Vol. XX, No.

32 Autumn Issue 2012

Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger

 Einsteins Theory of
Relative Insanity Editor and Publisher
Gerald Celente
Einstein said it best: Insanity is doing the Executive Editor
same thing, over and over again, but expecting John Anthony West
different results. Senior Editor
Yet, with the truth of Einsteins quote widely Alex Silberman
acknowledged and taken for granted, how is
Contributing Editors
it that entire societies keep doing the same Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
thing over and over again but expect different Eldad Benary
results?
Consulting Editor
On issue after issue economy, foreign
Lynn Hazlewood
policy, defense, environment, education, etc,
michaelbloomphoto.com

Subscriptions Manager
the manner in which governments address
Emily Arter
them continues to provide proof for Einsteins
Theory of Relative Insanity. Illustrations
Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
Another proof is to be found in the US
presidential election. The electorate will vote Photo
for a representative of one of the two political parties. An analysis of what these Michael Bloom
parties have accomplished during their respective reigns reveals an unbroken Design
track record of failure failure ranging from the catastrophic to the abject. Norgaard Advertising & Design
Thus, to vote for either presidential candidate and to expect something other
than failure is, by definition, insanity.
Why will so many people vote on Election Day when they know they will
not get what they really want? Not only will they settle for less, many openly
acknowledge that they will be voting for the lesser of two evils.
How can people justify voting for an evil and actually believe that any good
can come of it? Lesser or greater, evil is evil. Yet, not only do they justify it, they
will argue that their evil candidate is better than your evil candidate and become
furious when you dont see it their way.
In America, it is an article of faith (drummed into our heads since childhood)
that voting is a privilege and a duty and if you dont vote you get what you
deserve. Personally, I deserve better than a lesser of two evils and will not
demean myself by voting for one. Nor do I consider it a dereliction of duty. Just
the opposite. It is by not voting that I register my vote of No Confidence.
Not voting is not necessarily a sign of apathy, its a positive statement in
repudiation of a failed and corrupt system. Only when enough people vote No
Confidence can the system change. To perpetuate the same system and expect
different results is insanity.

All rights reserved. For information on permission

A Plague on Both Your Parties Whenever I recommend not voting as an
act of protest, I receive a spate of emails attacking me for my unwillingness to
participate in the insanity. I do not regard the choice between the lesser of two
evils as democracy in any sense of the word.
Thus my 2012 Presidential Campaign slogan: Stay Home. Dont Vote. If
less than 40 percent of the electorate turns out, the numbers will prove how
disgusted the citizenry is with both parties and demands for substantive change
and true democracy will become impossible to ignore.
Gerald Celente
Publisher
to reproduce or translate material from The Trends
Journal , please contact The Trends Research
Institute. The Trends Journal (ISSN 1065-2094) is
published quarterly by The Trends Research Institute.
2012. Globalnomic, Trends Journal , Trend Alert,
Trends in The News and History Before it Happens
are registered trademarks of the Trends Research
Institute.
The Trends Research Institute
P.O. Box 3476, Kingston, NY 12402
845 331-3500
www.trendsresearch.com

2 The Trends Journal Autumn 2012

 The Next Four Years:
An American Tragedy
A BAD ENDING OR A NEW BEGINNING And when enough individuals change, society changes.
Its more than just a secular challenge and its not
The goal of trend forecasting is to predict the probable Change You Can Believe In political hype. Charting our
course of the future by extrapolating from verifiable facts future and creating our own destiny is a divine respon-
and data. sibility. And Hope wont deliver what can be achieved
Sometimes forecasts have to be adjusted when wild cards only through a lifetime of hard work and dedication.
(e.g., man-made or natural disasters) come into play or un- Everyone is born with a unique talent for something.
foreseeable variables arise (e.g., digital revolution, energy Working to bring that talent to its highest level is what gives
breakthrough, too-big-to-fail bailouts) that can reverse, our lives meaning. A life lived without creativity is a life
stall or redirect a major trend. not fully lived. When enough
More often than not, the people are living fulfilling, cre-
facts and data lead to inescap- ative lives, a higher collective
able conclusions. The conclu- consciousness is created.
sions we have come to in this
issue of The Trends Journal we JUNK IN JUNK OUT
regard as near-inescapable. But The higher the level attained,
there is one wild card that can the higher the bar is set. Those
lead to different conclusions, living fulfilling, creative lives
and that wild card is YOU! will not accept mediocrity in
The course of history that we any aspect of life from the
have forecast can be changed. food they eat to the clothes they
However likely it may appear, wear to the music they listen to
it is not predestined. It has not and the TV shows they watch.
been charted by beings of a Every physical, emotional and
higher cosmic order. intellectual experience and ac-
But those who are charting tivity is food.
the future Presidents, Prime There is food to nourish the
Ministers, Chancellors, Kings, body, emotional food for the
Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger

Emirs at the helms of the ships
of state behave as though
they believe they are of a high-
er order.
Are we destined to be no
more than hapless passengers
slaves aboard their slave ships,
whipped into submission, forced to obey orders and work
until we are no longer useful and then thrown overboard?
The answer to these questions is Yes if we are slaves
that obey the Captain and his mates, accept their author-
ity, and believe in their superiority, then that is our fate.
But if we are human beings who refuse to believe, ac-
cept and obey self-important, self-serving beings, regard-
less of their positions then the answer is No!
The course of history most certainly can be changed,
but for history to change the individual has to change.
heart, intellectual food for the
head, and at the highest level,
food that elevates the soul.
At the physical level, of
course, its obvious: Eat junk
food, drink junk drinks and
the inevitable result is a junk
body. The same applies to the quality of food fed to the
head, heart and soul. Read junk books, absorb junk news,
listen to junk music, watch junk entertainment and the
mind thinks junk thoughts and inevitably the heart expe-
riences junk emotions.
When enough individuals become sufficiently junk
free, society is transformed from within and the course
of history changes.
But at this juncture, as detailed in the following pages,
the most commanding trends are not leading toward a

The Trends Journal Autumn 2012 3

pan-societal transformation. Instead, they point unmis-
takably to a rapidly declining United States superpower,
a disintegrating Europe, and an economic meltdown in a
world gearing up for war.
On every front, theres chaos: failing economies, deadly
foreign policy, societal decay, cultural rot and environ-
mental destruction. All man-made disasters made by mad-
men and madwomen. And who will be chosen to fix them?
The same madmen and madwomen who had a hand in
creating them.
THE LEADERSHIP VACUUM These negative trends
did not happen on their own, they took enormous
amounts of time, money and energy to develop. Behind
each of them are the all-too-familiar names and faces
that were instrumental in pushing through and promot-
ing policies that were destined to become monumental
failures.
In this Trends Journal we provide indisputable facts
and data to substantiate our analyses and conclusions: The
United States is in the grip of the greatest leadership vac-
uum in its history, at a time when it most needs righteous,
trustworthy and principled leaders.
Instead, the presidential candidates, by their words
and deeds, reveal themselves as polar opposites of what
is needed. The race for the White House has lost the last
vestiges of the dignity and substance it once had and has
degenerated into a made-for-TV spectacle.
Its The Presidential Reality Show, the fitting finale to
the drama of a once-great nation that, through its unscru-
pulous leadership and the shameful acquiescence of its
people, has devolved into the junk-food, junk-entertain-
ment, junk-culture Superpower of the World.
And the US isnt alone. There is ample competition.
Just as so many countries once embraced and looked up
to the best America had to offer, they now have become
terminally infected with Americas worst. The curtain
isnt falling on Empire America alone. As the pages that
follow detail, the immorality, the political corruption, the
financial greed and the leadership vacuum in every power
sector has become a global virus.
MIRACLE CURE
Unless a cure is found, we forecast an accelerated rate of
decline and destruction. The only miracle cure we have
discovered resides deep within the minds, hearts and
souls of individuals seeking a higher meaning to life.
While no one can deny the facts and the data pre-
sented, no one is obliged to agree with our analyses, our
conclusions or our forecasts. The following pages provide
ample food for thought. Remember our Trends Journal
motto: Think For Yourself!
4 The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
And after youve read what we have written and have
arrived at your own conclusions, essentially you are left
with three choices:
1. Do nothing, just go with the flow. Let the future take
care of itself.
2. Willingly sign up for passage on a slave-ship-of-
state of choice and allow self-important, self-serving
beings to control your life. Dispose of your courage,
dignity, self-respect, integrity and passion: Believe -
Accept - Obey.
3. We are all endowed with unique gifts. Find the tal-
ents within, keep honing your craft(s), sharpen your
skills and do your part to pave a path to a future that
will lead to a higher order and a more spiritually ad-
vanced society: Prepare Survive Prevail.
If you want to do your part, but dont feel you have what
it takes to make a difference, remember: If Clinton can,
Bush can, Obama can and Romney can, YOU can, and I
can unless, of course, you believe their Mother is better
than yours.
Speaking only for myself, their Mother is not better
than mine. And they are not superior to me. But just to
keep it polite, so this doesnt get out of hand, lets just call
it equal.
Capisce?
Gerald Celente
HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF
The Summer of 2012 was one for the books. Was history re-
peating itself? The parallels were eerie. The Crash of 29 was
mirrored by the Panic of 08: It was The Great Depression
back then and it is The Great Recession/Depression now.
And once again there were currency wars, trade wars,
and now a build-up to a Great War.
As if this wasnt enough, out of the blue, a new wild
card dealt by Mother Nature was shaping up to look
much like the card she had dealt some eight decades
ago. Would the worst drought in 56 years and record-
breaking heat that scorched much of the United States
lead to Dust Bowl 2.0?
By mid-August, three-fifths of the nation was in a
drought and nearly 80 percent of the nations corn and
soybean crops had been affected, resulting in declin-
ing yields and rising prices. Corn futures projected in
April to sell in July at $4.80 per bushel were selling at
above $8.00. In the spring, the government had fore-
cast a harvest of 14.8 billion bushels of corn, but in
August, that forecast was slashed to 10.8 billion, down
some 37 percent.
Since the US supplies nearly half the
worlds corn, the combination of spiking
prices and diminished stocks was fomenting
a complex world-wide crisis. While American
households generally spend about 13 percent
of their budgets on food, in middle-income,
developing, and poor countries that figure
rises dramatically (Mexico 21.7 percent, Bra-
zil 25 percent, China 28.3 percent, India 39
percent, Indonesia 50 percent).
Nor were extreme weather conditions con-
fined to America. Hot and dry weather was
impacting major wheat producers Russia,
Ukraine and Australia, while heavy rains were
damaging Brazils sugar production. From
South America to Europe, hot, dry conditions
were affecting corn and soybean crops.
With global food prices jumping 6 percent

Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger

in July alone the third food-price shock in
five years it was more than just pinching
the pocketbooks of Americans and Europe-
ans. It was becoming a survival issue to bil-
lions around the world especially in the
poorest nations that had not even recovered
from the earlier food spikes.
It was, indeed, an eerie replay of the 1930s. A global
food crisis coming on top of an unrelenting financial cri-
sis combined with rampant unemployment, governments
toppling, draconian austerity measures, mountains of
debt weighing down nations, civil unrest and a paralyzed,
inept, and out-of-touch political class ill-equipped to deal
with the crisis:
G20 plans response to rising food prices
G20 countries are to step in to try to co-ordinate a
response to surging food prices, after the worst US
drought in half a century devastated crops in the
worlds largest agricultural exporter
G20 officials plan to hold a conference call in
the week of August 27 to discuss a meeting, which
could be held in late September or early October,
according to four officials familiar with the con-
versations.
The meeting would be the first of the Rapid Re-
sponse Forum, a newly created body to promote
early discussion among decision-level officials
about abnormal international market conditions.
The forum is part of the G20-backed Agricultural
Market Information System, created last year at
the initiative of France and seen as a key policy
response to the 2007-08 crisis.
The US government on Friday stoked fears of
a price surge The Department of Agriculture
slashed its forecast for the crop and predicted re-
cord prices over the next year.
And when President Barack Obama arrives in
corn-growing Iowa for a three-day tour on Mon-
day, he will be entering a fierce debate in the
run-up to the presidential election on whether the
grain is worth more as food or biofuel.
Leading G20 countries are in favour of hold-
ing a meeting as crop conditions continue to de-
teriorate in the US, one of the officials said.
G20 officials emphasised the planned meeting
was not a sign of panic. On the contrary, they said,
it would be an attempt to avoid the kind of policies,
including export restrictions and hoarding, that
in 2007-08 transformed a shortage of agricultural
commodities into the first full-blown food crisis
in 30 years with riots in two dozen countries.
The world is braced for a repeat of the 2007-
2008 food crisis as the worst US drought in 50
years pushes up the prices of staple commodities.
In many respects it is just making sure ev-
eryone is on the same page in terms of what the
situation is, and certainly trying to discourage any
policies that would exacerbate the volatility, one

The Trends Journal Autumn 2012 5

 G20 official said.
The UN is likely to use the meeting to push
for a global debate about biofuel policies, particu-
larly asking the US, the EU and other countries to
scrap government-mandated production targets.
(Financial Times, 13 August 2012)
KING CORN One of the big issues regarding surging
corn prices was the enormous impact it would have on
people in developing countries, who spend 30 to 40 per-
cent of their income on food. It is estimated that ethanol
refiners will consume some 40 percent of the US corn
crop. In other countries, substantial percentages of their
crops are similarly diverted into the biodiesel industry
(e.g. 60 percent of Europes rapeseed crop, and 50 percent
of Brazils sugarcane).
More than just a choice between feeding the people
or fueling the machines, ethanol production was itself
both politically and scientifically controversial. Did it
benefit the environment or did it just enrich special inter-
ests? (See The Cornell University Study: Ethanol, pg. 7)
Indeed, Mr. Obamas trip to corn-king Iowa, his fifth
this year, emphasized the political importance of the
corn-belt states in US politics. Having won Iowa in the
2008 race, his visits were more about reaffirming his pro-
ethanol policy, which benefited agribusiness, than about
increasing supply to feed people and livestock.
While viewed as corporate welfare by environmental
and libertarian opponents because of its generous subsi-
dies and tax incentives, the ethanol program had strong
bipartisan support in Washington. Thus, there was little
that Obamas opponent, Republican Mitt Romney, could
do to out-promise or out-flank Obama when it came to
winning the hearts and minds of the corn belt states.
Publishers Note: Whether deciding what measures to
take to deal with an imminent food crisis, economic cri-
sis, debt crisis, or war crisis, the pattern was always the
same. This time it was the G-20s pretentiously named
Rapid Response Forum of self-inflated decision-level ern Greenland, central and southern Europe, Japan and
officials who were on the job (or would be on the job
in a month or so) to discuss the steps to be taken. As
we have repeatedly detailed in previous Trends Journals,
whatever decisions the decision-level officials take will
end either in abject failure or in making a bad situa-
tion worse. This is not conjecture, it is a forecast based
upon the proven track records of governments around
the world. (See Summer Trends Journal, The Shadow
Knows, pg. 20)
Yet the Presstitute media, in their role as enablers and
facilitators, persists in reporting government proposals as
6 The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
though they were credible, while virtually never provid-
ing follow-up coverage of the failed solutions and unful-
filled promises.
And, as good Presstitutes who dutifully service their
masters, there is no journalistic act they will not perform,
regardless of how degrading or ludicrous it may be:
Agriculture Secretary Vilsack
prays for rain
With three-fifths of the nation in a drought, Ag-
riculture Secretary Tom Vilsack says the Obama
administration is doing everything it can and
hes saying some extra prayers.
Right now, there are a lot of farmers and
ranchers who are struggling, Vilsack said. Key
federal officials are fanning out across the coun-
try to get a first-hand look at drought conditions.
I get on my knees every day, and Im saying an
extra prayer now, the former Iowa governor said.
If I had a rain prayer or a rain dance I could do,
I would do it. (AP, 18 July 2012)
Yes, Vilsack gets down on his knees every day, and so do
the Presstitutes. Pray for rain? Sure, that will make a dif-
ference. After all, Vilsack is Agriculture Secretary of the
United States of America, so God will be obliged to listen
up and deliver whatever he asks for just as Santa does
at Christmas. And they call it news.
Trend Forecast: In the US and around the world, record-
setting extreme weather patterns prevailed. It was one of
the hottest, driest summers on record in America, record-
high ocean temperatures were recorded off the New Eng-
land coast, there was accelerated glacier melting in the
European Alps and Greenland, and sea ice in the Arctic
Ocean shrank to an all-time low.
Worldwide, it was the fourth-warmest August ever re-
corded, marking the 330th straight month with a global
temperature above the 20th century average, with above-
average temperatures occurring in eastern Canada, south-
western Australia, among other locations.
TREND OR FAD
Was the climate really changing? Is global warming really
a trend? Regardless of how the data added up and who
was doing the adding, there is, and will be, no consensus
on whether the changing weather patterns are part of a
natural cycle or largely man-made. The controversy will
continue, in part because of the vested interests involved,
in part because the data themselves are complex and open
to widely varying interpretations.
 The Cornell University Study: Ethanol

S
everal studies suggest that the $1.4 billion in government subsidies are encouraging the ethanol program without
reaping substantial benefits to the U.S. economy. Large ethanol industries and a few U.S. government agencies,
such as the USDA, support the production of ethanol.
Corn-farmers receive minimal profits. In the U.S. ethanol system, considerably more energy, including high-grade
fossil fuel, is required to produce ethanol than is available in the energy-ethanol output. Specifically, about 29% more
energy is used to produce a gallon of ethanol than the energy a gallon of ethanol can produce. Fossil energy powers corn
production and the fermentation/distillation processes.
Increasing subsidized ethanol production will take more feed from livestock production and is estimated to currently
cost consumers an additional $1 billion per year. Ethanol production increases environmental degradation. Growing corn
production causes more total soil erosion than does growing any other crop. Also, corn production uses more insecti-
cides, herbicides and nitrogen fertilizers than required for any other crop.
All these factors degrade the agricultural and natural environment and contribute to water pollution and air pollution.
Increasing the cost of food and diverting human food resources to the costly, inefficient production of ethanol fuel raises
major ethical questions. These occur at a time when more than half of the worlds population is malnourished. o

For more of the Cornell University Study, click here: http://vivo.cornell.edu/display/individual16468

