when the manufacture and distribution of news was extremely expensive, hence having all the text and no pictures crammed into the fewest number of pages.

From such challenging beginnings until their heyday in the early 20th century, they have always been difficult and partisan. One of the reasons government propaganda was pushed more through cinema than newsprint was because almost every town had an independently owned newspaper, typically founded by a local industrialist so that he could keep the local politicians’ feet to the fire. It was completely decentralised and highly biased.

Perhaps it is just because I have spent years working in media but, let me assure you, it’s never been anything other than ‘fake’. Never. That's the first thing to realise when navigating this new era of so-called fake news. It has always been fake, it is not going to get better, and this is just our point in the timeline.

Here are some other suggestions when navigating our apocalyptic media landscape:

1.
Ignore basically all "the Russians are coming" idiocy from the mainstream media. At first I could not believe that the imperialists ever thought this evidence-free fantasy was ever going to work. Now I cannot believe that there are people out there stupid enough for it to work on. (Interestingly, the Washington Post walked back its full-blown neoliberal propaganda and McCarthyist witch hunting mentioned in a previous newsletter.)

2.
Realise that in this game, everyone's **** stinks. The New York Times is correct that InfoWars is deranged nonsense. (And I still think Alex Jones is CIA cointel.) But then InfoWars itself is entirely correct in pointing out the constant lies and manipulations of those claiming “fake” news. You can read the full list at this link -the first and only time I will ever link to InfoWars.)

3.
Realise that the whole argument is weaponised. Not only is the term clearly a replacement for "conspiracy theory", but in addition to navigating the reality of propaganda you also need to navigate the reality of cointel. Just because a piece of information arrives on your screen from a so-called alternative news source does not mean it is something the so-called mainstream media is trying to keep from you. False stories have been seeded in competing publications by all factions of the Deep State for decades –actually stretching back to the days of high empire.

It could be wrong. It could be deliberate cointel. Or it could be an actual thing. Different factions of the Deep State are taking potshots at each other by hinting at the skeletons the other side has in its closets. All -hear me, now- ALL of these 'revelations' are not written for you, nor are you the intended target.

4.
Don’t use the term. Avoid it. Don’t get caught up in the ‘he said, she said’ name calling. The whole thing relies upon preposterous models of reality. What even is ‘fake’ versus ‘true’ and what even is ‘news’? You do not need the drama.

5.
Consume much less content but consume it more widely. The left/right spectrum is laughable during a time of imperial collapse. You are responsible for the accumulation and parsing of your data points. You have to be the internet now. You also have to step away from it a lot.

So hold all news at arms-length, but still keep it within reach.

TARL Cable
//

[Cara]

Here is the latest TARL (The All Red Line) from Gordon White. His website is at http://runesoup.com/ where you can subscribe to receive this newsletter.

*WARNING to readers - Gordon White uses strong language*



The Overt War Is As Fake As The Covert Is Real

We need to revisit and double-down on a very important notion that will contribute to your coherence no end:

Nothing going on in the media is about you.

We are no longer the targets in the Mind War. We are its battlefield. The pro-Empire faction of the Deep State has the pro-US faction as its target and vice versa.

With the caveat that the following organisations are not monolithic and so on, let me list some of the crucial weapons of the Empire's team:

• The DOJ
• The CIA
• Homeland Security

This is how you saw Hillary skate on those numerous email charges when the DOJ was in her pocket and Bill had that completely illegal meeting for forty five minutes on the plane to talk about 'grandchildren'. It took a completely different part of the FBI to trigger laptop-gate -one that is further from DOJ operations- and one that spends most of its time tracking predators using their digital footprint and thus has the NSA on speeddial. (I call them the laptop faction, as you know.)

Hence it is from the CIA that we get the entirely-imaginary conspiracy theory about the Russians stealing Hillary's election. And it is the CIA that has promised to 'brief' the electors on their conspiracy theory but refuses to brief Congress on it.

That is the same CIA whose formation was shot-through with Nazis and has spent the last half century stealing election, raising private armies, collapsing countries and expanding the Empire.

