By Daisy Luther

Angela Merkel and nearly every other national leader in Europe are in a panic because of Trump’s unexpected win in the Presidential election.

Why?

Because, money, of course. The US money that props up NATO may be coming to an end.

During his election campaign, President-Elect Trump described NATO as obsolete.

NATO is something that at the time was excellent. Today, it has to be changed. It has to be changed to include terror. It has to be changed from the standpoint of cost because the United States bears far too much of the cost of NATO. (source)

American money makes up a disproportionate 73% of NATO defense expenditures. That is something that Trump says he that he intends to reduce which would force others to put more into the communal money pot if they want America’s continued participation.

NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg has warned President-Elect Trump that going it alone isn’t a good idea for either the US or the EU:

The only time Nato has invoked its self- defence clause, that an attack on one is an attack on all, was in support of the United States after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. This was more than just a symbol. Hundreds of thousands of European soldiers have served in Afghanistan since. And more than 1,000 have paid the ultimate price in an operation that is a direct response to an attack against the United States. Today of all days, we remember them – It is all too easy to take the freedoms, security and prosperity we enjoy for granted. In these uncertain times we need strong American leadership, and we need Europeans to shoulder their fair share of the burden. But above all we need to recognise the value of the partnership between Europe and America. It remains indispensable. (source)

European Commission President Jean-Claude Juncker said:

I think that we’ll waste time for two years while Mr Trump tours a world that he is completely unaware of. We have to teach the new president of the USA what Europe is, and how it works. The Trans-Atlantic alliance, and the NATO alliance, is called into question, so it could be quite pernicious. With regards to refugees and other non-Americans, Trump has an approach which in no way coincides with the approach in Europe. (source)

Juncker was speaking at a “crisis” meeting that had been arranged very soon after Trump won the election.

But a crisis for whom?

It has never crossed the consciousness of any of these people that they have messed up, and they have messed up big-time. They have listened to Angela Merkel, who seems to be the self-proclaimed ‘ruler’ of Europe, and now they are paying the price. Infrastructures are crumbling, and crime rates are soaring as they sink without trace under the weight of migrants pouring across their open borders. What’s more, this is a situation that they thought the United States would be joining them in until last Wednesday morning.

And until last Wednesday morning, they thought that the US would be ponying up to help them.

The UK refused to follow the same route as the rest of Europe, and Brexit was the result.

Boris Johnson, the UK Foreign Secretary, refused to attend the meeting. He said that the ‘collective whinge-o-rama’ going on amongst European leaders due to Trump’s election needs to stop.

Johnson’s failure to attend was viewed as a snub to Europe and a thumbs up to the US. His decision to stay at home on a soggy British Sunday highlights the growing divide between the UK and Europe since Brexit became a reality.

A Foreign Office spokesman said:

We do not see the need for an additional meeting on Sunday because the US election timetable is long established. An act of democracy has taken place, there is a transition period and we will work with the current and future administrations to ensure the best outcomes for Britain. (source)

Finally, Nigel Farage (UK Independence Party) spent a couple of hours in a private meeting with Trump on Saturday. You may recall that Farage was the engineer of the Brexit movement. He and most of the Brits who voted to exit the EU were pulling for Trump in the election.

“Don’t underestimate this guy,” Farage said on “Squawk Box.” “He’s made a big, big success of his business career. And he intends to be a successful president, and I think he may well be.”

…Trump’s surprise victory has often been compared to the poll-defying June vote by British citizens for the U.K. to leave the European Union trading bloc.

“What Trump believes in, as I believe in, is nation-state democracy — that we should be controlling our own borders; making our own laws; and yes, trading with each other, cooperating with each other, being good neighbors,’ Farage said. (source)

Trump threatened “Brexit times 10,” and he delivered it. The EU, still a mess from Britain deciding to leave, is now in a death spiral from which it may not recover.

If Europe is looking to lay blame, it seems to me that they need to look no further than Angela Merkel. It was her open-door policies on immigration that drove the UK away and gave the US a glimpse of their future if they elected for Clinton.

The trouble with opening a can of worms is that you can never get the lid back on before a few escape.

Image Credit: Pixabay.com


(activistpost.com)

By Mac Slavo

Don’t just survive when the world burns, but survive in style.