What is not open to interpretation is the reality of the
trillions of tons of poisons spewed into the air, pumped
into the earth, and spread over the land and the seas. Be it
global warming induced by fossil fuels or climate change
due to natural cycles, everyone and everything the Man
on the Street and Mother Earth herself has been and
continues to be seriously damaged by the toxic onslaught.
Clear-cutting of forests, topping off mountains and
mega-mining operations, over-fishing, inexorable popula-
tion growth, dwindling natural resources, cannot, by any
stretch of the imagination, be considered as unavoidable,
acceptable byproducts of progress. Yes, they create jobs,
but on a grander scale, they are among the myriad factors
destabilizing and desecrating life on Earth.
Trendpost: Regardless of short-term fluctuations (too
much rain, not enough rain, too hot, too cold, good har-
vest, bad harvest) Environmental Restoration on the
micro and macro scale will be a long-term mega-trend.
Out of necessity, safe food and clean water; energy-ef-
ficient equipment, appliances, fixtures; alternative energy
development, sustainability at every level (from the grand
scale to the personal level) will become paramount con-
cerns. In the process, the new Environmental Restoration
trend will generate innumerable new entrepreneurial and
investment opportunities.
While the mega-trend will not result in an environ-
mental utopia, the more individuals, communities and
countries that embrace it, the greater the compounding
positive effects.
Past is Present With angry, destitute and starv-
ing populations outraged and rising in protest against the
financial mobs, business monopolies and powerful politi-
cians, history was repeating itself in 2012.
The names and times had changed but the fundamen-
tals were essentially the same: a few people with a lot, in
control of everything and a lot of people with very little,
going out of control. The Panic of 08, and pre-1st Great
War of the 21st Century, were near-mirror images of post-
Crash of 29 and pre-World War II.
For the general public and all of the media, even the
most obvious parallels were not being made. Ironically, as
economically ravaged Spain was being reduced to Franco-
era poverty, so the stage was being set for a new Spanish
Civil War.
This time the civil war would not be cast, as it had been
in the 1930s, as a struggle between Fascism and Freedom.
In fact, it was just that. Back then it was championed by
Republican sympathizers as a struggle between tyranny
and democracy, while opposing Nationalists painted it
as a struggle between communist/anarchist hordes and
Christian civilization.
This time around the government would paint the war
as a struggle between the righteous forces of national se-
curity and stability and a rabble of anarchists, socialists,
malcontents, separatists and home-grown terrorists.
However, for the tens of millions of unemployed and
newly destitute who had lost everything and had noth-
ing left to lose, it was a struggle between themselves and
the criminal banking cartel, business monopolies and a

The Trends Journal Autumn 2012 7

political Mafia that controlled their money and their lives.
Trends Analysis: Pick a place on the map, name the cul-
ture. If political elections are held there, they almost in-
variably boil down to a contest between groups of the most
powerful, entrenched power brokers. Rarely is there an
option for a clean sweep and a new beginning.
In practice, most political elections are exercises in futil-
ity. Come election time, each party plays the we care the
most about you role. In doing so they promote the myth
that its an open party for all to join and benefit from,
and that this egalitarian and democratic system is not about
power, prestige or money, but is a vehicle designed to carry
the will of the people to the seat of government.
Yes, come election time, its all for one, and one for all.
Your interests are their interests and thats what theyre
looking out for. A vote for that political him or her is a
vote for you.
In 2012, from France to the US, from Mexico to Egypt,
that was the pitch, and despite overwhelming evidence to
the contrary, most of the public bought it, including many
who should have known better.
It had become a ritual, a secular religious rite that all
must blindly believe in, none dare question and everyone
must practice. Participating in the electoral process was
dogma preached by political pitchmen and promulgated by
the media, as though going to the polls was proof that we
the people are privileged souls lucky enough to live in the
most advanced civilization humanity has ever devised.
IN CHARGE OF THE ASYLUM
Even though it was evident that the choice of candidates
was limited to psychopaths, sociopaths, and megalomani-
acs, they were, in the eyes of the faithful, political gods,
wise and benevolent.
The political priesthood told the worshipers that if they
didnt perform the voting ritual, they forfeited their right
to complain when they didnt like the results.
The reality was, however, that by performing the ritual,
voters were guaranteed unsatisfactory results, since they
were voting for politicians who, almost by definition, were
pathological liars interested only in furthering their own
interests and the interests of those that gave them the
most money.
It was a mystery, but there were no hidden secrets.
How could otherwise-functioning adults, people who
had an education, could drive a car, earn a living and
raise a family actually be so gullible as to believe that
their electoral choice had their best interests at heart and
cared about them?
Yet they did, and they would become angry, even violent,
should anyone question the sanctity of their political god.
8 The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Those daring to speak out against the manifest travesty of
the entire political system were branded heretics non-
believers in sacred democracy and traitors to the cause.
East, West, North, South, name the country, the par-
ties, the players: almost without exception, democracy
was simply a euphemism for party rule.
Egypt: Welcome to the Party!
Youre Not Invited In June 2012, some 18
months after the overthrow of Hosni Mubarak (who had
ruled for 40 years), Egypt held its first democratic
election. But it was barely democratic and it wasnt
the celebrated people power candidates those who
spent months in the streets, were beaten and jailed
who got elected, or even garnered enough votes to make
the runoffs.
The election boiled down to a contest between the en-
trenched old guard represented by Mubaraks former
Prime Minister, Ahmed Shafiq and Mohamed Morsi,
from the powerful Muslim Brotherhood, a group that had
been outlawed in Egypt for most of its 84 years.
Although the Brotherhood had played virtually no role
in bringing about the revolution, it was their candidate
who narrowly won the presidency. The elections were de-
clared fair, and a new Muslim boss ostensibly replaced
the old military boss, but the genuine democracy that
President Obama hailed following the fall of Mubarak was
essentially a travesty:
Good afternoon, everybody. There are very few
moments in our lives where we have the privilege
to witness history taking place. This is one of those
moments. This is one of those times. The people of
Egypt have spoken, their voices have been heard,
and Egypt will never be the same.
By stepping down, President Mubarak respond-
ed to the Egyptian peoples hunger for change
Egyptians have made it clear that nothing less
than genuine democracy will carry the day.
(President Obama, 11 February 2011)
Democracy? The people of Egypt hadnt spoken. The
June 2012 election would prove that the countrys en-
trenched interests did all the speaking. Secular, religious,
it made no difference. A party was a party was a party and
whatever party won, all those outside the party would not
be invited, let alone have their interests addressed.
Yes, there was a vote, but the numbers told the true
tale. In the first round of elections, only 46 percent of eli-
gible voters turned out, and just 51.6 percent voted in the
ensuing runoff. The moral of the Egyptian election story
is that when half the electorate stays home, the powers
that be are the powers that will continue to be.
Subsequent events further reinforced the vapidity of all
that Washington wind and provided yet another example
of democracy not-in-action. There were no high-profile
cabinet appointees pulled from the ranks of the revolu-
tionaries. There was no Liberty, Fraternity or Equality.
Just days prior to Morsis inauguration, the still-ruling
military passed decrees circumscribing the powers of the
presidency. But in August, in what would prove to be the
first round in a long and ongoing power showdown, the
Morsi government invalidated the decrees, stripped exec-
utive and legislative power from the military, reinstalled
Parliament members that the military and the courts had
declared illegitimate and replaced top Mubarak-era gen-
erals with new ones.
HERE COMES THE JUDGE
Further consolidating its power, the Brotherhood also
moved to take over the courts. Mubarak-era judges would
be replaced. Judges are a society that want cleansings,
declared newly appointed Minister of Justice Ahmed Me-
kki. The judges will cleanse themselves, not me. I will
just remove the immunity of judges who are corrupt.
And the commission drafting Egypts new constitution
was also stacked with Islamist delegates.
By every measure, it appeared to be a Brotherhood
takeover. But was it? There was speculation that the Mus-
lim Brotherhood was little more than a front for Egypts
military who would still maintain their grip on power but
legitimize it by making it look as though the Brotherhood
was making the decisions.
Immediately after Morsi replaced the top-ranking mili-
tary leadership with his own team, the United States ex-
pressed its strong approval of the power play. We had
expected President Morsi to cooperate with the military to
name a new defense team. And we will continue to work
with Egypts civilian and military leaders to advance our
many shared interests, White House spokesman Jay Car-
ney told reporters.
US Defense Secretary Leon Panetta telephoned Egypts
new defense minister, General Abdel-Fattah El-Sisi, the
former head of Egypts intelligence agency, to express his
unwavering commitment to the US-Egypt military-to-
military relationship, which has been really an anchor of
stability in the Middle East for more than 30 years.
What was unquestionable, and gave credence to the
suspicion of military/Brotherhood agreement was that the
a newly installed regime had played no role in the revolu-
tion and had even been hostile to it. Yet, at least on paper,
Morsi had seized all, if not more, of the powers exercised
under the Mubarak regime.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Same Game, Different Place There could
be no denying it. While the story had a nice democratic ring
to it, there was no Arab Spring in Egypt, or anywhere else
in the Middle East. In each case, what began as a popular
uprising would devolve into just another power struggle be-
tween powerful factions.
In Tunisia, the first of the authoritarian North Afri-
ca/Middle East governments to be toppled by an angry,
poverty-stricken populace, the Islamist Ennahda an off-
shoot of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood, had played no
role in the revolution but was voted into power. And they,
like their Egyptian counterparts, were also suspected of
being a front for the old regime, which, behind the scenes,
still controlled the state apparatus.
And in Tunisia, as in Egypt, there was growing concern
that the religious-based government was not only counter-
revolutionary but could prove radically fundamentalist. In
Egypt, the Morsi government had vowed to run the coun-
try according to Sharia law. But as with any law, religious
or secular, the open question in August 2012 was: how
would it be interpreted and how strictly would it be en-
forced?
In Egypt, members of the hard-line Salafist Al Nour
party were insisting that Al Azhar, the center of Sunni
Islamic thinking in the Arab world, take on the role of
interpretation while the more moderate Islamists wanted
the largely secular Supreme Constitutional Court to con-
tinue as arbiter of Sharia.
How would it be interpreted and what would it mean to
Egypt? Once again, Tunisia could serve as the bellwether.
The combination of Ennahdas imposition of strict Is-
lamic law and its inability to address Tunisias endemic
poverty was provoking another round of nationwide pro-
tests from unions, the unemployed and women.
In August, a general strike called by the main trade
union federation had 90 percent of its workers join the
strike. In support, businesses closed their shops and offic-
es in city centers for the day. With official unemployment
at over 20 percent, food prices soaring, infrastructure in
a shambles, public services evaporating and corruption
rampant, the stage was being set for a second and more
violent revolution.
In Tunis and other cities throughout the country, tens
of thousands of women marched in protest of the harsh
interpretation of Sharia law being proposed by the fun-
damentalist Islamist government, an interpretation that
would severely downgrade the status of women and re-
verse the full equality granted them under the 1956 Code
of Personal Status law.
Yemen, Bahrain, Syria, Libya, Jordan, Afghanistan,
Iraq the potential for the entire Middle East region to go
up in smoke was accelerating. The only question remain-
9
ing was how much of it would go down in flames?
It was a trend; it was predictable and we predicted it.
The more authoritarian the governments, the longer they
held on to power, the longer they repressed their people,
the more violent the reaction of the impoverished and re-
pressed would be.
And in each case, the puppeteer pulling the strings of
the puppets in power was the United States and its allies,
most of them hated former colonialists and exploiters.
We saw it coming, we named it Crusades 2000, and we
predicted the consequences:
The seeds of the new Crusades have been sown
in areas of Africa, Eastern Europe and Asia.
Throughout the Muslim world, devout masses, po-
litically repressed and impoverished, were rising
up against their endemically corrupt and ineffi-
cient secular governments with their pro-Western
alliances. Imperialism, directly or indirectly, took
the blame for the poverty, the lack of opportunity,
and the social and moral decay.
Disenfranchised, desperate, politically power-
less, Muslims in many countries looked to char-
ismatic clerics to change their destiny. (Trends
2000, Warner Books, 1997)
Trend Forecast: The same scenario of revolution fol-
lowed by Islamic government control that has trans-
pired in Tunisia and Egypt will be repeated throughout
the region. How each countrys government evolves or
dissolves cannot be forecast in detail, but the broad
outlines are clear.
In each country, excepting some of the already-fun-
damentalist monarchies (Saudi Arabia, Qatar, United
Arab Emirates, Kuwait), large population segments,
forced to accept religious fundamentalist government
rule, will erupt in battles between the Imams and the
man on the street.
In profligate monarchies where Sharia law already
prevails, fundamentalist counter forces intent upon over-
throwing leaders perceived as subservient to the West will
fight to seize power and impose yet-stricter religious ob-
servance.
Regardless of how the individual scenarios develop in
and between Middle East countries, when taken together
they will constitute yet another set of elements that will
culminate in The 1st Great War of the 21st Century.
But in August 2012, only The Trends Journal was writ-
ing this chapter of History Before it Happens. The rest
of the media were merely repeating what anonymous
sources and government officials with fixed agendas
were telling them.
10
With few exceptions, each countrys conflicts were
treated as if they were semi-contained. Yes, there were
refugees, outside military support, violence spilling across
borders, financial assistance and undercover operations
carried out by foreign powers to influence the outcome.
There were fears and realities of violence spreading to
neighboring countries, but nevertheless, the mounting
turmoil was not viewed as either a prelude to a region-
wide war or the flashpoint for The 1st Great War of the 21st
Century.
FLASHPOINT IRAN
It never seemed to stop. Year after year, the Iranians
would insist their nuclear ambitions were for peaceful
purposes, while Israel and the West would, with equal
insistence, accuse Iran of a lack of transparency which
was to them, in effect, evidence that Iran was developing
nuclear weapons.
Now, in the summer of 2012, as the US presidential
election drew near, the urgent question making the head-
lines was not whether or not Israel would attack Irans nu-
clear facility, but rather, would Israel attack before Elec-
tion Day?
Since the beginning of the year, Israel (with its alleged
400-plus nuclear warheads) had been waging an increas-
ingly strident Iran must never possess a nuclear weapon
campaign.
A nuclear Iran had also become a hot-button politi-
cal issue among Republican presidential candidates, who
were portraying the President as weak and indecisive for
not taking tough action to stop Irans program.
In early March, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-
tanyahu came to Washington to meet with President
Obama and to pressure him for a pledge to take decisive
military action against Iran and also to attend the annual
conference of the American Israel Public Affairs Commit-
tee, the powerful pro-Israel lobby.
According to news reports:
The Israeli leader has told US officials that he
wants Mr. Obama to outline specifically what
Washington views as the red lines that Iran
cannot cross, something the administration is
considering as it drafts the presidents speech at
the American Israel Public Affairs Committee
and sets the agenda for his meeting with Mr. Ne-
tanyahu. Some administration officials said that if
Mr. Obama decides to more clearly define his red
lines, he is likely to do it in private with Mr. Ne-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 tanyahu, rather than state it
in his AIPAC speech. Over the last three years, as
Mr. Netanyahu and other President of the United States, I have kept
top Israeli officials also are
pressing for Mr. Obama to my commitments to the state of Israel.
publicly clarify his insis-
tence that all options are
on the table in addressing the Iranian nuclear
threat. (Wall Street Journal, 28 February 2012)
With both the Prime Minister and President maneuvering
for position and neither wanting to appear to give way,
how to deal with Iran became a primetime question:
Barack Obama calls US support
for Israel sacrosanct
NEW YORK President Barack Obama on Thurs-
day called US support for Israel sacrosanct,
and said he wanted the country to maintain its
military superiority as he prepares to meet with
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The two leaders are expected to make discus-
sions about Irans nuclear development program a
priority during their planned meeting Monday at
the White House.
Obama spoke Thursday during a re-election
campaign fundraiser in New York, where he dis-
cussed geopolitical changes created by popular
uprisings in the Arab world.
One of our long-term goals in that region is to
make sure that the sacrosanct commitment that
we make to Israels security is not only a mat-
ter of providing them the military capabilities
they need, not only providing the sort of qualita-
tive military edge that they need in a very tough
neighborhood, Obama said. (Economic Times, 2
March 2012)
Two days later, Mr. Obama told the 13,000 people at-
tending the AIPAC meeting that while he would not
clearly define his red lines, he pledged to uncondition-
ally support Israel in any future military confrontations
with Tehran and reiterated his commitment as a tireless
advocate for the unbreakable bonds between Israel and
the United States.
The President assured the crowd that he had a policy
to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon. I will
not hesitate to use force. I do not have a policy of contain-
ment, I have a policy to prevent Iran from obtaining a
nuclear weapon. A nuclear armed Iran is completely coun-
ter to Israels security interests. But it is also counter to
the national security interests of the United States, said
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Obama, making clear in no
uncertain terms that I have
Israels back.
Publishers Note: How is it
that the Jewish State should
wield influence in American
politics far beyond what the Jewish population (2.2 per-
cent) would seem to warrant? Is it not undemocratic and
non-representative for President Obama to speak on be-
half of 97.8 percent of the American people to declare Is-
rael sacrosanct while also committing America to move
in lockstep with Israel in its approach to Iran?
Or was the President speaking only for himself, when
he said, I have Israels back.
Or did that I refer to the American troops who would
be sent to cover Israels back, along with billions in weap-
ons and defense systems?
Or was Mr. Obama just speaking to the Jewish 2.2
percent of the US population, and the powerful AIPAC
lobby when he assured Netanyahu that he had Israels
back?
STRONG ON ISRAEL Though Obama is often attacked
by political opponents as weak on Israel, despite oc-
casional lapses in diplomatic language, Obama was as
strong on Israel as most of his predecessors had been:
Over the last three years, as President of the United
States, I have kept my commitments to the state of Is-
rael, Obama said. At every crucial juncture, at every
fork in the road, we have been there for Israel. Every
single time. During this political season, [when] you
hear some question my administrations support for Is-
rael, remember that its not backed up by the facts.
(President Obama, 4 March 2012)
The facts, in fact, supported Obamas statement. Since
taking office, the Obama administration has increased
military assistance to Israel each year, providing some $10
billion in aid.
Like Presidents before him, Obama voiced objections
to Israels continued confiscation of Palestinian land and
just like them demonstrated he would do nothing to stop
it. In June of 2009, for example, President Obama called
for a settlement freeze and a halt to confiscation of Pales-
tinian land. After a short pause, Israel annexed more land
and Obama rewarded it with twenty F-35 fighter jets plus
an extra $70 million in aid.
Then, in May of 2011, Obama spoke of using the 1967
borders as a starting point for the creation of a Palestin-
ian state, only to later veto a UN resolution that called
11
for an end to the continuous confiscation of Palestinian
land by Israel.
Peace process, no peace process, settlement freeze
the building boom continued. There are now some
600,000 Israelis occupying former Palestinian areas of
the West Bank and East Jerusalem.
For his part, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu
appreciated the fact that President Obama reiterated
his position that Iran must not be allowed to develop
nuclear weapons, and that all options are on the ta-
ble, and the fact that Obama made clear that when it
comes to a nuclear-armed Iran, containment is simply
not an option.
More Hot Air With the race for the White House
in full swing and the Republican presidential hopefuls
fighting it out in the primaries, there had been heated
competition among the front runners as to who best rep-
resented Israels interests and who was best qualified to
deliver a fatal knockout punch to Iran.
Newt Gingrich, the # 3 man among the top three con-
tenders, said he would not keep talking while the Irani-
ans keep building, and promised to give Israel the green
light to attack and help provide the means to do it.
Not to be outdone, #2 contender Rick Santorum de-
clared that as President he would present Iran with an
ultimatum to tear down their nuclear facilities and that
if they do not tear down those facilities, we will tear
down them.
And Mitt Romney, who would ultimately challenge
Obama, thundered:
Nuclear ambition is pursued by Iran to domi-
nate, to subjugate, to obliterate. A nuclear Iran
is not only a problem for Israel, its a problem
for America, and its a problem for the world. If
elected I will bring the current policy of procras-
tination toward Iran to an end. I will not delay
imposing further crippling sanctions, I will not
hesitate to fully implement the ones we already
have. I will make sure Iran knows of the very real
peril that awaits if it becomes nuclear, he prom-
ised. The only thing respected by thugs and ty-
rants is our resolve backed by our power and our
readiness to use it.
But while the politicians in Tel Aviv and DC were talk-
ing tough, Israeli military and intelligence officials were
sounding alarms. For example, former Mossad chief Meir
Bagan feared that a strike on Irans nuclear facilities
would be ineffective and that an Iranian counterattack
12
would have a devastating impact on Israeli daily life
while igniting regional wars. And, wars, you know how
they start. You never know how you are ending it, he
warned.
Propaganda Machine The Israeli drumbeat to
bomb Iran played on and on. Upon his return to Israel,
Prime Minister Netanyahu, in an address to his nation,
affirmed that the US and Israel had different timetables
for dealing with the Iranian nuclear program. So the
American clock regarding preventing Iranian nucleariza-
tion is not the Israeli one. The Israeli clock works, obvi-
ously, according to a different schedule, said Netanyahu.
His determination to bomb was not a matter of if, but
when. Stopping Tehrans alleged nuclear bomb program
was not a matter of days or weeks, he warned, it is also
not a matter of years.
Months passed and bombs on Iran were not dropped,
but the we must strike Iran before they get a bomb re-
frain never let up:
London braces for Israeli strike
on Iran during 2012 Games
Olympic planning committee fears
a military showdown during the largest
sporting event in the world
Taking into account the possibility of an Israeli
attack on Iran during the 2012 Summer Games,
the Olympic committee in charge of the London
event has formed a special team to prepare for the
contingency.
According to the Hebrew daily Yedioth Ahro-
noth on Wednesday, the team consisting of poli-
ticians, diplomats, security officials and organiz-
ing committee personnel wrote in a report that
such a strike was entirely possible.
England is thought to be within the range of
Iranian missiles and UK officials believe that a
military confrontation between Jerusalem and
Tehran could involve the country against its will.
(Times of Israel, 18 July 2012)
The story line was broadened. Not only was Iran a threat
to Israel, but if Israel did strike Iran preemptively, Iran
would attack the Olympic stadium. The fear and hysteria
cards had been played. The country went on high alert.
The Times of Israel reported that elaborate contingency
plans had been put in place:
The special team listed a number of steps that
would need to be taken in the event of such a con-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 flict, among them: opening a special command cen-
ter, providing secret safe houses for foreign leaders
wishing to meet for diplomatic purposes, and pre-
paring for emergency evacuations of dignitaries.
The team said England would have to guaran-
tee the safety of the athletes and the continuation
of the Games, as well as make sure Israeli and
Iranian athletes are kept away from each other.
Anti-aircraft missile batteries ringed the city. Tens of
thousands of armed-to-the-teeth guards were at the
ready: 12,000 police officers, 17,000 military person-
nel, 7,000 private security guards, 1,000 American se-
curity personnel, and 300 MI5 agents. Warships, drones
and snipers were all in place to thwart terror. It was the
largest peacetime security operation ever launched in
Britain.
The plot thickened. Even if Israel decided not to
strike Iran during the Olympics, Israel was worried that
Iran would launch an unprovoked terror strike:
Israel warns of Iranian terrorists
attack on London Olympics
LONDON Israeli officials have warned that
an Iranian terror squad in Europe may be plan-
ning to attack its athletes at the 2012 Olympic
Games, sparking the largest security operation
in peacetime Britain, British media reported on
Sunday.
The Sunday Times reports that panic rooms
have been installed beneath the stadium as a
haven for VIPs and spectators in the event of an
attack. MI5 and New Scotland Yard are report-
edly thought to have raised their threat assess-
ment in light of the terrorist attack in Bulgaria
on Wednesday that killed 5 Israelis, the bus
driver and a suicide bomber. In addition, the
Sunday Times reports, the Israeli government
has dispatched agents from the Shin Bet and
Mossad to protect its 38-strong delegation.
The Mossad, says the Sunday Times, is
hunting a group of white Europeans who are
thought to have converted to Islam and to be
working with the Iranian Quds force and He-
zbollah, backed by Tehran. One of the Israelis
targets is thought to be a terrorist carrying a
US passport under the name of David Jefferson,
who is believed to have fled after the Burgas
attack and is thought to have another power-
ful device like that used in last weeks bomb-
ing, said the report. According to the Sunday
Times, Security experts say the Quds force - a
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
unit of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards - has
recruited a number of white European Islam-
ic converts, including two Germans, one from
Sweden and a couple of Britons. New York po-
lice believe Iranian Revolutionary Guards or
their proxies have been involved so far this year
in nine plots against Israeli or Jewish targets
around the world, according to restricted police
documents. (Online Asian Defence News, 23
July 2012)
Evil Doers Nukes or no nukes, Iran was the enemy.
No evidence needed, only accusations repeated often
enough that they were accepted as evidence. In the case of
the Burgas attack, Bulgarian officials could find no proof
of an Iranian connection. Similarly, New York police also
provided no evidence to substantiate their accusations of
Iranian plots against Jewish targets, maintaining the doc-
uments were too sensitive to reveal.
Just weeks after the games finished without incident,
target Iran was back in Israels sights:
Israel ready for 30-day war
after Iran strike: minister
JERUSALEM Israel is prepared for a 30-day war
on multiple fronts should it decide to strike Iran,
and is ready as never before for such a clash,
the outgoing home front defence minister said
Wednesday.
In an interview with the Maariv newspaper,
Matan Vilnai said Israel was ready to face the
consequences of a clash with Iran that could be
sparked if the Jewish state decides to launch a
strike against Tehrans nuclear programme.
The assessments are for a war that will last
30 days on a number of fronts, he said, repeating
the predictions of other senior Israeli officials that
the Jewish state would suffer around 500 deaths
in such a clash.
It could be that there will be less fatalities, but
it could be there will be more that is the scenario
that we are preparing for according to the best
experts.
Speculation has risen in recent weeks about
the possibility of an Israeli attack on Irans nucle-
ar programme, which the Jewish state and much
of the international community believes masks a
weapons drive.
Tehran vehemently denies those accusations,
saying the programme is for peaceful energy and
medical purposes.
13
 As the speculation
grows, observers in Is- If journalists were not Presstitutes,
rael have raised con- they would mock Vilnai for seeing no reason
cern about the countrys
for hysteria in this hellish scenario.
preparedness for war.
(Maariv, 15 August 2012)
Vilnai brushed aside these concerns, saying there was no
reason for hysteria and that Israelis had no choice but to
accept such a death toll:
Just as the citizens of Japan have to realize they can
have earthquakes, so the citizens of Israel have to realize
that if they live here, they have to be prepared to expect
missiles on the home front. Its not pleasant for the home
front, but decisions have to be made and we have to be
ready. I can say in the most authoritative manner that
the home front is ready as never before in the countrys
history.
Ah yes, He, Vilnai The Omniscient has spoken in the
most authoritative manner, thus:
n The war will last 30 days
n The Jewish state would suffer around 500 deaths
n It could be that there will be less fatalities, but it
could be there will be more.
NO SURPRISE Whether its politicians taking people to
war by promising swift victory and minimal losses or
politicians taking people to the poor house by promising
that bailouts and austerity policies will bring prosperity,
its all basically the same: Having set themselves up as
leaders and authorities that know best, they invari-
ably minimize risks, make promises they cant possibly
keep and initiate policies that invariably fail. As history
proves over and over again, either they dont know what
they are talking about, they are lying, or both. And the
consequences are invariably horrific.
KIDDIE CRAP
If there were honorable journalists, and not a corps of
subservient Presstitutes, they would rip apart Vilnai for
his arrogant and baseless assumptions and calculations.
They would expose as a fool anyone idiotically compar-
ing a Mother-Nature-made earthquake in Japan to a man-
made Israeli provocation that would bring missiles raining
down on the home front while brushing the resulting
devastation off as a not pleasant consequence.
If journalists were not Presstitutes, they would mock
Vilnai for seeing no reason for hysteria in this hell-
ish scenario. They would describe him as deranged for
14
his willingness to start a
war because decisions had
to made, one which in this
case, was strongly opposed by
the Israeli public.
And, if journalists were
not Presstitutes, they would
ridicule Vilnai and his best experts for making un-
substantiated estimates of the Israeli death toll and the
destruction that would be wrought by an Iranian coun-
terattack.
Irans best experts saw it very differently:
Iran Response Huge If Targeted
by Israel, Hezbollah Says
Irans response to an attack by Israel would be
huge, Hezbollahs Secretary-General Hassan
Nasrallah said, reacting to warnings by Israeli
leaders that time is running out for a diplomatic
solution to the Islamic Republics atomic work.
A strike by Israel would give Iran the golden
opportunity it has been seeking for years, Nas-
rallah said today in a speech relayed to supporters
in southern Beirut.
Israel would have attacked Irans nuclear facili-
ties a long time ago had the Persian Gulf country
been weak, Nasrallah told supporters marking
Quds Day, or Jerusalem Day.
Iran is powerful and courageous, Nasrallah
said, adding that he and the Israelis know Irans
response to any assault would be huge and light-
ning. (Bloomberg, 17 August 2012)
Tumour of Israel will soon
be destroyed: Ahmadinejad
TEHRAN Iranian President Mahmoud Ahma-
dinejad told an annual anti-Israel protest in Teh-
ran on Friday that the Jewish state was a cancer-
ous tumour that will soon be excised, drawing
Western rebukes.
The Zionist regime and the Zionists are a
cancerous tumour, he said.
The nations of the region will soon finish
off the usurper Zionists in the Palestinian land
A new Middle East will definitely be formed.
With the grace of God and help of the nations, in
the new Middle East there will be no trace of the
Americans and Zionists, he said.
The diatribe took place amid heightened ten-
sions between Israel and Iran over Tehrans con-
troversial nuclear programme.
The Jewish state has in recent weeks intensi-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 fied its threats to possibly bomb Irans nuclear fa-
cilities to prevent it having the capability to pro-
duce atomic weapons.
Its military has warned it will destroy Israel if
it attacks.
They (the Israelis) know very well they dont
have the ability to successfully attack Iran, for-
eign ministry spokesman Ramin Mehmanparast
was quoted as saying by the ISNA news agency.
If they make a mistake, our nations reaction
will lead to the end of the Zionist regime, he said.
US National Security Council spokesman Tom-
my Vietor told AFP that Ahmadinejads comments
were hateful and divisive.
We strongly condemn the latest series of offen-
sive and reprehensible comments by senior Iranian
officials that are aimed at Israel, Vietor said.
The entire international community should
condemn this hateful and divisive rhetoric.
French deputy foreign ministry spokesman Vin-
cent Floreani hit out at the latest provocations
from the Iranian president.
We firmly condemn these outrageous and to-
tally unacceptable statements and we remind (Iran)
that we would never allow the right of Israel to live
in peace to be called into question, he said. (AFP,
17 August 2012)
Iran War, Israel War? Only time would tell.
The one thing that time would not have to wait to tell was
that the propaganda war had long been underway and was
being waged relentlessly.
When Israeli leaders threatened to bomb Iran, the
Western media did not apply a pejorative label to either
the tone or the substance of the threat since it was ac-
cepted as a given that Israel had the supreme right to
defend itself. But when Iran, which was being threat-
ened with a massive, unprovoked attack, denounced
Israel, the Presstitutes disparaged it as a diatribe,
and provided one-sided commentary from a variety of
Israeli supporters while providing no counterbalance
from Iranian allies. Ahmedinejads rhetoric was: hate-
ful, divisive, offensive, reprehensible, and his series of sophisticated viruses apparently designed
latest provocations were outrageous and totally
unacceptable.
Yet, when Israel responded that it was prepared to
attack Iran, while using the upcoming US Presidential
elections as a tool to force the Obama Administration
into supporting the attack, there was no outcry calling
the Israeli threat: hateful, divisive, offensive, rep- is still pursuing nuclear weapons, Prime Minister
rehensible, outrageous and totally unacceptable:
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Israel planning to attack Iran
before U.S. election: PM could order strike
on nuclear targets within weeks
Israel is planning a military strike against Irans
nuclear programme before November, security
sources in Israel have claimed.
Alon Ben-David, the well-informed military
correspondent for Israels Channel 10 News,
claimed on Monday that the country was closer
than ever to a strike against Iran.
He said Mr. Netanyahu was determined to at-
tack Iran before the US election on November 6
just 11 weeks away.
Israeli leaders believe that President Obama,
locked in a close election battle with Republican
Mitt Romney, would be forced to back an Israeli
strike even though US military chiefs are against
it for fear of alienating Jewish voters in key swing
states such as Florida.
Mr. Netanyahu has described the Islamist coun-
trys nuclear ambitions as an existential threat
that could be used to destroy the Jewish state.
But British and American security chiefs be-
lieve military action would spark a lethal Middle
East conflict. Last week, US defence secretary
Leon Panetta and the chairman of the US Joint
Chiefs of Staff, Martin Dempsey, held an unprec-
edented briefing at the Pentagon to warn against
an Israeli strike.
Even senior Israeli defence and intelligence
figures, including the recently-retired head of the
Mossad spy agency, have opposed an Israeli attack.
Military analysts have warned that, without US
bunker-busting bombs and other vital armaments,
Israel cannot destroy Irans well-defended nuclear
installations.
But Mr. Netanyahu appears determined to strike.
From the prime ministers point of view, the time
for action is getting ever closer, Ben-David said.
Behind the scenes, a shadow intelligence war
appears to be escalating. Key Iranian nuclear sci-
entists have been assassinated or disappeared and
Irans computer networks have been infiltrated by a
to sabotage control systems at its nuclear research
facilities. (Daily Mail, 21 August 2012)
Netanyahu: Iran is accelerating
progress toward nuclear weapons
Information revealed this week proves that Iran
Benjamin Netanyahu told visiting U.S. congress-
15
 TREND LESSON

