God's Wrath
Pentagon alarm bells, primates on the loose, foreign policy quagmires and plenty more...
Bill Bonner, reckoning today from Dublin, Ireland...
Inflation in the US is picking up slightly. El Pais reports:
Inflation in the United States edged up in July after 12 straight months of declines. But excluding volatile food and energy costs, so-called core inflation matched the smallest monthly rise in nearly two years,…
We believe the financial world – or at least that part of it that is in the US – is in a confusing transition period. The Primary Trend, we think, is down. Ultimately, stocks and bonds are going down….in real terms.
But that trend is going to take time. And it’s often going to feel like riding a bucking steer. It’s going to be hard to stay on top of it. While most central banks are raising rates to bring monetary inflation under control (deflationary), most central governments are running big deficits…increasing demand (inflationary) while actually lowering the output of desirable goods and services. The feds use our money for boondoggles, not for productive investment, making us all poorer.
Primate Warns Biden
One of the biggest ratholes of all is in the news today – foreign policy. Niger has just had a coup d’etat staged by disgruntled military men. The former president is said to be locked in his home…and starving. The new Junta says it will kill him if the US intervenes.
As you know, no sparrow can fall anywhere in the world without setting off alarm bells in the Pentagon…hatching subversive plots in the CIA…and raising mansion prices in Northern Virginia, home of America’s ‘defense’ industry.
Niger is now eager to head off a US attack. The Daily Post Nigeria reports:
Leave Niger or face God’s wrath – Primate Ayodele tells US President Biden
The leader of INRI Evangelical Spiritual Church, Primate Elijah Ayodele has warned the United States, US, President, Joe Biden against invading Niger Republic following the coup that ousted President Mohammed Bazoum.
Ayodele warned that invading Niger Republic would amount to fighting God, adding that it may lead to third world war.
The warning followed the US acting Deputy Secretary, Victoria Nuland’s comment asking the junta to return Bazoum back to power.
However, Ayodele warned that the US invasion of Niger Republic is satanic and a terrorist move that would spark God’s anger.
In a statement signed by his media aide, Oluwatosin Osho, Primate Ayodele warned Biden to allow the people of Niger Republic to decide their future rather than forcing the return of democracy on them.
There are already more than 1,000 US troops in the godforsaken country. Will Biden send more?
Menace to Civility
Telephones ring. Dogs lift their heads. ‘Foreign policy experts’ rush to offer their opinions. The public…the media…the State Department – all want to know what is going on. Who will get control of Niger’s uranium mines? Why are Russian flags such hot items on the streets of Niamey (not Miami!)? ‘Who lost Niger?’ the headlines already ask.
We imagine the conversation in the White House.
Acting Secretary Victoria Nuland: Mr. President, there’s been a coup d’etat in Niger.
Joe Biden: Good work, Toria.
Nuland: No, Mr. President. This is not our doing. Not this time.
Biden: Oh…too bad. Are we going to send more troops to restore democracy?
Nuland: Don’t know yet. The Primate is warning us to stay away.
Biden: What’s a primate?
Nuland, rolling her eyes: It’s someone who walks upright.
The foreign policy establishment can be divided into two camps, both a menace to peace and prosperity.
One group, led by Henry Kissinger, John Mearsheimer and Edward Luttwak, call themselves neo-realists.
The other – now dominating the State Department, in the persons of Anthony Blinken and Victoria Nuland – are best described as megalomaniacal crackpots and sometimes called ‘idealists.’ Former Secretary of State, Madeleine Albright, now dead, embodied the creed. She pointed out that it was no good simply having the most expensive military in the world; you had to put it to use.
God’s Wrath
This latter group – the idealists – got us into Iraq and Afghanistan, and now have us backing our Ukrainian proxies in a war with Russia. This war has turned into another ‘quagmire.’ And now that their proxies seem to be losing the war, the nation builders are getting serious lip from the realists. ‘You shouldna, oughtna done that,’ they say.
Yet, instead of backing off, Blinken, Nuland et all want to wade in further. CNN:
Biden asks Congress for $24 billion in more Ukraine assistance
The new funding request, which will be unveiled later Thursday, will be paired with a $12 billion request for new funding for disaster relief, potentially sweetening the package for skeptical Republicans who have voiced concern about approving more Ukraine aid.
Next week, let us look at the two schools of ‘expertise’ more carefully. We will see that one is a fraud…the other is a fantasy…and that they always converge, as do all our foreign policy muddles, in a fiasco.
The Primate is right; God’s wrath awaits us all.
Stay tuned…
Regards,
Bill Bonner
Although I've never met Victoria Nuland, I have met many like her in the corridors of the State Department. And I know Africa moderately well, having served in 7 different countries over the course of 20 years. I would guess there are other State Department Officials who would be better suited to negotiate with the putschists. Abrasive white women are not the best interlocutors with African military men.
There is a tribal element to the current difficulty in Niger. The last time that issue raised its head in a big way in Africa was in Rwanda in the nineties. Susan Rice, another senior official of the Obama/Biden and later Biden/Harris administrations was a key decision maker then, and made the wrong decision (to refuse to call it genocide). I would not be surprised if we make bad decisions again this time, and things will go south again. That's a pity: Niger has been generally well-run.
There will always be problems. And the solutions offered by democrats & republicans are usually stupid and ignorant.
The voters don’t care or feel their vote doesn’t matter.
It’s called corruption.
Until you deal with the corruption, this is what you get!