The election of Donald Trump signals a revolutionary fervor among a large segment of the population that is simply fed up, though it isn’t just his supporters. The economic realities of a stagnated economy are weighing heavily upon the masses, and they are looking for outlets to address their anger.

If the current protests against the election are any indication, the world is nearing ever closer to destruction, and those who can afford to do so are getting out of the path of violence, mayhem and property destruction ahead of time. Though the dust will likely settle, the current atmosphere issomewhere between ‘anxious’ and ‘panicked’:

Via CBS in Dallas/Fort Worth:

An investor group is planning for a doomsday scenario by building a $300 million luxury community replete with underground homes. There will also be air-lock blast doors designed for people worried about a dirty bomb or other disaster and off-grid energy and water production.

Residents will enjoy an equestrian center, 18-hole golf course, polo fields, zip lines and gun ranges. Retail shops, restaurants and a row of helipads are also in the works. For those looking to “get away,” they’ll also be able to enjoy three white sand beaches and a neighborhood spa.

“We’ve evolved it into long-term sustainability instead of a survival community,” Trident Lakes CEO Jim O’Connor told the Houston Chronicle, adding that the 400 planned condos will house about 1,600 people.

“It’s not just a hole in the ground to hide in — it’s going to be one of the most plush resorts in all of Texas, if not America,” Trident Lakes spokesperson Richie Whitt told the Sherman Herald Democrat.

“People are getting fearful of this world … If need be, it’s going to be one of the safest places on Earth.”

For those already living in the luxury class, the expense of the elaborate underground community is not only grandiose, but to me, the extra expense on comfort, entertainment and the focus on above-ground activities only suggests that they are hedging seriously on the possibility that they might have to retreat to these places for considerable time periods.

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At any rate, the 1% has taken cues from Occupy Wall Street, Tea Party protest voters, Black Lives Matter, Bernie supporters and the populist upsurge that elected Trump – namely, that whether or not some or all of these events are manufactured, the population itself has reached the point of revolt and uprising.

With such deep-seated anger and division, the wealthy are going to great lengths to ensure that they are able to live comfortably and, if necessary, completely apart from the rest of society.

This elitist self-sustaining community will not only set the bar for the rich and well-connected, but for anyone looking to ensure long-term survival through sustainable living that is either off the grid, or not dependent upon it if the grid goes down.

Whether or not the world ever experiences a nuclear attack or apocalyptic disaster anytime in the foreseeable future, there is every sense that society itself could unravel, and that the disintegrated fabric will spread unrest, violence, riots and ruin for all that it touches.

As J.D. Heyes has reported, the elite are preparing their getaways with considerable urgency:

With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.

The president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, Robert Johnson, told attendees at the recent World Economic Forum in Davos (itself, ironically, representative of a class of uber-rich that exists apart from the 99.9 percent of the rest of the world) that a number of hedge fund managers and others with the means to do so were already busy planning their getaway.

“I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway,” he said.

Food, water, electricity, fuel (and other forms of power), firearms, medicine and skills in everything from agriculture, animal husbandry, mechanics, engine repair, shoes and clothing, tools, hunting and camouflaging will all become vital assets in building that lifeline – and people of all income brackets will need to take measures to prepare, or remain wide open and vulnerable to a society that continues to flirt with total disaster, while scoffing at measures to reduce risk and normalize.

The underground shelter market is gaining in size, especially as more and more sectors are preparing to deal with the increasing importance of the threat of EMP attack.

Notably, engineers just announced the development of ‘conductive concrete,’ which they designed as a low cost way to shield against an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) attack.With the potential of grid failure and system wide disabling of communications, data centers, military structures, government buildings and more are investing in defensive protections, though theoretically anyone could create their own shielded room or home using these materials:

According to Phys.org:

Nebraska engineers Christopher Tuan and Lim Nguyen have developed a cost-effective concrete that shields against intense pulses of electromagnetic energy, or EMP. Electronics inside structures built or coated with their shielding concrete are protected from EMP.

“EMP is very lethal to electronic equipment,” said Tuan, professor of civil engineering. “We found a key ingredient that dissipates wave energy. This technology offers a lot of advantages so the construction industry is very interested.”

EMP-shielding concrete stemmed from Tuan and Nguyen’s partnership to study concrete that conducts electricity [creating]– the ability to block electromagnetic energy.