The News Behind the News

Our analysis of the Daily Mail story Israel planning to attack Iran before U.S. election shines a very different light upon
what, at first glance, appears to be little more than the news of the day, the latest in an ongoing series: Will Israel attack
Iran? When will they attack? and If they attack, what will happen?
However, to more accurately describe what Netanyahu wanted and what it would mean, the Daily Mail headline should
have read:

Presidency of United States Held Hostage.

Israel Prime Minister Demands Ransom: Will Obama Pay?

Seemingly innocuous and even-handed as the Daily Mail story is, as with so many other mainstream reports, it provides yet
another instance of journalistic bias.
The evidence resides in the language. In the Western media, virtually all stories concerning Americas staunch ally Israel,
regardless of the issue (seizing Palestinian land to build further illegal housing developments, extra-judicial assassinations,
attacks upon unarmed civilians) are couched in non-judgmental, non-inflammatory language.
But in virtually all stories concerning Americas sworn enemy Iran, a totally different order of language is employed.
When Netanyahu wants to hold America hostage, its just Bibi being Bibi. But if the same language that was applied to
Ahmedinejad talking about retaliation to an Israeli strike were applied to Benjamin Netanyahu, Bibis true nature would
stand revealed: reprehensible, outrageous, totally unacceptable, a diatribe from a raving, scheming, paranoid
psychopath.
ONLY IN AMERICA
It was a curious fact that the American press and American politicians were routinely more pro-Israel than the Israeli press
and politicians. As the to bomb, or not to bomb Iran debate heated up in Israel, Shaul Mofaz, chairman of the opposition
Kadima Party ridiculed the Prime Ministers style of government, calling it Bibi-land Netanyahus land of wonders, a cut-
off kingdom that is all illusion, complete with a fraudulent leadership.
He also accused Netanyahu of using the Iranian issue to divert attention from Israels domestic problems, saying the
premier was planning distractions far from Israels borders.
Cries are heard from afar. Motivation is high. Scare tactics are used. And the strategy is clear: If we die of fear, we wont
die of hunger, Mofaz added.
The lesson within the Trend Lesson: Watch, read and listen to as many sources from as many different points of view as
possible, both domestic and foreign, on any issue with geo-political, economic and military consequences. This, of course,
means going beyond mainstream and even alternative media for specialized research and analysis on the given topic.
As demonstrated in the story above, there is a stark difference in how Netanyahus war talk is reported in Israel as com-
pared to the United States. If you received information only from US media, you would not realize how contentious the issue
was in Israel itself. o

man Rep. Mike Rogers on Friday.
Citing sources, Reuters reported on Thursday
that Iran is continuing to install many more ura-
nium enrichment centrifuges in its Fordo facility,
which is buried deep inside a mountain, in order
to protect it from a military strike. One source
suggested Iran had already installed hundreds of
enrichment machines.
Meeting in Jerusalem, Netanyahu told Rogers,
who is the chairman of the House Intelligence
Committee, that the report was additional proof
that Iran is continuing its accelerated progress to
obtain nuclear weapons, while completely ignor-
ing international demands.
Iran is using the Fordo facility, near the holy
city of Qom, to enrich uranium to a fissile concen-
tration of 20 percent. The West fears Irans actions
are aimed at paving a way for the manufacturing
of nuclear bombs. (Haaretz, 24 August 2012)
Apocalypse Now or Later? Could this be?
Was Israels Prime Minister going to use the presidential
election as a cover to attack Iran, and in so doing, coerce
Obama into dragging America into war? Considering Alon
Ben-Davids inside access to Israels military high com-
mand, was there any reason to challenge his veracity? Or
could he be acting on behalf of Netanyahu and/or the
military by sending up a trial balloon to gauge US and
international reaction?
Here was Israel, a diminutive nation (bigger than New
Jersey but smaller than Massachusetts) financially and

