B-52 bombers deployed to Middle East==

Trump admin announced a drawdown of troops in Afghanistan and Iraq Tuesday

The U.S. military deployed B-52 bombers to the Middle East Saturday, just days after the Trump administration announced a partial withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.

U.S. Central Command said the U.S. Air Force B-52H “Stratofortress” aircrews conducted the mission on "short notice" to "deter aggression and reassure U.S. partners and allies."

“The ability to quickly move forces into, out of and around the theater to seize, retain and exploit the initiative is key to deterring potential aggression," said Lt. Gen. Greg Guillot, 9th Air Force commander.

"These missions help bomber aircrews gain familiarity with the region’s airspace and command, and control functions and allow them to integrate with the theater’s U.S. and partner air assets, increasing the combined force’s overall readiness.”

President Trump's new acting defense secretary Christopher Miller announced Tuesday a drawdown of troops to 2,500 in Afghanistan and 2,500 in Iraq by Jan. 15 of next year. There are roughly 4,500 troops in Afghanistan and 3,000 in Iraq right now.

"In light of these tremendous sacrifices, and with great humility and gratitude to those who came before us, I am formally announcing that we will implement President Trump's orders to continue our repositioning of forces from those two countries," Miller said Tuesday.

"This is consistent with our established plans and strategic objectives, supported by the American people, and does not equate to a change in policy or objectives."

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo was in Doha, Qatar, Saturday to take part in what could be his last round of negotiations with the Taliban and Afghan government about a peace deal.

Violence in Afghanistan soared this year, as eight people were killed just hours before peace talks were set to begin Saturday when mortars hit a residential area of Kabul.

It is unclear where the B-52H bombers went in the Middle East Saturday, but they left from Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota.

Minot Air Force Base is the only base in the United States that houses both intercontinental ballistic missiles in underground silos as well as a fleet of bombers also capable of carrying nuclear warheads.

It marks the first B-52 mission to the Middle East in several months. In January, after the U.S. military’s elite Joint Special Operations Command killed Iranian General Qassem Soleimani in a drone strike, six B-52 bombers were dispatched to Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean.

https://www.foxnews.com/us/us-military-deploys-b-52-bombers-middle-east

Do Not Trust Governments With The Control Of Money

If there one thing that is fairly certain in this life – besides the seeming inescapability of death and taxes – is that once someone is appointed to almost any position in the political and bureaucratic structures of a government they soon discover how important and essential is the organization of which they are a part for the well-being of the nation. The country could not exist without it, along with its increasing budget and expanded authority. This applies to the Federal Reserve, America’s central bank, no less than other parts of government.

The news media has reported that the apparently unlikely appointment of Dr. Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors probably will be successfully maneuvered through the full Senate confirmation process. Shelton would then sit on the Federal Reserve Board filling the balancing a term that ends in 2024 and then made eligible for a 14-year term. Hers has been one of the more controversial nominations to the Fed in recent years, with critics fervently expressing their negative views of her.

For instance, Tony Fratto, a former Treasury official and deputy press secretary under George W. Bush, was recently quoted as saying that Shelton’s appointment would be “a discredit to the Senate and the Fed. It screams. Nothing at all is serious. Not us. Not you. Not them.”

Mainstream Economists Against Anyone for Gold

Back in August of this year, over one hundred academic and business economists issued an open letter to members of the U.S. Senate calling for rejection of her nomination to the Fed. Among those who signed were some economics Nobel Laureates, including Robert Lucas and Joseph Stiglitz. They insisted on her unfitness for such an appointment. Why? They said: “She has advocated a return to the gold standard; she has questioned the need for federal deposit insurance; she has even questioned the need for a central bank at all.”

They also accused her of hypocrisy, saying that Shelton had changed her stance on Federal Reserve policy and the institution’s relevance based simply on a desire to be appointed to the Fed board, and to serve the wishes of the president who had nominated her. So, she stands damned if she opposes the Fed with her call for a gold-backed currency, and she is damned if she modifies her positions on monetary policy supposedly to be more palatable to the Senators deciding her professional fate. Clearly, her critics would only stop being critical if they were somehow convinced that Judy Shelton truly loved the Fed, hated the gold standard, and supported “activist” monetary policy and interest rate manipulation; and for the full 14 years of her term on the Fed Board.

Political campaigns are full of people who say that they are drawn to higher echelon government employment so they can “give back” to or “serve” the country, and no doubt there are some who are seriously sincere when they say so. But who can deny that what also appeals to such people, and many others who are far more crudely opportunistic, is the attraction of being a “player” and an “insider” in the various halls of political power and decision-making in determining the bigger picture of the “shape-of-things-to-come?”

And it may be that Judy Shelton, based on her own statements of desiring to “serve” the country in this particular capacity, truly wants to, even with all her apparent changing views and emphases. Or maybe it’s all a game to say what she thinks others want and need to hear so that will approve her as a Board member of the Federal Reserve, and then sit at the Big Boy’s – oh, I mean the Big Person’s – table.

https://www.aier.org/article/do-not-trust-governments-with-the-control-of-money/

Willing Slaves of the Covidian State?

When I wrote back in March that Britain as we knew it was finished, I did so for three main reasons:

Firstly, the mass quarantining of millions of healthy people for (almost) the first time in history, for a virus that is not remotely deadly to them (and yes this was known in March), could not possibly be a medical necessity and must instead be for some other reason. I say "almost", because there was one other short-lived attempt at the mass quarantining of healthy people in Mexico back in 2009, but that experiment ended after less than three weeks, when the Mexican Government came to its senses, realising the immense social and economic harm it would do to their country. We are not nearly so fortunate, and have now been subject to our Psychological, Economic and Social Trial (PEST) for 8 months, including two pointless national Lockdowns; Maskup, which is designed to perpetuate fear, test our compliance, and have us walking around like humiliated prisoners; along with utterly absurd diktats, such as the Rule of Fiddlesticks or whatever it is called. If anyone still seriously thinks this was done for health reasons, there are — I understand — a number of bridges going cheap on Ebay.

Secondly, the suppressions placed upon the people, under the absurd claim that we can control viruses, was bound to be far longer lasting than we were being told, since coronaviruses don't just disappear. And because they don't disappear, the changes to the social, economic and psychological state of people, families, communities and whole nations were bound to be seismic and even epochal in nature. And so it is turning out to be. 2020 is not just another year; it is the start of a new era, and a sinister start no less.

Thirdly, it became quite clear to me a long while ago that Western societies have moved from a state where people could be reasonably confident that what they were being told by Governments and the media had at least some basis in reality, to one where reality itself was being shape-shifted and manipulated to such an extent that it is now largely impossible to be sure of what is and isn't real in the civic sphere any longer. We now live in the World of Unreality, where truth is buried and obscured by a quite obscene mountain of lies and deception.

I am quite sure that with a few exceptions, most people who read what I wrote in March thought I had lost what remaining marbles I may once have possessed. But I am equally sure that many more people now start to see what I was getting at, and are also wondering what happened to their country and whether they'll ever get it back.

A key part of doing so, along with the obvious need for national repentance, is that third point. I often come back to a comment attributed to Karl Rove, George W. Bush's Chief of Staff, since it is perhaps the best explanation of what has been done to us over the last couple of decades, and in 2020 is being dished out in the concentrated version and causing the world to go off in the great nutsy, loony spasm that it has:

"We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you're studying that reality — judiciously, as you will — we'll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors . . . and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

Few would associate Rove with revolutionary fervour, but there is in this statement something remarkably revolutionary.

https://www.sott.net/article/444620-Willing-Slaves-of-the-Covidian-State