In the pro-US corner we have:

• The FBI (or at least the corners of it that can hide from the DOJ's Sauron eyebeams)
• The NSA (with similar eyebeam caveats)
• A lot more of the top military brass than you might believe and a considerable majority of the rank and file

And so it has been from this group that we got laptop-gate in the first place and it is where we are getting the entirely-justified observations that there is no proof the Russians were involved 'hacking' the election.

Who else gets access to and releases the emails of the most powerful people on earth and gets away with it? With complete impunity? As dozens of credible people right up to Director Comey have said, there is no evidence of a hack. This is a leak. Who has the skills to do that?

Who -As Catherine Fitts observed during the election- has the skills to systematically isolate and neutralise the imperial lieutenants in the Hillary campaign?

And so we come to that 'conscience voting' elector who will not be voting for Trump. Who is sufficiently skilled to pull out just the right amount of Chris Suprun's digital footprint -revealing that he was paying for Ashley Madison while bankrupt and married with three children- with the assumption left hanging that there is more to come?

The laptop faction. You know who knows that?

All of the other electors. All the other electors who -like the rest of us- have digital footprints cohered into relational databases by... oh yeah. The NSA and FBI.

(Incidentally, the Empire's goal with the electoral college is not to thwart the incoming President's election -or at least that's simply the moonshot- but to further muddy and delegitimise the whole process. It is a continuation of colour revolution tactics that we should expect to see sustained long into next year.)

The "fake news" idea virus we spoke about last week is squid ink that the Empire is going to try to hide in because they made a classic, rookie internet mistake: they underestimated the nerds. Now Facebook will have an 'independent team' of 'fact checkers' -save me from that Orwellian word- because it was on social platforms that the narrative got away from them. They are gearing up for a really rough fight: Trying to retake the Empire is going to result in a lot of dirty, imperial laundry being aired. (And consider that it was the part of the intelligence community responsible for tracking child abusers that landed the final blow in the pre-election round of the war. That laundry could be hella dirty.)

So the Empire faction is using fear and lies to sway the electors and the laptop faction sets up a Sword of Damocles above them should any of them step out of line. You do not enter into this battle at any point. And you won't for some time.

That is really good news. It tells you how little mental and emotional energy you should put into getting angry about the rocks these mountain giants are throwing at each other -and the correct answer is zero- versus how much you should put into maintaining and spreading coherence -and the correct answer there is all of it.

Just be aware that between now and the end of January most of the overt stuff is going to be completely false. In the last week:

• The New York Times had to write about how the New York Times was Russian propaganda.
• Merkel is talking about how Putin is going to manipulate her election so you should all vote for Merkel.
• A British MP and Remain campaigner has said that Putin "probably" swayed the Brexit vote.
• The CIA said that Putin personally hacked the election. Personally. He did it with his team of nerds. The guy on the horse and in the submarine and all that. He sat down, put on his headset and hacked away like in the movies.
• We've been subjected to a barrage of entirely staged and otherwise swapped images as Assad retakes Aleppo from ACTUAL AL-QAEDA and we are supposed to feel sad about actual Al Qaeda losing.

This last one is particularly dangerous. Remember when I said if we can get to the inauguration without World War 3 starting then it probably won't? 'Escalating' (ie faking) the situation in Aleppo is the outgoing Empire's last ditch attempt to get their land invasion. Touch wood it does not work.

I appreciate -boy, do I appreciate- the compelling need to get involved, to help. You cannot do this by getting angry or yelling at the mind controlled. That just swings the dialectic pendulums more vigorously.

You help by recognising that you are emotionally reacting to rocks being thrown in a spy war, consuming fewer of these rocks, take all necessary steps to maintain your coherence and only then look to the coherence of others. It is not something that can be forced. People cohere in their own time because -almost by definition- the only components involved in cohesion belong to them.

So if you want to help and you can spare it, you can and should wrap coherence and put it under the family Christmas tree. But know that your recipients will only unwrap it when they are ready.

TARL Cable
//