16 The Trends Journal Autumn 2012

economically inconsequential, but capable of holding
mighty America hostage. In a Presidential race that began
18 months prior to Election Day and in which billions of
campaign dollars would be spent to win over swing voters
(the undecideds) in a few crucial states, could Benjamin
Netanyahu prove to hold the balance of power to deter-
mine who would win in November?
And, according to the Daily Mail story, one crucial
swing state targeted by Netanyahu was Florida, with its
large, elderly and unconditionally pro-Israel Jewish pop-
ulation.
In 2008, Barack Obama beat John McCain in Florida
by 2.8 percent, but received around 75 to 78 percent of the
Jewish vote. Obama scored a greater share of Jewish votes
than John Kerry did in 2004 and nearly equaled Al Gores
numbers in 2000, when Gore ran with Joseph Lieberman,
an Orthodox Jew.
But in late August 2012, Florida polls showed Obama
with a statistically insignificant one point lead over Rom-
ney. With Romney outpolling Obama among seniors,
many of whom have watched their home equity evapo-
rate and retirement funds dissolve, the President faced an
uphill battle in trying to win them over. Under these cir-
cumstances, maintaining or even increasing the Jew-
ish majority became an even more critical element in the
election.
HOLD OR FOLD
If Netanyahu made good on his threat, was Barack Obama
prepared to sacrifice his re-election and listen to the US mili-
tary, which publicly opposed an Israeli attack upon Iran?
Would Obama pay heed to the gamut of Israeli military,
security and intelligence sources who warned that the war
against Iran would prove hugely destructive for Israel as
well, would not permanently destroy Irans nuclear capa-
bilities and would lead to a massive regional war through-
out the Middle East?
While the Netanyahu power play to gain American
support for a possible attack on Iran before the Novem-
ber election was being reported, the extent, consequences
and even the legality of Israels direct influence on the US
Presidential campaign were not being considered by the
press in America. But it was in Israel:
Mofaz demands clarifications
from Netanyahu over his intention to
lead Israel to war with Iran
Israels opposition head Shaul Mofaz sent Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu a letter on Monday
demanding an urgent meeting on the Iranian is-
sue. I ask that this meeting be convened with-
out delay, and address your intention to lead Is-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
rael to war, Mofaz wrote. According to law, the
prime minister must brief the opposition head on
a monthly basis.
Mofaz attached a classified document, copies of
which were also sent to the defense minister, At-
torney General Yehuda Weinstein and the chair-
man of the Knessets Foreign Affairs and Defense
Committee. According to Army Radio, the at-
tached document included a number of questions
concerning Israels preparedness for a war with
Iran and relations with the U.S.
The Kadima chairman added that an Israeli at-
tack on Irans nuclear facilities would only achieve
limited results, alongside loss of life, grave dam-
age to the home front and deep erosion of Israels
political situation such action is immoral and
operationally illogical under the circumstances.
In his letter, Mofaz also criticized Netanyahu
for his handling of relations with the U.S. What
is the real goal behind widening the rift with the
U.S.? he asked. Administration officials have
clearly illustrated to you, to the defense minister
and to the undersigned the dramatic ramifications
of an Israeli operation, which would [constitute]
a blunt and illegitimate intervention in internal
U.S. political processes in the run-up to the presi-
dential election in November this year. (Haaretz,
20 August 2012)
It could not have been clearer. This was not a false ac-
cusation being made by an anti-Semite intent upon poi-
soning US/Israeli relations. Rather, it was a warning
from the leader of Israels Kadima party that there was
a blunt and illegitimate intervention [by the Israeli
Prime Minister] in internal U.S. political processes in
the run-up to the presidential election in November
this year.
But over and above the complex political machinations,
one thing was certain: Romney had to win the Jewish vote
to win the White House and to win the White House, he
had to win Florida:
Florida crucial to Romney;
clincher for Obama
WASHINGTON For Mitt Romney and the Re-
publicans, Florida is a must-win, the indispens-
able make-or-break prize they must capture on
Election Day to regain the White House.
For President Barack Obama, Florida is the
potential clincher, the knock-out punch, the big
boost he may not need in terms of Electoral Col-
lege votes but would love to have to ease his path
17
 to a second term and strengthen his mandate to
govern. (Sun Sentinel, 26 August 2012)
Or, would Obama make good on his promise to AIPAC
and join an Israeli preemptive strike to prevent Iran
from obtaining a nuclear weapon, and not hesitate to
use force?
A JACKASS BY ANY OTHER NAME
If the stubborn Democratic donkey couldnt be led by the
Israeli government, would the Republican circus elephant
perform its tricks? In late July, with his campaign in stall
mode, Mitt Romney took it overseas to England, Israel and
Poland to showcase his foreign policy skills and presidential
potential.
The Romney road show bombed big on its first stop.
Upon arrival in London, the presidential challenger wast-
ed no time in alienating and insulting his hosts:
Mitt Romney visits London
while stumbling on almost every front
The Obama campaign could scarcely have thought
of a better outcome for Mitt Romneys first UK visit
as presumptive nominee
If Barack Obama were dreaming up the ideal
start to Mitt Romneys first overseas visit as the
presumptive Republican nominee, the president
might wonder whether his rival could offend the
USs historic transatlantic ally.
That would obviously be rejected as impossibly
ambitious, so the president might then ask him-
self whether Romney would fail to remember the
name of one of his hosts in London.
To the undoubted joy of the White House,
Romney stumbled on all those fronts in London
on Thursday, the first day of his visit to three of
the USs closest allies - Britain, Israel and Poland.
Downing Street, which had gone to great
lengths to give Romney the red carpet treatment
without breaching strict protocol rules, was as-
tonished when he questioned whether London
was capable of running a successful Olympics. In
an interview with NBC after his arrival in Lon-
don, Romney said it was disconcerting that the
Olympics organizers had encountered difficulties
over security. One Whitehall source described
Romneys remarks as a total shocker that had
rendered officials speechless.
David Cameron wasted no time in delivering
18
a carefully calibrated put down. During a visit to
the Olympic Park, the prime minister said Britain
was delivering the games in a bustling city. Of
course its easier if you hold an Olympic Games in
the middle of nowhere, the prime minister said
in a none too subtle reference to the 2002 Salt
Lake City games famously rescued by Romney.
(The Guardian, 26 July 2012)
On his Israel leg of the trip, Romney once again stepped
on his tongue:
Mitt Romneys insult-the-world tour
excels in picking on the Palestinians
In his enthusiasm to attract Jewish donors,
Romney fails to acknowledge Israels iron grip
on Palestinian economic hopes
Mitt Romney isnt on an ordinary world tour. Hes
on an insult-the-world tour, during which hes
constantly trying to outdo his previous personal
best. How else to explain the Republican presi-
dential candidates horribly offensive comments
about Palestinians during his recent trip to Jeru-
salem, so soon after the clunking insults leveled
at his British hosts in London last week?
Over a 16,000-a-plate campaign fundraiser
breakfast with Jewish donors in Jerusalem, Rom-
ney aired his deep thoughts on the dramatic,
stark difference in economic vitality between
the Palestinian and Israeli economies. These
thoughts were obtained by reading books, he pre-
fixed, before surmising that Israeli accomplish-
ments were down to at least culture and a few
other things oh, and also, the hand of provi-
dence. So Romney thinks that Palestinians are
screwed because Israelis have a better culture and
a better god. Its a shame he didnt add something
about bad karma and the Palestinians not doing
their positive affirmations properly.
The presidential hopeful doubtless believes
this standard-issue, superiority-complex racism
and that its what his donors want to hear. Romney
was, after all, only in Jerusalem to assure right-
wing Israelis that he is an even bigger fan of their
peace-quashing ways than President Obama. Sit-
ting next to the Republican candidate at that Is-
raeli hotel breakfast was American casino-billion-
aire Sheldon Adelson, who bankrolled Romneys
visit and has indicated his readiness to part with
$100m (63.5m) for the Romney campaign.
Adelson thinks that the Palestinians are an
invented people, supports Israeli hard-right
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 prime minister Benjamin The report also says the
Netanyahu and vigorously coastal aquifer, the terri-
opposes a two-state solu- torys only natural source
tion, so we can presume of fresh water, may become
that Romneys remarks unusable by 2016.
were designed to help him Disconnected territory
reach for his wallet. UN officials point to the
Palestinians have, quite difficulty of improving the
naturally, responded with situation given the closure
outrage at Romneys re- of the Gaza Strip, violent
marks. The statement re- conflict, and the pressing
flects a clear racist spirit, need for Palestinian recon-
said Palestinian labour min- ciliation.
ister Ahmed Majdalani. If An urban area can-
Romney came here to rally not survive without being
Israeli and Jewish support connected, said Maxwell
in the US election, he can Gaylard, the UN Resident

Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger

do that without insulting the
Palestinian people. (The
Guardian, 31 July 2012)
While his host (and former
Boston Consulting Group col-
league) Netanyahu may have
considered the insult to Pales-
tinians as a compliment to Israel, the entire Arab world
and a good portion of the rest of the world found these
remarks stupid, insensitive and inflammatory.
The culture disparity could hardly be ascribed to in-
ferior Palestinian DNA:
Gaza will not be livable by 2020 - UN report
The Gaza Strip will not be a livable place by
2020 unless action is taken to improve basic ser-
vices in the territory, according to a UN report.
Basic infrastructure is struggling to keep pace
with a growing population, the UN Country Team
(UNCT) in the occupied Palestinian territory said.
It estimates Gazas population will rise from
1.6m to 2.1m by 2020.
Israel imposed a blockade on Gaza after the
Islamist movement Hamas seized power in the
coastal territory in 2007.
Israel says the restrictions are necessary to pre-
vent weapons reaching Hamas. Palestinians and
human rights group denounce them as collective
punishment.
The UN report, Gaza in 2020: A livable
place?, estimates the territory will need double
the number of schools and 800 more hospital beds
by 2020, and says it is already suffering from a
housing shortage.
and Humanitarian Co-or-
dinator.
Gaza has no air or sea
ports, and the economy is
heavily dependent on out-
side funding and smug-
gling through tunnels un-
der the Egyptian border.
Even though Gaza has experienced some eco-
nomic growth in recent years, the report says it
does not seem to be sustainable and finds that
Gazans are worse off now than in the 1990s.
Unemployment was at 29% in 2011 and has
risen since then, particularly affecting women and
young people. (BBC, 27 August 2012)
Missionary Mitt The former Mormon missionary
was on a mission. For Romney to win the US election he
had to win over the Jewish vote to win in the swing states,
especially Florida. And to help him win the Jewish vote,
multi-millionaire Romney was performing his circus act
in front of some of the richest people in the world, many
of them US citizens who had come to Jerusalem especially
to participate in the $50,000-per-couple breakfast fund-
raiser.
The breakfast fund-raiser featured billionaires such as
vulture capitalist Paul Singer; John Miller, CEO of Na-
tional Beef Packing; and the aforementioned casino mag-
nate Sheldon Adelson (estimated personal wealth $25
billion). And there was Mormonizing Mitt, going for the
Adelson gambling gelt even though:
The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints is
opposed to gambling, including lotteries sponsored by

The Trends Journal Autumn 2012 19

 governments. Church leaders have encouraged Church
members to join with others in opposing the legaliza-
tion and government sponsorship of any form of gam-
bling. (From The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day
Saints website)
Trends Analysis : With the Republican Party platform
largely built upon moral issues, there was no big issue
being made in the media of Romneys eagerness to take
campaign money from the worlds richest gambling en-
abler. Drug money, gambling money, brothel money in
politics money is money and whoever gives the most gets
the most.
Thus, when it concerned Israel, wealthy Jewish donors
lavished millions in campaign contributions on both Re-
publican and Democratic candidates. This isnt specula-
tion or insinuation, nor anti-Semitism: It was openly ac-
knowledged.
Israeli billionaire and media mogul Haim Saban, who
has reportedly contributed tens of millions to both parties,
was, according to The New York Times perhaps the
most politically connected mogul in Hollywood, throwing
his weight and money around Washington, and increas-
ingly, the world, trying to influence all things Israeli. Im
a one-issue guy and my issue is Israel, he said.
The Jewish influence on American politics has been
acknowledged by both Jewish and non-Jewish media.
Back in 2000, The Jerusalem Post wrote that Jewish in-
fluence is far disproportionate to the size of the com-
munity, Jewish leaders and US officials acknowledge. But
so is the amount of money they contribute to [election]
campaigns. One member of the influential Conference
of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations
estimated Jews alone had contributed 50 percent of the
funds for [President Bill] Clintons 1996 re-election cam-
paign. (The Jerusalem Post, 2 April 2000)
The Third Act With two months left to decide on
the winner of The Presidential Reality Show, there was a
lull in the action. Campaign 2012 had become one long
series of attack ads, as each side spent hundreds of mil-
lions to discredit the other. With both parties zeroing in
on jobs, abortion rights, same sex marriage, Medicare/
Medicaid, immigration and family values, foreign policy
issues were not hot button issues.
The only new excitement from the Republican side was
Mitt Romneys selection of Wisconsin Congressman Paul
Ryan as his running mate.
With grand fanfare, on Saturday August 11th, the stag-
nant campaign put on a grand spectacle for the official
announcement.
20
In keeping with the tradition of The Presidential Real-
ity Show, the stage had been carefully chosen to capture
the trite, sophomoric superficiality of the campaign and
the campaigners.
In the heat of summer, on a Saturday morning (the least-
watched news day of the week), at 9 a.m. ET, with most of
the nation still asleep, the flags waved, the music boomed,
and the crowd roared as candidate Romney bounded down
the stairs of the battleship Wisconsin onto the red-white-
and-blue stage to introduce the man of the hour.
The symbolism aptly reflected not only the level of in-
tellect but the true heart and soul of Campaign 2012. Here
they were, the two tough guys, neither of whom had ever
worn a military uniform, pretending to be warriors against
the steely backdrop of the mothballed man o war.
Political Whores Mitt Missionary Romney, who
was prime draft bait during the Vietnam War, dodged the
draft to serve as a Mormon missionary in Catholic, wine-
drinking, caffeine-addicted, cigarette-smoking, Bridget-
Bardot-loving France.
Enter Paul Altar Boy Ryan. Goody two-shoes. Class
president. Prom king. The student voted by his high
school classmates Brown-Noser of the Year who, like
Romney, was born on Easy Street but pretends hes just
one of the guys.
Team Romney ran on a fiscal platform that demanded
the harshest of sacrifices from the people least able to sac-
rifice, while pruning tax rates for the biggest corporations
and richest individuals. On the perennially key social is-
sue of abortion Ryan was equally harsh, calling for abor-
tion to be outlawed, even in cases of rape and incest.
Missionary had several positions on the matter,
changing depending on what office he was seeking. When
he ran for Governor of pro-choice Massachusetts in 2002,
he declared: I will preserve and protect a womans right
to choose that a woman should have the right to make
her own choices whether or not to have an abortion.
Then, when seeking the Republican candidacy for
president in 2004, he changed his position: In my view
we are wrong to accept abortion other than in cases of
rape and incest.
Thus, under the newly revised Mitt doctrine, only if a
woman is impregnated by a rapist, or by some testoster-
one-raging family member, or when a womans life is at
risk, was an abortion permissible.
However, should young kids or couples who did not
necessarily love each other do what a lot of people like to
do, and she gets pregnant, well, thats just too bad. Rich,
poor, kids, adults, jobless or homeless, you had sex and
now you must have the baby!
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 Why? Because thats what Presidential candidate Mitt
now believes and as President Mitt he promises that youll
be forced to do as he says.
POLITICAL SLIME
And in keeping with the time-honored political practice
of saying what you need to say to get elected, changing
position when politically expedient and then lying about
what you said you would do and what you actually did,
Mitt chose a running mate who would live up to those
standards.
Vice Presidential selection Paul Ryan, with his fervent
championing of a no-abortion-under-any-circumstances
position, did what was politically correct: He immedi-
ately changed his position to accommodate his running
mates changed position. When asked by reporters to ex-
plain how, after years of being on record for his hard-
line anti-abortion beliefs, he could abandon them, Ryan
responded: Look, Im proud of my record, Im proud of
my record, Mitt Romney is going to be president and the
president sets policy.
Thus, if the vice presidential candidate, a declared
devout Catholic and former altar boy, alters his steadfast
principles to comply with the president, and stops believ-
ing in what he professed to believe, it was implicit that the
general public was expected to comply as well. Explicitly,
devoutly expressed principles dont count in America
the land of freedom, liberty and democracy. Policy counts
and the president sets policy. Behave or Beware!
Publishers Note: Following Ryans selection as Romneys
running mate, inconsistencies between what he said and
did arose. From claiming to support smaller government,
but actually voting for billions in bank bailouts and cor-
porate subsidies, and then accepting stimulus money, to
claiming to have run a marathon an hour faster than he
really did, Ryans political performance was near perfect:
Lies, dishonesty and deception.
Trends Analysis: On the issue of lies, Republican and
Democrat politicians were joined in a rare instance of true
bipartisanship: No lie was too big or too small to tell as
long as it advanced agendas or produced desired results.
For his part, President Barack backtrack Obama
boasted about his own enviable track record of big lies
and empty promises. From promising to take no money
from special interests and lobbyists but taking millions
to cleansing Washington of insiders while staffing his
Administration with nothing but insiders; from vowing
government transparency but operating in impenetrable
secrecy; from promising to close the Guantanamo prison
camp within a year to letting it stand while adding war-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
rantless wiretapping, a renewed and reinforced Patriot Act,
overseas renditions, kill lists and targeted assassinations
to his vision of human rights the litany of Obamas lies
and deception goes on.
Only in politics, where lies are renamed misspeaking
and soft-pedaled as mere flip flops, is such behavior tol-
erated and accepted.
In everyday life in relationships, friendships, partner-
ships, business, social intercourse where lies are lies,
hypocrisy is hypocrisy and cheating is cheating no one
is allowed to get away with it with impunity.
THE PRESIDENTIAL REALITY SHOW
Instead of the public being outraged and/or disgusted,
when it comes to politics, entire societies suspend their
critical faculties and the sense of right-and-wrong theyve
been taught since childhood.
The 2012 Republican and Democratic Conventions are
exemplars of this bizarre abdication of the human spirit:
each party spends several days and tens of millions of tax-
payer dollars to stage a made-for-TV spectacle showcasing
a steady stream of carefully scripted political character ac-
tors orating from teleprompters before a wildly applauding
cast of thousands.
They were all there: The rabbis, priests, and ministers;
the maimed veterans who didnt regret having sacrificed
limbs to make America safe for democracy. And to pull
in the Hispanic vote there were the baby-faced, perfectly
groomed, shiny new Latino stars coached to read their
carefully scripted speeches with true teleprompted passion,
pausing, smiling and choking up on cue, in anticipation of
the crowds response to the predictable applause lines.
And then there was the masterful camera work, pan-
ning over the convention hall to capture the seemingly
spontaneous, but actually scripted reactions designed to
21

Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
affirm successive highlights of the speech. The close-ups
of heads nodding in agreement, the physical validation of
the speakers vacuous, fatuous rhetoric. For Obama, they
were all there: the aging VFW member with a cap on his
head and a flag in his hand, the full spectrum of minori-
ties, the moms with kids on their laps, the union workers,
American Indians in traditional dress, and even a couple
of Arabs for Obama.
Republican or Democrat, a rainbow coalition of work-
ing class, middle class, upper class rose, clapped and
barked on cue like trained seals.
And on stage, in their designer dresses and Brooks
Brothers suits, perfectly coiffed and excessively Botoxed,
were the party hacks.
OH, THEM!
These were the same people you hated in high school and
college, the suck-ups who campaigned tirelessly for class
president or head of the student council, the insincere
glad-handers, back-slappers, suck-ups and brown-nosers.
Having never wavered from their career paths, the most
ambitious of them had successfully glad-handed, back-
slapped, sucked up and brown nosed their way onto the
plastically patriotic red, white and blue convention stage.
Each speaker had a mission: to discredit the other
party and its candidate. They vied with each other over
22
who could express the most heart-wrenching tale of the
difficulties and endless hardships they had to surmount
to live The American Dream.
In addresses replete with sound bites, talking-points
and every clich in the book, each speaker celebrated his
or her accomplishments, paid homage to the wonderful
families they came from who had made their success pos-
sible and declared what devoted family men and women
they all were now.
With image burnished and credentials established,
they launched into their attack.
Trends Analysis: Prior to the era of The Presidential Re-
ality Show, conventions often reflected political reality.
Prior to the 1970s they were often raucous gatherings of
delegates and party bosses wrangling, wheeling and deal-
ing over who they would select as their presidential can-
didate. The outcome was not foreordained and there was
actually some suspense to them.
However, over the subsequent decades, they have not
only lost all elements of drama and suspense, but have
devolved into tightly scripted, formulaic pep rallies, what
former TV newsman Ted Koppel has derided as more of
an infomercial than a news event.
And so today, the sole purpose of these elaborate, ex-
pensive, corny, Hollywood-style extravaganzas is to deliv-
er a political sales pitch to the American people. No lon-
ger conventions in their original form, the quadrennial
gatherings have degenerated into coronation ceremonies
crowning a pre-selected party king or queen to serve as
Pretender to The Throne.
Stand By Your Man By 2012, The Presidential
Reality Show had become a Family Affair. On the Republi-
can side, the Romneys were pitched as the most perfect, rich-
est, nicest, most caring people that ever walked the planet.
Always upbeat, never down, they were a smart, frugal, sen-
sible couple who deeply loved both God and country.
On the Democratic side, it was pretty much the same
story, except they didnt talk as much about God. But the
Obamas made up for it by being perfect poor people who
got rich through hard work.
Back in the earlier, black-and-white days of The Presi-
dential Reality Show, the good, loyal wives of the contes-
tants played a simpler auxiliary role, standing decorously
beside their man in mostly silent support. Just as the regu-
lar crop of TV reality shows present only an orchestrated
artificial reality, so in 2012, the last vestiges of any reality
were excised from The Presidential Reality Show.
As everyone knows, in real life, its virtually unheard
of for a wife to rave on about her husband the way Ann
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
and Michelle do, especially after decades of marriage. Yet
in the reality TV world of national conventions, hours of
prime time were devoted to the perfect wives extolling the
virtues of their perfect husbands.
MY GUY
Unlike TV Lands typical husband, commonly portrayed
as a slovenly, lazy, overweight, dopey, beer-drinking
couch potato who constantly screws up and couldnt sur-
vive were it not for his all-knowing, supermom wife and
their two amazing, special and utterly exceptional chil-
dren on The Presidential Reality Show, hubby was put
on the pedestal.
In the magical, mystical, supernatural world of politics,
the dim-witted jerk who can barely tie his shoes, boil water
or screw in a light bulb is transformed into a shining ex-
ample of the greatest, smartest, bestest husband and daddy
that any woman could ever hope to be impregnated by.
He is the all-inclusive, all-around man who rides a
horse, pets dogs, plays basketball, shoots pool, does push-
ups, (hardly ever burps, never farts), fixes the kids bikes
and goes over the river and through the woods to grand-
mas house for Christmas dinner. No doors slammed,
dishes thrown, nor voices raised in the perfect households
of the perfect people.
Above all, this prince of a man loves his kids and fam-
ily and is therefore qualified to stand at the helm of the
worlds last remaining, though swiftly declining, econom-
ic and military superpower.
The Grand Manipulation Part Super Bowl
halftime show, part mega-church revival meeting, the
conventions are as fictional as anything coming out of
Hollywood. Yet millions of red, white and blue Americans
sit through these well-rehearsed, elaborate charades and
take them at face value, while a gaggle of political pundits
provide long-winded commentary on the actors perfor-
mances, as though they reflected reality rather than role
playing.
Had The Presidential Reality Show been only a Hol-
lywood production, it could have been written off as en-
tertainment and it would have been a comedy, had it not
been so tragic. Here were two men auditioning before the
nation for the job of decider and Commander-in-Chief,
being introduced and spoken for by their wives and with
their kids in tow.
STRANGE BREED
In the real world, who would take their wife and kids
along when applying for a top executive job or any job
and expect to be taken seriously?
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Fiscal policy, national defense, social issues, geopoli-
tics, the environment, effectively carrying out the over-
whelming responsibilities attached to the American presi-
dential office (or any nations top office) has nothing to do
with who your daddy was, what your momma did, where
your kids go to school and in fact, whether or not you have
a family at all.
Running a country is not a family affair, yet, in the
2012 Presidential Reality Show, such irrelevancies were
treated as top qualifications for the job. And neither the
public nor the pundits questioned the stupidity of it all.
Who cares about whether their doctor or dentist has a
family life or even a family? Does anyone ask the captain
of the cruise ship how many kids he has? Is it important
to know whats going on between your car mechanic and
his wife?
It was a grand manipulation, a ploy designed to distract
the public from the unworthiness and incompetence of
two mediocre men: Obama with his track record of broken
promises and failed policies and Romney with his reputa-
tion as a ruthless corporate vulture flip-flopper both of
them buried beneath a deluge of sentimental slop.
It was The Presidential Reality Show. But while the
media and pundits panned the contestants performances
as weak on substance and vague on solutions, they werent
calling it what it was: a multimillion dollar cheap act.
Barack Obamas uninspiring speech
It was his uplifting convention speech in Boston
in 2004 that shot Barack Obama to stardom
The US president did offer some trademark flour-
ishes. But they could not make up for the lack of
new substance. Following Mitt Romneys largely
content-free address in Tampa last week, Mr.
Obama had an opportunity to show up his oppo-
nent. As it is, both emerge from convention season
with question marks over their campaigns. (FT, 8
September 2012)
Of course there was lack of new substance in Obamas
speech, because after three and half years in office his
track record proved him to be a man of no substance.
And anyone taking the time to review the dozens of Re-
publican debates leading up to the convention will hear
nothing but an unremitting barrage of Romney attacks
upon the Presidents performance, while he offered con-
tent free solutions of his own.
No, the question marks were not over their cam-
paigns. The question marks hovered over the capabilities
of the contestants. But the media were too gutless, too
stupid or too partisan to call the charade a charade or a
spade a spade.
23
ITS NOT THE ECONOMY, STUPID
Unlike 2008, when the crisis-stricken economy dominated
the presidential race, in 2012, even though money and jobs
were prominently on the minds of the American public,
they were often overshadowed by other news or candidate
gaffes, and polls showed it.
The race, which had been a dead heat prior to the
conventions, widened to a five-point Obama advantage,
despite the gloomy economic news that broke just hours
after the Presidents convention speech:
Obama Momentum Slowed by
Jobs Report That May Spur Stimulus
President Barack Obama, a day after getting his
highest approval rating in more than a year, was
confronted by a worse-than-expected slowdown in
the job market that threatened to undercut enthu-
siasm for his re-election.
About 12 hours after Obama took the stage at
the Democratic National Convention in Charlotte,
North Carolina, to accept the partys nomination
for a second term as president, Republican nomi-
nee Mitt Romney seized on the labor data, under-
lining the challenge the economy presents for the
administration.
Yesterdays U.S. Labor Department report
drove the political debate as both candidates
campaigned in the swing states of Iowa and New
Hampshire. The figures showed the economy
added 96,000 jobs in August, down from a revised
gain of 141,000 in July and fewer than forecast.
While the unemployment rate fell to 8.1 per-
cent from 8.3 percent in July, the report showed
368,000 Americans left the job market and the
share of the working-age population in the labor
force slumped to 63.5 percent, the lowest since
1981. (Bloomberg, 8 September 2012)
By all measures, the fundamentals of the economy were
not sound. When analyzed in depth by Dr. Paul Craig
Roberts, Assistant Treasury Secretary during the Reagan
administration, the job numbers revealed a United States
rotting out at its core:
Spinning Bad Financial
News Into Good
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
Fridays payroll jobs report says that 96,000 new jobs were
created in August and that the unemployment rate, known
as the U.3, fell from 8.3 percent to 8.1 percent. As 96,000
24
new jobs are not enough to keep up with population
growth [150,000 per month is needed], the decline in the
U.3 unemployment rate was caused by 368,000 discour-
aged job seekers giving up on finding employment and
dropping out of the work force.
Discouraged workers are not included in the U.3 mea-
sure of unemployment, which makes the measure useless.
The only purpose of the U.3 is to keep bad news out of the
news. The U.3 unemployment rate only measures those
who have not been discouraged by the inability to find a
job and are still actively seeking employment.
The government produces another unemployment
measure, the U.6, which includes people who have been
discouraged by the inability to find a job and have been
out of the work force for less than a year. This measure of
unemployment is 14.7 percent, a number that would get
plenty of media attention if reported.
When the long-term (more than one year) discouraged
workers are included, the US unemployment rate is about
22 percent. In other words, the real US rate of unemploy-
ment is almost three times higher than the reported head-
line rate of 8.1 percent.
What is the purpose of reporting an unemployment
rate that is about one-third the real unemployment rate?
The only answer is deception through Happy News.
MORE THAN MEETS THE EYE
Lets have a look at those 96,000 jobs. What kind of high-
tech, high-income super jobs is the worlds only superpow-
er, the indispensable nation, the worlds greatest economy
and capitalist heaven creating? The answer is lowly paid
Third World jobs, which is why there is not and cannot be
an economic recovery. All the good jobs have been moved
offshore in order to maximize the incomes of the rich.
According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS),
28,300 of the 96,000 jobs, or 29 percent, are waitresses
and bartenders.
Health care and social services, primarily ambulatory
health care services and home health care services, pro-
vided 21,700 jobs or 22.6 percent of the jobs.
So, 52 percent of the new jobs created by the American
superpower are lowly paid waitresses, bartenders, practi-
cal nurses, and hospital orderlies.
Highly paid manufacturing jobs declined by 15,000.
The incomes lost by these jobs most likely exceed the in-
come gains from the waitresses, bartenders, and hospital
orderlies jobs.
Where did the other 46,000 jobs come from?
Formerly, in hard times, government employment
would expand but, despite Republican propaganda, not in
todays mean times. Government (federal, state and local)
lost 7,000 jobs.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 Professional and business services gained 28,000 jobs,
primarily in computer systems design and related services
(mainly Indians on H-1B work visas) and management
and technical consulting services (mainly former corpo-
rate professional employees who now eke out a living by
consulting for their former employers, without pension or
health benefits in other words, people who are working
the same jobs for less money).
These three categories account for 81 percent of the
new jobs.
Where are the remainder?
There are a few thousand new jobs in finance and in-
surance, jobs that absorb consumer incomes but produce
no product. Telephone, cable, water, electricity, and heat-
ing produced 8,800 jobs. Transportation and warehousing
to store unsold goods produced 5,700 jobs. Retail trade,
primarily food and beverage stores (alcohol), produced
6,100 jobs.
And there you have it. The powerful American econ-
omy is an economy that cannot produce its own clothes
and shoes, or the manufactured products, including high
technology products, that it consumes, or its own energy,
all of which it imports by issuing more debt.
The great hegemonic American economy is on the
verge of total collapse because the only way it can pay for
the imports that sustain it is by issuing more debt and
printing more money. Once the debt and money creation
undermines the dollar as the worlds reserve currency, the
US will become a Third World country, much to the relief
of the rest of the world.
On September 9, Mario Draghi, the head of the Euro-
pean Central Bank, announced for propaganda purposes
that the ECB would buy up the sovereign debt of the trou-
bled EU member governments if, and only if, the assisted
member governments agreed to the conditions that would
be imposed.
In other words, Draghi told Greece, Spain and Italy,
The ECB will buy your bonds if you do what we tell you!
Draghis conditions are a combination of austerity mea-
sures and the surrender of financial sovereignty. Since
the troubled debtor countries already had that option,
Draghis scheme doesnt change anything. However, the
NY Stock Exchange used Draghis announcement to gin
up day-trading profits.
Draghi says that the money that the ECB will pour into
purchasing Greek, Italian and Spanish bonds will be off-
set by draining reserves from the European banking sys-
tem, hardly a helpful operation to stressed banks and the
European recession.
It is difficult to imagine worse news than Draghis. Yet
stock markets rose. This result is more evidence that fi-
nancial markets are not to be trusted.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
But you will never, ever, hear this fact from the finan-
cial press.
A financial system based on lies and deceptions cannot
last forever. o
Trend Forecast: The collapse should have occurred im-
mediately following the Panic of 08, an economic explo-
sion that reverberated around the world. Although the
collapse was postponed by schemes undreamed of res-
cue plans, bailouts, stimulus and rounds of quantitative
easing engineered by successive administrations and the
Federal Reserve the trillions spent, borrowed and loaned
would provide only symptom relief for what was a chronic,
degenerative economic condition.
Back then, there was no way for us to predict that Un-
cle Sam, incessantly championing himself as a capitalist,
would prove to be a closet fascist merging state and cor-
porate powers and stealing trillions of the peoples money
to bail out too-big-to-fail banks, financiers and transna-
tional businesses.
But regardless of what scams they would try and what-
ever politicians and Wall Street promised, Gerald Celente
saw through the con game and was certain that what was
being touted as recovery was, in fact, the greatest finan-
cial cover-up in history. (See Trend Alert: Celente on Rus-
sia Today Cover up, not Recovery, 15 September 2009)
LESSER OF TWO EVILS
While each of the presidential contestants whistled and
danced to a different tune, there was little to distinguish
one from the other in terms of substance.
Obama, positioning himself as a born-again populist,
took on the role of President for the People, and enemy
of big-bank oligopolies, Wall Street criminals, corporate
welfare and environmental deregulation and desecration.
And while he played the role well on-stage, off-stage
his track record included giving trillions to the big banks
with no strings attached. Under his administration, not
one White Shoe Boy the big bankers and top financiers
responsible for the massive crimes and corruption was
prosecuted. And although Obama talked a good game
about stopping illegitimate foreclosure practices and
helping people keep their homes, the facts proved he did
very little.
FRACK YOU
On the environment, his core base of eco-sensitive lib-
erals suddenly went deaf, blind and dumb when Obama
boasted in his Convention speech, Weve opened millions
25
of new acres for oil and gas exploration in the last three
years, and well open more. Was it hypocrisy that kept
them silent when Obama promised to keep investing in
clean coal (an oxymoron)? Were they so gullible and
infatuated that they really believe he could make good
on his promise that, under his watch, no major environ-
mental accidents would follow from his opening of the
pristine Arctic to oil exploration?
What was it that restrained those tree-huggers from
protesting Obamas pledge to develop a hundred-year sup-
ply of natural gas thats right beneath our feet? Did these
die-hard anti-frackers suddenly think that because it was
Obama making the promise, all that gas right beneath our
feet would miraculously waft up all by itself without hav-
ing to pump millions of tons of toxic chemicals and billions
of gallons of precious water into the earth?
Was this abandonment of principles justified by the
Presidents promise to create 600,000 new jobs in natu-
ral gas alone?
Was it a failing of the human spirit? Or was it a charac-
ter flaw that allowed otherwise sensible, intelligent peo-
ple to lend their support to Obama, whose deeds were the
antithesis of virtually everything they held sacred?
Or were they just moral cowards in deep denial, not
man nor woman enough to admit theyd been conned by
the Conmander-in-Chief?
Liberals had spent eight years bashing George W.
Bush for waging unprovoked and unjustified wars, but
gave their Nobel Peace Prize-winning President carte
blanche to continue or intensify the very worst and most
vicious of the Bush policies: the troop surge in Afghani-
stan, expanded CIA operations, extra-judicial killings of
suspected militants, escalation of drone attacks, out-
Bushing-Bush in asserting the right to kill anyone any-
where, including US citizens, without even the pretense of
judicial review. And of course, there was his Libyan War.
Whose Side is God On? While there was lit-
tle true difference between the Lesser of Two Evils, what
was presented as a defining issue separating Romney
from Obama and Republican from Democrat was God. In
this time of planet-wide economic uncertainty and global
strife, God was dragged into the campaign:
Paul Ryan Slams The Democrats
For Removal Of God And Jerusalem
From Democratic Platform
Republican Vice Presidential candidate Paul
Ryan appeared on Fox & Friends and weighed
in on the Democratic partys platform which has
removed the word God and omitted any sup-
26
port for Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. (Fox, 5
September 2012)
Not wanting to get on the wrong side of God or Israel, the
Democrats swiftly reinstated both God and Country into
their platform.
Dems Quickly Switch to Include
God, Jerusalem
Moments after convention chairman Antonio Vil-
laraigosa gaveled in day two of the Democratic
Convention, the hall burst into chaos as Demo-
crats voted to amend their partys platform to in-
clude the word God and name Jerusalem as the
capital of Israel.
An Obama campaign official said President
Obama personally requested that God be put
back into the platform. Why did they change
that? Obama said, according to the official, when
he heard the word had been removed.
The changes came after Republicans spent
the morning criticizing Democrats for removing
Jerusalem and God from their platform, which
was adopted during the start of the convention on
Tuesday. The Republican platform mentions God
12 times.
GOP presidential candidate Mitt Romney said
Wednesday that taking the word God out of
the Democratic platform proved that the party is
veering further and further away into an extreme
wing that Americans dont recognize.
Romneys vice presidential running mate, Paul
Ryan, said Wednesday that the omission of God in
the DNC platform was rather peculiar and is
not in keeping with our founding documents, our
founding vision. (ABC, 5 September 2012)
While God had made it back onto the Democratic plat-
form, in fact, He had not been included in the Constitu-
tion and was mentioned only twice in the Declaration of
Independence, which refers to the Laws of Nature and
of Natures God, and to the Creator. Other than these
two honorable mentions, God was, despite Ryans asser-
tion, not a factor in Americas founding documents or
its founding vision.
Keeping the God fires burning and playing the always-
safe God card, Romney declared I will not take God out
of the name of our platform, I will not take God off our
coins and I will not take God out of my heart. Were a na-
tion thats bestowed by God.
Publishers Note: That Gods presence or absence on a po-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012