Their technology works by both absorbing and reflecting electromagnetic waves. The team replaced some standard concrete aggregates with their key ingredient – magnetite, a mineral with magnetic properties that absorbs microwaves like a sponge. Their patented recipe includes carbon and metal components for better absorption as well as reflection.

[…] Today’s shielding technologies employ metal enclosures that require expensive metal panel or screen construction, limiting their feasibility in large structures. […] The resulting patent-pending product protects building interiors from electromagnetic interference, such as radio waves and microwaves, as well as electronic eavesdropping.

Furthermore, this type of concrete, known as Shotcrete, can be sprayed on over existing structures – meaning that existing buildings can be upgraded for a fraction of the cost of new construction.

The wealth gap that divides a few from a country devolving into desperate, revolutionary masses will be nothing compared to the doomsday gap that could follow widespread unrest, violence, war or an EMP attack.

Prepping has never made more sense.

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You can read more from Mac Slavo at his site SHTFplan.com.

(activistpost.com)

By Chris “Kikila” Perrin

When is environmental damage too much? When is it acceptable? In what is being called “a relatively tiny” marine oil spill, for the Heiltsuk First Nations of the Central Coast of BC, the question is being asked in quite real terms, forcing government to answer the questions that it might have preferred to have evaded.

Since running aground in mid-October, a small boat has been leaking oil into the Pacific Ocean, and along BC’s Central Coast. Despite the fact that this spill comes in the aftermath of the Royal Visit to the region — a visit that sought to place the health of the coastline and all the life that dwells there within the global lens — there appears to be very little international interest. Making matters worse, there appears to be little interest from Canadian lawmakers on how best to reduce the potential for disasters like this.

Along the Central Coast of British Columbia, the Great Bear Rainforest is seen as “one of the most pristine wilderness environments on earth.” Stretching approximately 400 kilometers along this sparsely populated area, the Great Bear Rainforest has long represented the very idea of conservation and intrinsic preservation to Canadians and environmentalists around the world.

Along with the Kermode Bear, the area made National Geographic’s “Places of a Lifetime” list and has been called the planet’s last large expanse of coastal temperate rainforest by people like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. Natural beauty, conservation projects, and provincial parks are not, however, all the region is known for.

Of all things, the Central Coast offers access to the Pacific Ocean. It also provides a more-or-less direct line for fossil fuel exportation from various LNG (liquefied natural gas) sites around the province, as well as tar sands oil from the neighboring province of Alberta.

North of Bella Bella, the town of Kitimat serves as the proposed terminal destination of Enbridge’s Northern Gateway Pipeline, a project that has seen a great deal of protest that, in many ways, echoes the issues coming to a head in Cannon Ball, North Dakota. One of the most attractive aspects of the region, insofar as fossil fuel extraction is concerned, is the access it offers to Asian markets, pitting the desires of big oil corporations against those of First Nations and environmentalists, alike.

Even with the legislative death of Northern Gateway, the region continues to be the focal point for resource extraction. October’s oil spill — which is ongoing — provides a visceral reminder of what is at stake in such discussions, pushing many local residents to demand a full tanker ban along the Central Coast.

Yet, while the Coastal Rainforest is inundated with thousands of liters of oil, the federal government seems content to remain reactive. Rather than agreeing to the suggested ban, the Liberal government of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau instead proposed a $1.5 billion (CDN) fund to help deal with oil spills after they occur.

Reactive policies like this leave the fragile ecosystems found in the Central Coast region to suffer contamination before they are dealt with, and offer no change for the way issues of sovereignty are evaluated between First Nations and the colonial Canadian government.

Since his election in 2015, PM Trudeau has taken several quick steps back from his promises to respect First Nations’ sovereignty and deal with environmental issues. Although this “relatively tiny marine oil spill” can be seen as just that, a minor environmental issue that will be cleaned up with more federal money, there is a deeper implication that can be seen — one that pits ongoing environmental degradation and cultural assimilation and genocide against neoliberal economic policy.

This article (Oil Has Been Spilling Into The Pacific Since Last Month And It’s Being Totally Ignored) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Chris “Kikila” Perrin and UndergroundReporter.org. If you spot a typo, please email the error and the name of the article to undergroundreporter2016@gmail.com. Image credit: Flickr/John Lester.

(activistpost.com)