litical platform, in a nation founded upon the sacred prin-
ciple of a separation of church and state, had become a major
campaign issue and was treated seriously by the Presstitutes,
was itself a testament to how far America had strayed from its
founding vision and how debased it had become.
What drivel. Congressman Ryan denouncing the Dem-
ocrats for not including God on their platform; President
Obama demanding that God be reinstated; and Mission-
ary Mitt with his impassioned vow to keep God in his plat-
form, on coins, and in his heart.
Was it all political posturing or did these jackasses re-
ally believe the Creator gave a good goddamn about
what they wanted or thought, or about which candidate
won or lost?
What God were they referring to? The God of the Af-
ghan, Iraq and Libyan Wars? The God of Drones? The
God of Rendition, who approves of enhanced interroga-
tion techniques? The God of Surveillance? The God of
Strip Search, who loves to watch people spread their legs
and bend over? Or the God who, rather than selling what
he possesses and giving it to the poor, parks his wealth
in Swiss bank accounts and Cayman Island tax shelters?
If that was the God they were referring to, he belonged
in their platform.
But if they were all talking about the Christian God
they profess to love and obey we (without claiming au-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
thority to speak for Jesus Christ) would humbly submit,
given His doctrine, that Hed rather hang on the cross
than stand on either of their platforms.
Back on Earth With God put in his proper place,
and Jerusalem (not Tel Aviv) officially recognized on both
platforms as the rightful capital of Israel, the Iranian nucle-
ar issue, having briefly faded from the headlines, was back
in the news by mid-September and Israel was again playing
a conspicuous role in shaping the presidential race.
In his Republican Convention speech in late August,
Mitt Romney slammed President Obama for not meeting
Israels demands for immediate action to forestall Irans
nuclear ambitions and accused him of throwing Israel
under the bus.
Every American is less secure today because he has
failed to slow Irans nuclear threat, Romney asserted.
Responding to Romneys charges, Obama, in his Con-
vention speech, reaffirmed that Americas commitment to
Israel, must not waver while warning that The Iranian
government must face a world that stays united against its
nuclear ambitions.
Impatient for immediate action, from out of the sidelines
and into the headlines, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-
tanyahu jumped into the middle of the Presidential race:
27
 Israeli Sharpens Call for
United States to Set Iran Trigger
WASHINGTON Prime Minister Benjamin Ne-
tanyahu of Israel inserted himself into the most
contentious foreign policy issue of the American
presidential campaign on Tuesday, criticizing the
Obama administration for refusing to set clear
red lines on Irans nuclear progress that would
prompt the United States
to undertake a military
strike. As a result, he said, Mr. prime minister, you want a crude,
the administration has no rude, unprecedented, reckless, and risky
moral right to restrain
Israel from taking military intervention in the US elections.
action of its own. trying to replace the Administration in
Mr. Netanyahus un-
usually harsh public com-
Washington or that in Tehran?
ments about Israels most
important ally laid bare
the tension between him and President Obama
over how to handle Iran. They also suggested that
he is willing to use the pressure of the presiden-
tial election to try to force Mr. Obama to commit
to attack Iran under certain conditions.
Mr. Netanyahu, speaking at a news conference
in Jerusalem said, Those in the international com-
munity who refuse to put red lines before Iran dont
have a moral right to place a red light before Israel.
In demanding that Mr. Obama effectively issue
an ultimatum to Iran, Mr. Netanyahu appeared to
be making maximum use of his political leverage
at a time when Mr. Obamas Republican opponent,
Mitt Romney, has sought to make an issue of what
Mr. Romney says is the administrations lack of
support for Israel.
It is not clear what level of development in Irans
nuclear program would constitute a red line in
Israeli eyes. Dore Gold, president of the Jerusalem
Center for Public Affairs, a research institute, and
a former Israeli ambassador to the United Nations,
said in an interview last week:
Mr. Netanyahu, who is highly attuned to Amer-
ican politics, seemed to be using his comments to
pressure Mr. Obama to specify at which point the
United States would be prepared to take military
action against Iran, perhaps at the United Nations
General Assembly opening this month. (NYT, 11
September 2012)
Trends Analysis: Rather than use language appropriate
to this overt attempt by a foreign power to manipulate the
outcome of Americas presidential race, the Times couched
28
its coverage in dispassionate journalese: The Israeli Prime
Minister inserted himself into the American presiden-
tial campaign.
No outrage, no indignation, that the leader of Israel was
willing to use the pressure of the presidential election to
try to force Mr. Obama to commit to attack Iran under
certain conditions. Had it been any other allied leader
trying to make maximum use of his political leverage
to dragoon America into yet
another war, it would have
set off a political and media
firestorm. Had America re-
nounced its sovereignty? Was
Who are you Israel calling the shots, or the
bombs, as the case may be?
Instead the debate, such as
it was, focused on whether or
not to support an Israeli at-
tack, rather than the condem-
nation of who the hell are they to tell the United States
of America what to do and when to do it?
While the American media and its politicians were too
timid to openly criticize Netanyahu, his inappropriate in-
trusion into the US elections was condemned in the plain-
est language by Shaul Mofaz, head of Israels Kadima party:
Mr. prime minister, you want a crude, rude, unprec-
edented, reckless, and risky intervention in the US elec-
tions. Tell us who you serve and for what? Why are
you putting your hand deep into the ballot boxes of the
American electorate? Who are you trying to replace
the Administration in Washington or that in Tehran?
(Christian Science Monitor, 5 September 2012)
And as for Netanyahus reprimand that Those in the in-
ternational community who refuse to put red lines before
Iran dont have a moral right to place a red light before
Israel it was a red herring, there was no red light.
Other than the billions it received yearly from Ameri-
can taxpayers, Israel was free to do as it pleased. What was
being left out of the discussion was that Israel lacked the
firepower and needed United States military support in
order to launch an attack against Iran with any hope of
succeeding.
A Bibi Bomb In late September, at the annual
gathering of world leaders at the UN, President Obama,
in his speech before the General Assembly, reiterated his
position that a nuclear-armed Iran is not a challenge that
can be contained The United States will do what we
must to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
With Obama suddenly taking a 4 percent lead over Rom- of a bomb, so infantile in its execution that even the most
ney in Florida and maintaining a comfortable 65 percent to provincial among the UN delegates should have seen it as
24 percent overall lead among Jewish voters, the political either an insult to their intelligence or surreal.
pressure for an immediate red A cartoon bomb? This man,
line decision abated. with one finger on the launch
In a subsequent appearance button and a crayon in his hand
before the General Assembly, drawing a red line just below
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin the fuse of the bomb was show-
Netanyahu gave a speech that ing the world how close it was to
should have been denounced as doomsday!
the ravings of a lunatic, and put The hour is getting late, very
on a performance that should late, he foamed, The red line
have had him laughed off the must be drawn on Irans nuclear
stage. enrichment program because
While declaring that he these facilities are the only nu-
may postpone a military attack clear installations we can see
against Irans nuclear facilities, he and target.
launched a tirade that compared Instead of the UN guards put-
the Iranian government to Al Qaeda which he described as ting him in straightjacket and hustling him off stage, he
a fanatic ideology bent on world domination, adding that was allowed to finish his speech.
It makes little differences whether these lethal weapons
are in the hands of the worlds most dangerous terrorist re- Trends Analysis: There were no denunciations from the
gime, or the worlds most dangerous terrorist organization. American Presstitutes of Bibis belligerent and delirious
To drive the point home of the danger Iran posed and harangue, nor was there mockery of his ludicrous cartoon
why it must be stopped, he displayed a cartoon diagram bomb and puerile drawing of the red line.

The Trends Journal Autumn 2012 29

 In fact, it was the opposite. The New York Times re-
ported the UN bomb drawing incident with all due Prime
Ministerial respect:
With an almost professorial air, Mr. Netanyahu
held up a diagram of a bomb with a fuse to show
the Israeli view of Irans progress in achieving the
ability to make a nuclear weapon. He drew a red
line through the point at which Iran would have
amassed enough medium-enriched uranium to
make a bomb which he said would be in the
spring or summer of 2013.
Imagine if Putin, Chavez or Ahmadinejad pulled a stunt
like Netanyahus. The media would have had a field day
and politicians would have been piling it on denounc-
ing, ridiculing and pronouncing them unfit to rule.
And there was no warning issued to Netanyahu by UN
Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon as there had been to
Ahmadinejad prior to his speech of the dangers of in-
cendiary rhetoric that could result in potentially harmful
consequences.
Nor was there political fallout following Bibis asser-
tion that Iran was the worlds most dangerous terrorist
organization bent on world domination, a claim so idi-
otic that even the Western Presstitutes should have found
it too implausible to swallow.
Iran with a bomb! World domination! Think of it!
First America, then Russia, then China, followed by
Europe and in the blink of a cosmic eye, Estonia, Ban-
gladesh, Haiti, Borneo, Brunei, Iceland Disneyland!
There would be no stopping them. No more Walmarts,
Starbucks, Dunkin Donuts, McDonalds. Before you know
it, well all be speaking Farsi and eating falafel.
Draw the red line before its too late!
Trend Forecast: Pre-or-post election, be it Romney or
Obama, would Americas President eventually bow to Is-
raeli pressure for military action against Iran? If so, there
can no longer be any question about the pervasive level of
Israeli influence on American policy.
Should there be an US/Israel attack on Iran, as we have
long forecast, it will be the beginning of World War III.
And with Israels fingerprints all over it, it will unleash
a global wave of anti-Semitism unparalleled in modern
history.
Publishers Note: That attacking Iran was even being
contemplated, much less vigorously promoted, in a desta-
bilized Middle East wracked with violence and disinte-
grating into civil wars, could be termed nothing less than
an act of total madness.
30
9/1111
Suddenly Gods place on the political platforms along
with Iran, jobs and the economy was upstaged when, on
September 11th, the 11th anniversary of 9/11, terror struck
in Libya:
Libya Attack Brings Challenges for U.S.
CAIRO Islamist militants armed with anti-
aircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades
stormed a lightly defended United States dip-
lomatic mission in Benghazi, Libya, late Tues-
day, killing the American ambassador and three
members of his staff and raising questions about
the radicalization of countries swept up in the
Arab Spring.
The ambassador, J. Christopher Stevens, was
missing almost immediately after the start of an
intense, four-hour firefight for control of the mis-
sion, and his body was not located until Wednes-
day morning at dawn, when he was found dead
at a Benghazi hospital, American and Libyan of-
ficials said.
American and European officials said that
while many details about the attack remained
unclear, the assailants seemed organized, well
trained and heavily armed, and they appeared to
have at least some level of advance planning. But
the officials cautioned that it was too soon to tell
whether the attack was related to the anniversary
of the Sept. 11 attacks.
Fighters involved in the assault, which was
spearheaded by an Islamist brigade formed dur-
ing last years uprising against Col. Muammar el-
Qaddafi, said in interviews during the battle that
they were moved to attack the mission by anger
over a 14-minute, American-made video that de-
picted the Prophet Muhammad, Islams founder,
as a villainous, homosexual and child-molesting
buffoon. Their attack followed by just a few hours
the storming of the compound surrounding the
United States Embassy in Cairo by an unarmed
mob protesting the same video. On Wednesday,
new crowds of protesters gathered outside the
United States Embassies in Tunis and Cairo.
Benghazi, awash in guns, has recently wit-
nessed a string of assassinations as well as attacks
on international missions, including a bomb said
to be planted by another Islamist group that ex-
ploded near the United States mission there as
recently as June.
Obama administration officials and regional
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 officials scrambled to sort out conflicting reports
about the attack and the motivation of the attack-
ers. A senior Obama administration official told
reporters during a conference call that it was
clearly a complex attack, but offered no details.
Col. Wolfgang Pusztai, who until early August
was Austrias defense attach to Libya and visited
the country every month, said in an e-mail that
he believed the attack was deliberately planned
and executed by a core group of about 30 to 40
assailants who were well trained and organized.
Stationed in Benghazi during the uprising
against Colonel Qaddafi, Mr. Stevens, who was
fluent in Arabic and French, had become a lo-
cal hero for his support to the Libyan rebels
during their time of greatest need. (NYT, 12
September 2012)
The first ten words of this 2,304-word New York Times
article told the untold story: Islamist militants armed
with antiaircraft weapons and rocket-propelled grenades.
Were these the same rebels to whom Ambassador Stevens
had become a local hero?
Were these the same rebels for whom President Obama,
former French President Sarkozy and Prime Minister Da-
vid Cameron launched their humanitarian mission to
bring freedom and democracy to Libya?
Or were the rebels that killed Ambassador Stevens
The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) that Colonel
Muammar Qaddafi had accused of fueling unrest and
trying to overthrow his government and establish an Is-
lamic state? (The same LIGF founded by Libyans that had
fought against Soviet forces in Afghanistan, which the US
had supported and who would subsequently play a key
role in overthrowing the Qaddafi regime.)
It was yet another grotesque example of American for-
eign policy achieving results diametrically opposed to
those always-phony promises of bringing freedom and
democracy to the repressed masses, especially when they
were sitting on billions of gallons of oil and not playing
the oil game according to Americas rules.
Stevenss death immediately became a political
football that was thrown into The Presidential Reality
Show spotlight:
Romneys quick criticism
on Libya draws rebuke
President Obama and even some
Republicans criticize Mitt Romney for assailing
the initial administration response on the day
of the attacks on U.S. diplomatic missions in
Libya and Egypt
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
WASHINGTON The deeply partisan nature
of this years campaign intruded abruptly into a
foreign policy crisis as Republican nominee Mitt
Romney sharply criticized the Obama administra-
tion for issuing an apology for Americas values
and the president retorted that his challenger was
politicizing a tragedy.
Romneys speed in assailing his campaign is-
sued its first statement Tuesday night appeared
to some to violate traditions of at least momentary
unity in the face of a foreign threat.
In a brief news conference in Jacksonville,
Fla., Romney said that it was a terrible course to
for America to stand in apology for our values.
When our grounds are being attacked and be-
ing breached, that the first response of the United
States must be outrage at the breach of the sov-
ereignty of our nation. And apology for Americas
values is never the right course. (NYT, 13 Sep-
tember 2012)
In Romney World where America is always right, an
apology for Americas values is never the right course,
even when Americas deeds are direct contradictions of
such American values as invading sovereign nations,
starting wars that kill millions for trumped up reasons,
targeted assassinations and drone attacks that kill civil-
ians and that violate International law.
As critics attacked Romney for his insensitivity in po-
liticizing the ambassadors death, Obama picked up the
fumble and ran with it. Gov. Romney seems to have a
tendency to shoot first and aim later, Obama said. As
president, one of the things Ive learned is you cant do
that; its important for you to make sure that the state-
ments that you make are backed up by the facts. We will
not waver in our commitment to see that justice is done
for this terrible act. And make no mistake, justice will
be done.
In pursuit of justice (i.e., killing anyone sus-
pected of having participated in the consulate attack),
Obama dispatched two battleships to Libya and sent
in the Marines:
Marines sent into Libya after
envoy is killed in attack
The US stepped up security at embassies around
the world and sent a contingent of marines to Lib-
ya after its ambassador was killed in an attack on
the US consulate in the eastern city of Benghazi.
In what US officials said appeared to have been
a planned operation, an armed group attacked
the consulate for more than 4 hours on Tuesday
31
 evening. It was the first time a US ambassador has
been killed abroad in more than 30 years.
The killing of the ambassador underlined the
continued lawlessness in post-revolution Libya
and its governments inability to restore security.
It was also a deadly reminder for the US and its
western allies of the complex realities of a more
democratic north Africa that they are helping to
shape one in which the old security state has
been decimated and new governments are still
struggling to assert themselves.
The US played a key role in the international
campaign that helped oust Muammar Gaddafi last
year and has been a supporter of the new interim
authority.
Today, many Americans are asking indeed, I
asked myself how could this happen? How could
this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a
city we helped save from destruction? said Hill-
ary Clinton, US secretary of state. This question
reflects just how complicated and, at times, how
confounding the world can be. (FT, 13 Septem-
ber 2012)
Trends Analysis: There was Hillary Clinton, the loudest
war hawk in the White House, who had screeched for the
invasion of Libya a sovereign nation at peace with the
United States with a mission statement to overthrow its
leader, asking rhetorically how could this happen?
More appropriately, why wasnt anyone asking if this
woman (who giggled, We came, we saw, he died, and
bounced with glee on TV at the news of Qaddafis death)
was actually deranged to even ask such a daft question,
with such an obvious answer?
How could this not happen!
Yet the Presstitutes not only repeated Madam Sec-
retarys absurdities verbatim and without comment, as
shown in the video link above, they laughed along and
nodded in agreement. Thus, when Hillary states This
question reflects how complicated and confounding the
world could be, she is given a free ride. Her statement
is accepted, implicitly suggesting that if shes bewildered,
then it must be bewildering to everyone.
And, while it may have seemed complicated to a
simpleton and looked confounding to someone utterly
out of touch with the world, it was neither. It was as simple
as one, two, three, and what it reflected was American
foreign policy: attack, invade, destroy and occupy.
Thousands of deaths, mass destruction, bombed-out
cities, wanton slaughter how could it NOT happen?
Americas decades of hegemonic foreign policy can, and
has, engendered deep hatred and a thirst for revenge:
32
Libya:
Death To America
by Dr. Paul Craig Roberts
KINGSTON, NY, 14 September 2012 Try to imagine
more deluded reporting than this by Americas Pressti-
tute free press: For 11 years Washington, in pursuit of
its rightful hegemony, has been sending troops, bombers,
jet fighters, helicopter gunships, drones and assassination
teams into seven Muslim countries. Two of the Muslim
countries, Iraq and Libya, and perhaps more depending
on how you see it, have been overthrown by Washington
and left in chaos.
Washingtons assaults on seven countries have blown
up weddings, funerals, kids soccer games, farm houses,
hospitals, aid workers, schools, people walking along the
streets, village elders. But the Muslims dont mind! They
understand that the well-meaning Americans who love
them and are committed to their human rights are bring-
ing them democracy and womens rights. The million or
more dead, maimed, and displaced Muslims are a low
price to be paid for liberation by Washington.
The Muslims understand that liberation has costs and
are content with Washingtons liberating violence until
some idiot in California produced an anti-Islamic film.
This film, and not Washingtons predations, set the Mus-
lim world alive with hate America.
On the symbolic date of September 11, the US am-
bassador to Libya and some other Washington repre-
sentatives were assassinated in Libya. According to the
Presstitute media, the assassins did not kill the Ameri-
cans because Washington destroyed their country and
left them in chaos. The assassins killed the Americans
because of a trailer for an anti-Islamic film for which the
murdered American representatives were not responsible.
This is the way Washington works and thinks. It is not
Washingtons slaughter of Muslims and control over their
societies and political life that produces blowback. It is
independent film-makers in California!
Deluded politicians in Washington, both Republicans
and Democrats and, of course, the bought-and-paid-for
experts, brought these forceful rejections of America
upon us all. Washington has not only attacked Muslim
countries on the basis of concocted lies weapons of
mass destruction, al-Qaeda connections, brutal dictators
but also destroyed the secular governments that held
the Islamists in check, and prevented their attacks on US
representatives and institutions.
In Egypt, long an American puppet state, the US Em-
bassy was stormed and the US flag was torn apart. If
only this were all, Washington could again purchase the
Egyptian government, as it has done since Anwar Sadats
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
assassination. But the ongoing news is that anti-
American protests are not only spreading across
the Middle East but erupting throughout the
world: Morocco, Sudan, Tunisia, Iraq, Yemen,
Iran, Gaza, Bangladesh, Lebanon, London, and
even into Israel.
The Obama administration is blaming al-Qa-
eda, an Islamist group that the administration is
currently supporting in its efforts to overthrow
the secular Assad government in Syria and the
group that the Obama administration used to
overthrow the Libyan government, thus leaving
a power vacuum in its place. Having destroyed
the protection from Islamist attacks that secular
Arab rulers provided Washington, Obama, in a
show of force, has sent drones, aircraft carriers,
Marines, and Tomahawk missile ships to Libya,
raising the prospect that more schools and chil-
drens soccer games will be mistaken for jihadi
encampments and blown up.
Attempting to politicize the turmoil, Presidential can-
didate Mitt Romney declared that the US needed him in
the White House and as president he would provide
the leadership that America respects and will keep us ad-
mired throughout the world.
What admiration is Romney talking about? Who are
these admirers? In Egypt, Muslims marching to the beat
of death to America, have not been deterred by police
after three days of protests. CBS News reports that po-
lice continue to fire tear gas in hopes it will deplete the
strength of the demonstrators but they [the demonstra-
tors] are proving relentless.
KINGS GOOD, DICTATORS BAD!
Unlike the Washington-supported Saudi royal family that
absorbs most of their nations oil income, Qaddafi allo-
cated the oil money to Libyans. In Cynthia McKinneys
excellent book, The Illegal War On Libya, Stephen
Lendman writes that Qaddafi wanted Libyans to share in
the countrys oil wealth, a notion foreign to America and
other Western societies. Under his 1999 Decision No. 111,
all Libyans received free healthcare, education, electric-
ity, water, training, rehabilitation, housing assistance, dis-
ability, old-age benefits, interest-free state loans, as well
as generous subsidies to study abroad, buy a new car, help
when they marry, practically free gasoline, and more.
Why did such a relatively wealthy and egalitarian coun-
try need to be liberated by Washington and its NATO
war criminal puppet state?
What was achieved by overthrowing a government that
provided for its people in better ways than do Western
governments for the people they govern?
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
The US is the new Rome, and Europe, the UK, Canada,
Japan, and Australia are its tributary dominions, along
with the oil kingdoms.
In his book, Rubicon, Tom Holland describes what it
is like to be a dominion of a powerful and ruthless mili-
tary state:
Prior to the cataclysms of B.C. 146, there had been
some confusion as to the precise definition of freedom.
When the Romans claimed to be guaranteeing it, what
did this mean? Roman and Greek interpretations of
freedom diverged. To the Romans, freedom meant an op-
portunity for the city states to follow rules laid down by
Roman commissioners.
This is the freedom that Washington imposes on
the world. Washington is the bermensch. The rest of the
world is Washingtons playground. Ruling as Rome did,
Washington installs puppets and relies on their obeisance.
In the end, empire destroys itself. Washingtons hu-
bris and arrogance is turning the world against America.
Thanks to the Clintons, the Bushes, Cheney, Obama and
the neoconservatives, America, instead of being loved or
even respected, is hated with a rising passion. The wide-
spread attacks on the imperial powers embassies are only
the beginning.
As Gerald Celente had forecast, The 1st Great War of
the 21st Century has begun. o
A BAD FLICK No, no. It was simply a crude offensive mov-
ie trailer that sparked the Libyan embassy attack and the
subsequent demonstrations that spread worldwide. Any-
body seeing it as a consequence of the United States and
NATOs brazen overthrow of a sovereign nation lacked a
33

Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
B.A. in Russian and Eastern European Studies from Yale
University and never earned a PhD in Bullshit, as has
White House Press Secretary Jay Carney:
Carney: Protests not
directed at the United States
The White House insisted Friday that anti-Amer-
ican protests roiling the Middle East are not di-
rected at President Obamas policies, but at a film
produced in the U.S. that Muslims find offensive.
This is not a case of protest directed at the
United States writ large or at U.S. policy, said
White House press secretary Jay Carney. It is in
response, not to United States policy, not to, ob-
viously, the administration, not to the American
people, but to a video, a film, that we have judged
to be reprehensible, disgusting. (The Washington
Free Beacon, 14 September 2012)
No, no, no, the consulate attack and worldwide protests
were not in response to the endless stream of US atrocities
assassinations, predator drone strikes, torture camps or
Americas 11-year Afghan War that routinely produces
headlines such as the one that ran shortly after Carney
maintained it was the offending movie clip that brought
on the violence:
34
NATO airstrike kills eight
women and girls in Afghanistan
Seven victims in hospital as villagers take
bodies to provincial governors office after
women gathering firewood are hit
Bodies of women Afghan officials say were
killed in the airstrike are brought to a hos-
pital in the Alingar district of Laghman
province.
Eight women and girls gathering fire-
wood were killed by a NATO airstrike in
Afghanistan early on Sunday, according to
Afghan officials.
The coalition says it believes only in-
surgents were hit. But villagers from Alin-
gar district in the remote Laghman prov-
ince, east of Kabul, brought the bodies
to the governors office in the provincial
capital, said Sarhadi Zewak, a spokesman
for the provincial government. They were
shouting death to America They were
condemning the attack, Zewak said.
Seven females were taken to area hos-
pitals, some as young as 10, said provincial
health director Latif Qayumi.
NATO forces at first said that about 45
insurgents and no civilians were killed
in the attack. But spokesman Jamie Graybeal
said later that they took the allegations of civil-
ian deaths seriously and were investigating them,
though initial reports showed only insurgents
were killed.
Air strikes have been a sensitive issue between
the Afghan people who say civilians often end
up killed along with or instead of insurgents and
NATO forces who maintain that they are a key
tactic against insurgent leaders. (Guardian, 16
September 2012)
Trends Analysis: While it may have been a key tactic it
was a proven abject and murderous failure. To persist in
employing it was manifest insanity.
Yet the media corps would not only let the NATO
spokesman get away with it unchallenged, but reported
it in such a way as to make it look credible and sound
authoritative.
Eleven years of war, with its troop surges and bold
promises of impressive progress made by US and NATO
generals impressive progress in producing tens of
thousands dead, hundreds of thousands wounded, and a
country in ruins with nothing gained other than hatred
and the populaces desire for revenge.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
ACCESSORIES TO THE CRIME The Presstitutes pressed
on, reporting propaganda as fact. Just as they repeated the
2001 White House line that America had been attacked
on 9/11 because they hate our freedom and liberty, so
the 9/11 attack on the American consulate in Libya, elev-
en years to the day later, was described as being launched
solely as a response to an inflammatory anti-Muslim trailer
for a film produced by an obscure, amateur American film-
maker.
Whatever came out of the White House (regardless of
who was living in it) was taken at face value. And when
high officials spoke, their words were given much more
weight than if they had been spoken by someone who ac-
tually knew what he or she was talking about, and wasnt
lying or spinning the truth:
Susan Rice: Libya Protests
Hijacked by Extremists
An Obama administration official said Sunday
that the deadly attack on a U.S. consulate in Libya
last week was the work of individual clusters of
extremists but began as a spontaneous protest.
Libyas interim president, Mohammed Al-
Megarif, suggested on Sunday that al-Qaeda was
behind the deadly assault on the U.S. consulate
in Benghazi, which claimed the life of the U.S.
ambassador.
Ms. Rice said on ABC that the assault on the
U.S. consulate in Benghazi Tuesday started with
a small number of people seeking to replicate
a violent protest that had broken out in Cairo.
And then as that unfolded, it seems to have been
hijacked, let us say, by some individual clusters
of extremists who came with heavier weapons,
weapons that in the wake of the revolution in
Libya are quite common and accessible, she
said. And it then evolved from there.
Mr. Magrief said, in contrast, if you take into
account the weapons used, like RPGs [rocket-
propelled grenades] and other heavy weapons, it
proves that it was pre-planned. Its a dirty act of
revenge that has nothing to do with religion.
The consulate attack in Benghazi killed four
Americans, including the U.S. ambassador to
Libya, Christopher Stevens. A question that has
lingered since is whether it started as a spontane-
ous protest or had been planned by extremists.
Ms. Rice told Fox News Sunday that the
protests werent an expression of hostility in
the broadest sense to the U.S. or its policies, but
rather were a reaction to the video negatively de-
picting the Muslim faith. She said that it was diffi-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
cult to project the trajectory of how the reaction
of protesters around the region would develop.
In appearances on several Sunday talk shows,
Ms. Rice described Mr. Obama as incred-
ibly calm, incredibly steady, and incredibly mea-
sured through the crisis. She said his leadership
has ensured that in Egypt, in Yemen, in Tunisia,
in Libya, and many other parts of the world, that
leaders have come out and made very plain that
theres no excuse for this violence.
She dismissed suggestions that the U.S. has
become less effective or popular in the region.
Were not impotent, she said in response to a
question on This Week. Were not even less
popular. (Bloomberg, 16 September 2012)
In keeping with their motto: A Presstitute is a Pressti-
tute is a Presstitute is a Presstitute, the American media
recorded and reported these self-serving, uninformed ob-
servations, declarations and conjectures without so much
as a grimace, since, after all, they were spoken by a voice
of authority, the US Ambassador to the UN.
Trends Analysis: No, America was not even less popu-
lar. That was why, around the globe, mobs were burning
the American flag and screaming Death to America.
And no, according to Ambassador Rice, the protests
werent an expression of hostility in the broadest sense to
the U.S. or its policies. Could anyone take this nonsense
seriously? In the broadest sense, the narrowest sense
and every other sense, the expressions of hostility were
precisely what they seemed to be and were understood as
such by anyone with common sense.
Implicit was the message there was nothing to worry
about. As soon as the offending movie is forgotten, the
expressions of hostility will cease and the Arabs of the
world will unite to sing the praises of all things American.
And, not to forget, no matter what happened, how it
happened, or why it happened, the situation was under
control. As the distinguished UN Ambassador assured the
American people, Mr. Obama (in between his rolled-up-
sleeve, non-stop campaign stops, golf games and rounds of
basketball) was a Commander-in-Chief who was incred-
ibly calm, incredibly steady, and incredibly measured
through the crisis especially since he was thousands
of miles away from the consulate when it was bombarded.
Were Better Than You Presidents, Secretar-
ies of This and That, Ministers of Importance, Ambas-
sadors of Wherever and all those of Higher Authority not
only knew what was best for everyone, they lived in a dif-
35
ferent world and even died in a different world.
Not only were they more important in life, they were
more important in death:
Diplomats Bodies Return to U.S.
WASHINGTON As four flag-draped coffins
bearing the bodies of the Americans killed in
Libya arrived in the United States on Friday, new
details emerged of Ambassador J. Christopher
Stevenss final hours, alone, locked in a smoke-
filled room in a diplomatic mission under siege.
In a solemn ceremony at Joint Base Andrews
outside the capital, President Obama said the vic-
tims laid down their lives for us all and vowed
to honor their memory by never retreating from
the world.
The arrival, broadcast live on news channels,
proved an emotional culmination to an episode
that has rocked Washington and American embas-
sies around the world, even as details of those final
fateful moments only now began to come clear.
Mr. Obama called Mr. Stevens everything
America could want in an ambassador.
Of the three others killed in the attack, he
said Sean Smith, a Foreign Service officer and an
Air Force veteran, had lived to serve. Tyrone S.
Woods, a former member of the Navy SEALs pro-
viding diplomatic security, was the consummate
quiet professional. And Glen A. Doherty, also a
former member of the SEALs providing security,
never shied from adventure.
Even in our grief we will be resolute, for we
are Americans, Mr. Obama said. And we hold
our head high, knowing that because of these pa-
triots, because of you, this country that we love
will always shine as a light unto the world.
Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton,
who looked stricken and seemed to be fighting her
emotions, echoed those sentiments. We will wipe
away our tears, stiffen our spines and face the fu-
ture undaunted, she said. All four worked for her,
and she spoke slowly and with evident grief. She
knew Mr. Stevens personally, she said, praising
his goofy but contagious smile, his California
cool and, mostly, his dedication and courage.
What a wonderful gift you gave us, she told
his family. Over his distinguished career in the
Foreign Service, Chris won friends for the United
States in far-flung places. He made those peoples
hopes his own. During the revolution in Libya, he
risked his life to help protect the Libyan people
from a tyrant, and he gave his life helping them
36
build a better country.
Her voice grew stronger again as she called
on leaders in the Middle East to fulfill their ob-
ligations to protect diplomatic posts. The peo-
ple of Egypt, Libya, Yemen and Tunisia did not
trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny
of a mob, she said. Reasonable people and re-
sponsible leaders in these countries need to do
everything they can to restore security and hold
accountable those behind these violent acts.
(NYT, 14 September 2012)
Trends Analysis: And so it was, when one of those higher
authorities got killed, it rocked Washington and Ameri-
can embassies around the world and a made-for-TV sol-
emn ceremony was broadcast live on news channels.
The Ambassador was dead, long live the Ambassador!
But when Pvt. Mike Jones gets blown to pieces by a
roadside bomb, or Cpl. Tammy White gets a bullet in the
head, or Sgt. Jose Gonzales gets murdered by the Afghan
recruit hes supposed to be training, nothing is broadcast
live and neither Washington nor its embassies around the
world are rocked. When the coffins of the Average Joes
and Janes come back, the media doesnt show them, and
the President, Secretary of State and top military brass
are AWOL.
It was 24/7 non-stop propaganda. The brave, beloved,
fluent-in-Arabic Ambassador Stevens didnt risk his life
to help protect the Libyan people from a tyrant. There
are tyrants ruling throughout the world, many of whom
America supports. In Libya, Stevens was looking after
Americas interests (i.e., doing its dirty work). The aim was
to remove the uncooperative Qaddafi and install a pup-
pet government that would allow America to better exploit
Libyas precious high-quality sweet crude, a resource that
the Chinese and others were freely accessing.
Publishers Note: Are the American people ever going to
wake up and grow up? How many times are they going to
buy in to the same lame, stale and demonstrably fraudu-
lent storyline that the reason the United States invades,
destroys and occupies sovereign countries that pose no
threat to it is for the standard, one-size-fits-all, altruistic
All-American reason: To bring freedom and democracy to
people being oppressed by brutal dictators and tyrants?
While American politicians keep pledging allegiance
to the flag of the United States of America, their words
and deeds run in direct contradiction to the words and
deeds of the Founding Fathers whom they profess to hon-
or, though only when convenient:
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
you to believe me, fellow-citizens,) the jealousy of a free
people ought to be constantly awake; since history and
experience prove, that foreign influence is one of the most
baneful foes of Republican Government. But that jealousy,
to be useful, must be impartial; else it becomes the in-
strument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of
a defence against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign
nation, and excessive dislike of another, cause those whom
they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to
veil and even second the arts of influence on the other.
Real patriots, who may resist the intrigues of the favor-
ite, are liable to become suspected and odious; while its
tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the
people, to surrender their interests. George Washington
The counsel of their Founding Fathers had been consigned
to the waste bin of history. Perhaps the American people
would never wake up or grow up. Brainwashed since birth
to believe my country right or wrong, the country their
Founding Fathers created had long since disappeared.
My country right or wrong now meant obey your politi-
cal leaders, follow their orders or suffer the consequences.
Flip Flop In an instant, the White House party line
about what happened in Libya and what motivated it was
given a fresh new spin. Thus, the question raised but nev-
er asked was: Why would anyone believe the second spin
since the first spin was sold as the official truth:
White House: Libya was terrorist attack
A White House spokesman today said it is appar-
ent that last weeks attack in Libya that killed a
U.S. ambassador and three other Americans was
an act of terrorism.
It is self-evident that what happened in Beng-
hazi was a terrorist attack, said White House
spokesman Jay Carney.Our embassy was at-
tacked violently and the result was four deaths of
American officials.
Carney spoke as CNN and others, citing un-
named sources, reported that slain U.S. ambas-
sador Chris Stevens had worried about what he
called the never-ending security threats in Beng-
hazi and mentioned his name was on an al Qaeda
hit list.
As U.S. officials continue to investigate the
deaths of Stevens and three other Americans, Na-
tional Counterterrorism Center director Matthew
Olsen told a Senate hearing: I would say, yes,
they were killed in the course of a terrorist attack
on our embassy.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
U.S. officials initially attributed the death to
protests over an anti-Islam film that got out of
control.
Aides to President Obama said the attack remains
under investigation, including the state of security at
the U.S. consulate in Benghazi, Libya.
President Obama is concerned that violent ac-
tions were taken that led to the deaths of four Ameri-
cans, said White House spokesman Jay Carney.
He is absolutely concerned that we take the
necessary measures to make sure that those who
killed Americans are brought to justice, Carney
said. And he has been focused from the begin-
ning on ensuring that adequate security reinforce-
ments be brought to bear at embassies and consul-
ates and diplomatic facilities where thats deemed
necessary.(USA Today, 20 September 2012)
What is the beleaguered, spin-battered public supposed
to think? First the attack on the consulate was officially
reported as a violent response to an offensive movie clip
and should not be seen as an expression of hostility in the
broadest sense to the U.S. or its policies. Four days later
the official new spin was that it was self-evident that its
a terrorist attack.
The Big Questions In the days following the as-
sault on the American consulate in Libya, the big ques-
tions being asked by the media, pundits and political op-
position were: Was there a warning of an attack? If so, why
didnt the ambassador have more protection?
But a bigger question that neither the media nor the
politicians were asking was: What the hell did you expect?
The Americans and their NATO allies killed a lot of people
and destroyed a country that was relatively prosperous and
stable, despite pockets of resistance and growing unrest.
However, that unrest became a full-blown civil war only
when President Obama and his NATO partners intervened
with massive air-strikes and provided armaments, intel-
ligence and other military support to anti-Qaddafi forces.
So maybe, just maybe, the Libyans who attacked the
US consulate were not the militants or extremists vili-
fied by politicians and the media. Possibly, just possibly,
they were Qaddafi loyalists seeking revenge.
WHAT IF?
Suppose the tables were turned. Suppose an outside force
(e.g., the BRIC coalition) attacked, invaded and destroyed
America on the pretext of ridding the country of the Wash-
ington tyrants who had robbed the people of their Consti-
tutional rights, enriched the already-rich one percent at
37
the expense of the 99 percent, and who had started wars
under false pretenses, sacrificing the lives and limbs of
its troops only to enrich the military industrial complex.
Would those Americans who rose up to oppose the in-
vaders be vilified as militants or extremists? Or would
they be considered resistance fighters, revered as patriots
and martyrs for risking their lives to throw out the new
government imposed upon them?
No, as a befuddled Hillary Clinton claimed, the world
was not complicated and confounding. In the case of
Libya, it was simple. Anyone understanding the cause and
effect of trend dynamics (where we are, how we got here
and where were going) would understand what happened,
why it happened and where it was heading.
It may have seemed confounding to the Presstitutes,
pundits, politicians and the tens of millions of indoc-
trinated Americans who believe in their President and
my country, right or wrong. And it may have seemed
complicated to the followers of Democratic and Repub-
lican cults that, with Hillary, would wonder, How could
this happen in a country we helped liberate, in a city we
helped save from destruction?
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya the same propaganda is used
to justify Americas invasions or incursions and the same
propaganda is used to demonize all those who refuse to be
ruled by whoever it may be that the US demands should
rule them. Those that fight back, those that do not want
American-style freedom and democracy are militants, ex-
tremists, terrorists and, sophomorically, The Bad Guys.
AMATEUR HOUR
In an October 3, 2011 Trend Alert, we forecast that President
Obama would defeat any of the Republican front-runners
competing for the nomination at that time, one of whom
was Mitt Romney. This forecast was not based on perceived
or substantive differences between the Republican chal-
lengers and the President, but rather on the superficiality
of the entire spectacle.
In short, we predicted Obama would be re-elected not
because of his performance in office but because of his
performance on stage. We wrote:
The Presidential Reality Show
Reflecting back on the debates between Repub-
lican candidates, Celente says, This isnt politics
as an exercise in Democracy in action, its politics
as show business for ugly people.
Anyone who saw the September 12th debate
hosted by CNN witnessed an early episode of The
38
Presidential Reality Show. It was a star-spangled,
made-for-TV-spectacle appropriating the low-
est common denominator elements of the World
Wrestling Federation, the Miss America Pageant
and American Idol.
Given that this is what is passed off as po-
litical debate in America, come Election Day,
the American Idol winner (a.k.a. The President of
the United States) will be the best performer. And
Barack Obama has proven that he can out-per-
form and out-teleprompt them all he will tell the
teleprompted truth the audience wants to hear.
And on a stage where performance counts
more than the heart, fans (a.k.a. the electorate)
will vote for the Best Actor. That actor will be the
man who commands the stage, Barack Obama.
TREND FORECAST UPDATE Exactly one year to the
day since we made our forecast for an Obama victory, the
primary component supporting it his superior stage per-
formance skills dramatically deserted him. Going into
the debate with a small, but statistically significant lead,
Obama bombed in what was arguably the most amateur-
ish debate performance ever televised.
America is a nation in crisis, its economy in the grip
of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depres-
sion. Yet, with people losing their homes and their jobs,
with the homeless population surging and nearly 50 mil-
lion people on food stamps, with an intractable $16 tril-
lion national debt, trillion-dollar budget deficits, trillions
more in consumer and student debt, and with the military
mired in losing wars as new wars loom, President Obama
opened the first of three critical presidential debates with
a calculated crowd pleaser:
There are a lot of points that I want to make tonight, but
the most important one is that 20 years ago I became the
luckiest man on earth because Michelle Obama agreed to
marry me. And so I just want to wish, Sweetie, you happy
anniversary .
It was all part of the script. Obamas how much I love
you Sweet Petunia after 20 years of marital bliss may
have warmed some womens hearts. But declaring it his
most important point spoke subliminal volumes about
the man, his insensitivity and his shallowness.
Even if it was intended as no more than a lighthearted
opening line, he and his wife were the point not the 67
million Americans tuned into the debate, the 50 million
on food stamps, the soldiers that had lost their lives, limbs
and minds in futile, immoral wars.
And from that point on he crumbled.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 WIRED AND OUT OF TOUCH
On stage, the President rambled on, seemingly unable to
speak a full sentence without the aid of a teleprompter,
the mind-held device he never leaves home without.
The uncharacteristically un-presidential performance
was universally panned:
n Romney Dominates Glum President (Financial
Times)
n Mitt Romney comes out on top as Obama stumbles
in first debate (The Guardian)
n CNN poll: Romney beats Obama in first debate
n Romney the aggressor in debate fixed on economy
(The Jerusalem Post)
n The 1st Round goes to Romney (Die Welt)
n Mitt Romney breathes new life into Race (Neue
Zuericher Zeitung)
n Romney turns in strong debate performance Japan
Today
The debate itself, such as it was, devolved into a face-off
between an empty suit and a stuffed shirt.
Romney, who up to the moment he took the stage,
had been ridiculed world-wide for his serial gaffes, his
stumbling, insincere delivery, his flip-flops and outright
lies, suddenly turned the tables. Insofar as anything in
The Presidential Reality Show could be called the high
ground, Romney took it and the audience yawned its
way through the hour and a half of seesaw sniping. And
although Romney was declared the hands-down winner,
what he was the winner of is a question barely broached
by the mainstream media.
In the substance-free 90 minutes mainly devoted to
tax policy and who said what, when, and what it would
mean now it wasnt as though Romney scored points for
trenchant analyses and proposed solutions. He simply won
by default because Obama suffered a meltdown.
IT AINT OVER TIL ITS OVER
So uncharismatic and detached was Obama that some
pundits even wondered if the President, wearied of the
office, deep down, did not really care if he was re-elected.
Was the President just off his game that night and his
lackluster showing just a temporary setback, or did it
mark a momentum shift that would ultimately determine
the election?
With two more debates to go, a month left to Election
Day, and the elections squarely centered on personality
and stage presence rather than on major policy differenc-
es, we cannot confidently forecast who will win the White
House. That will depend upon Obamas ability and will to
rise to the challenge.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
What we can confidently forecast is that absent an
October Surprise in which some type of national emer-
gency rallies the people around their President the can-
didate who performs the best in the TV debates will win
the White House.
THE NEXT FOUR YEARS Seventy million Americans
and millions more around the world have witnessed the
caliber of the two men contending for office. What can
they possibly expect from either of the candidates? Yet,
one of them will lead the nation.
The question is, where to?
Why should the public expect any more from either
Romney or Obama than what they have already wit-
nessed? The candidates track records are matters of re-
cord. Obama pretends he would not do most of what Rom-
ney promises he will do. While Romney, if elected, will do
what Obama has done for the last four years as President,
but promised he wouldnt do.
Yet, voters will wait for the next debate to see which
candidate performs the best. And rather than rising in
protest to demand a choice between a Greater of Two
Goods, the American people will once again acquiesce
and submit to the system and vote into office a Lesser of
Two Evils.
HIGH SCHOOL USA
Who are these people telling us whats best, whats right
and wrong, what we should do and how we should do it?
What superhuman qualities do they possess that make
them incredibly calm, incredibly steady, and incredibly
measured under the kind of pressure that would have less-
er mortals peeing in their pants?
They are our leaders. They are The Incredibles:
born of perfect parents, married to perfect wives, parents
of special, amazing, gifted children and proud masters of
wonder dogs.
Yes, they are The Incredibles: Incredibly full of
themselves, narcissistic, pompous, arrogant boys and
girls, most born on Easy Street and pampered from birth.
WE KNEW THEM AS KIDS
They ran for class president, or head of the student coun-
cil. Some were Eagle Scouts. And now they are all grown
up. But really, they have never grown up. In the deepest
sense, they act and behave as if they are still in high school
and still members of the same exclusive clique they hung
around with as kids. You didnt like them, and they didnt
like you. But you went your way and they went theirs.
39

Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
In spirit, they really never left high school because they
never had to. Having never questioned the system, they
never moved out of it. Their career paths were pre-paved
for them. Still trapped in their teenage state of mind, they
seldom contemplate the consequences of their decisions
or take responsibility for their actions. In high school it
didnt matter much. And, if they ever veered off their path
unless it was criminal their worst punishment was a
reprimand or suspension.
The big difference now is that with the high school
clique in charge of the worlds largest economy and most
powerful military, its decisions and actions affect all of us.
They continue telling us whats best for us, whats right
and wrong, what to do and how to do it. But now, instead of
telling them to f&#k off, entire nations listen to them, obey
them, look up to and even fight and die at the behest of these
high school kids who have grown older but not grown up.
40
Why does it never occur to the public that the same
wanker who was their high school class president is now
President of the United States, Cabinet Secretary, Senator
or Congressman?
And the do-gooder Eagle Scout that would rat you
out to the teacher for cheating, has followed his pre-paved
path through ROTC or West Point, punched his ticket up
the military chain of command and is now the General
who keeps losing thousands of men in losing wars.
No, no, show respect! Having graduated and matricu-
lated, they are no longer the overly ambitious, insincere,
suck-ups and brown-nosers that you couldnt stand. They
are lawmakers and distinguished leaders.
What accounts for the behavior of the masters and of
the enslaved, the leaders and their followers?
I LIKE IKE
Did Eisenhowers observation that Any man who wants
to be president is either an egomaniac or crazy apply
to Mitt Romney and President Obama? The former has
been campaigning for the office since 2007 and President
Obama has been on the re-election campaign trail since
April 2011.
And what keeps people obediently following leaders,
looking up to them and rarely questioning authority? Is
the public also trapped in a teenage mindset? Are leaders
surrogate parents; teachers who wont stand for disobedi-
ence? What would make adults follow and obey the same
people they couldnt stand as kids? What would make
them argue and fight among themselves over which ego-
maniac or crazy person would better represent their
interests and care the most about them?
Are they deluded by the trappings of office, the red
carpets, the salutes, the pomp and pageantry, backed up
by a lifetime of indoctrination? What prevents them from
seeing through it all?
Was it because of the way the system was sold to them
by the Presstitutes?
The Presstitutes Yes, the Presstitutes! Back in
high school, these were the people who wrote the school
newspaper and helped put together and publish the year-
book. And like the class presidents who followed their ca-
reer path, they got degrees in journalism and communica-
tions and the most successful among them sucked their
way up to become mouthpieces for the corporate networks
and largest newspapers.
In high school, the kids writing the school newspa-
per knew their place and never overstepped their bounds.
While they played journalist, promising their classmates
to ask tough questions of the principal or gym teacher,
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
when it came down to it, they did their utmost to show
respect and never questioned their subjects authority.
And now, as grownups, they continue to play the role and
pretend they are hardcore journalists when in practice they
are soft-core Presstitutes. When it comes to grilling a high-
level politician or top CEO, they respectfully pitch softball
questions and accept the answers without challenge.
And while it can be argued that the press has never
been free, what cant be argued is that never has it been
as controlled as it is in 2012.
The collusion between the press, politicians and CEOs
ominously echoed the relationship that existed between the
USSR and its apparatchiks. The USA has become the USSA.
The excerpts from the following New York Times story
reveal one of the most important and disturbing trends
affecting 21st century Americans:
Latest Word on the Trail? I Take It Back
The quotations come back redacted, stripped of
colorful metaphors, colloquial language and any-
thing even mildly provocative.
They are sent by e-mail from the Obama head-
quarters in Chicago to reporters who have inter-
viewed campaign officials under one major con-
dition: the press office has veto power over what
statements can be quoted and attributed by name.
Most reporters, desperate to pick the brains of
the presidents top strategists, grudgingly agree.
After the interviews, they review their notes,
check their tape recorders and send in the juiciest
sound bites for review.
The verdict from the campaign an operation
that prides itself on staying consistently on script
is often no, Barack Obama does not approve this
message. Quote approval is standard practice for
the Obama campaign, used by many top strategists
and almost all midlevel aides in Chicago and at the
White House It is also commonplace through-
out Washington and on the campaign trail.
The Romney campaign insists that journalists
interviewing any of Mitt Romneys five sons agree
to use only quotations that are approved by the
press office. And Romney advisers almost always
require that reporters ask them for the green light
on anything from a conversation that they would
like to include in an article.
From Capitol Hill to the Treasury Department,
interviews granted only with quote approval have
become the default position. Those officials who
dare to speak out of school, but fearful of making
the slightest off-message remark, shroud even the
most innocuous and anodyne quotations in ano-
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
nymity by insisting they be referred to as a top
Democrat or a Republican strategist.
Many journalists spoke about the editing only
if granted anonymity, an irony that did not es-
cape them.
It was difficult to find a news outlet that had
not agreed to quote approval, albeit reluctantly.
Organizations like Bloomberg, The Washing-
ton Post, Vanity Fair, Reuters and The New York
Times have all consented to interviews under
such terms. (NYT, 15 July 2012)
Quote approval? That was a Presstitute euphemism for
censorship! Thats what it would be called in any other
country. But back in the USSA, Presstitutes desperate to
pick the brains of the presidents top strategists, grudg-
ingly agree to conduct interviews under such terms.
Grudgingly or otherwise, writing only what they are
permitted to write or repeat is not journalism, its submis-
sion to authority, its cowardice. In fact, so cowardly have
the Presstitutes become that they insist upon anonymity
even when speaking to their Presstitute peers!
American journalists had admittedly abandoned the
principles of their profession. It wasnt about doing what
was morally right, it was self-preservation. Suck up, bow
down, show no self respect, be a good girl or boy, just write
what you are told and youll keep your job until you get
downsized.
But there was a major difference between journalism
USSA and Journalism USSR. If the American Presstitutes
did not comply theyd lose their jobs; in the USSR, theyd
lose their heads.
RIGHT ON THE MONEY
We said they would do it before the election, and they did
it! The Americans called it quantitative easing (QE3), the
Europeans called it a euro rescue fund and bond interven-
tion (unlimited government bonds purchased from troubled
eurozone nations) while the Chinese and Japanese called it
stimulus. Desperate to prop up their failing and flagging
economies, the nations digital presses began pumping out
trillions of dollars, euros, yuan and yen that were not worth
the paper they were not printed on.
Month after month, the data imports, exports, job
numbers, industrial production, real estate, retail sales
added up to recession, stagnation, depression. The world
over, it was a variation on the same theme. In countries
that had until recently been booming there was, at best,
minimal growth.
41
 Although a global economy had been in place for de-
cades, individual nations perpetuated an illusion of sov-
ereignty and independence. But now, in September 2012,
that illusion has been shattered. It was all inextricably
connected, and the common denominator by any name
(dollar, euro, yuan, real, rupee) was money, with the cen-
tral banks working in concert to make sure the money
kept flowing.
In August, the overriding economic concern had been
how to solve the European debt crisis a crisis that euro
leaders had initially denied would occur and then, over
the past two years, repeatedly claimed to have resolved.
Now that crisis threatened the euro, the cohesiveness of
the eurozone and by extension, not only the global econ-
omy but geopolitics.
Indeed, it was all connected. As we have frequently em-
phasized, when Europeans and Americans cut consumer
spending, the Chinese and other low-wage manufacturing
nations cut production. And when they cut production,
resource-rich countries such as Australia, Brazil, Bolivia,
Chile, etc., export less. Thus it was about more than just
money. Anything done to forestall and/or repair the eco-
nomic crises was to the advantage of the incumbent politi-
cal parties:
Draghi helps out Obama campaign
Barack Obamas chances of re-election as US
president rose on Thursday and the words that did
it were not his but Mario Draghis.
Long before Mr Obama stood up to accept the
Democratic nomination in Charlotte, North Caro-
lina, the head of the European Central Bank had
sketched out a new plan to buy the bonds of trou-
bled eurozone countries.
That will not move the polls; it will not move a
single vote. But Mr Draghi has lowered the grav-
est of risks to Mr Obama: a pre-election meltdown
in the eurozone that would have blown up banks,
pulverised Wall Street, and routed a fragile US
economy back into recession.
If that happened, it would not be Mr Obamas
fault, but he would get the blame. Just as the fail-
ure of Lehman Brothers doomed his rival John
McCain in 2008, a eurozone implosion would
create economic odds too great for Mr Obama to
surmount.
The eurozone has barely been mentioned in
the US election campaign swing voters in Ohio
care little for Spanish bond yields but economic
advisers to Mr Obama and his Republican rival
Mitt Romney know its wild card potential.
Behind the scenes, Mr Obamas economic team
42
has spent much of the past year fretting about the
eurozone, and working every diplomatic angle to
push the Europeans towards a credible solution.
The ECBs latest action is not the whole solu-
tion, but it is a forward step, and one that the cen-
tral bank hesitated over before taking. Markets
rallied strongly when it did.
Dangers remain, not least from Greece, the
worlds slipperiest economic banana skin. But
if Mr Obama does win in November, he should
thank not just his own elegant words, but the less-
than-soaring rhetoric of an Italian central banker.
(FT, 6 September 2012)
New World Order In what was deemed one of
the most important rulings in its 61-year history. Ger-
manys highest court approved the nations participation
in a 700 billion European Stability Mechanism (ESM)
bailout scheme. The court ruling sacrificed sovereignty to
the greater goal of saving the eurozone, in effect transfer-
ring decision-making powers to Brussels, in order to form
a more perfect European Union.
Beyond the legal jargon explaining why the court came
to its decision, in plain English, what it did was put con-
trol of the entire eurozone into the hands of a handful of
money men and power brokers:
Europe must become
federation of states, Barroso says
The president of the European Commission called
for the EU to be turned into a federation of na-
tion states in a sweeping demand for countries to
surrender more sovereignty and move towards full
integration.
In a speech to the European Parliament, the
head of the blocs executive, President Jose Manu-
el Barroso, said Lets not be afraid of the words:
We will need to move towards a federation of na-
tion states. This is our political horizon. This is
what must guide our work in the years to come,
he said in his annual state of the union address.
A democratic federation of nation states that
can tackle our common problems, through the
sharing of sovereignty in a way that each coun-
try and its citizens are better equipped to control
their own destiny.
While there may be enthusiasm in some Eu-
ropean capitals for such a move, it is a vision that
is likely to rankle in countries such as Britain,
where there is strong opposition to the idea of
more powers being devolved to Brussels.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 Barroso said that in an age of
globalisation, the EU would strug-
gle to compete unless it was pre-
pared to pool its sovereignty and
act as one.
I said a federation of nation
states because in these turbulent
times, we should not leave the de-
fence of the nation just to the na-
tionalists and populists, he said.
I believe in a Europe where peo-
ple are proud of their nations but
also proud to be European.
Many will say that this is too
ambitious, that it is not realistic,
he said. But let me ask you this
- is it realistic to go on like we
have been doing? Is it realistic to
see more than 50 percent of young
people without jobs in some of our
member states?
The realistic way forward is the way that
makes us stronger and more united. Realism is to
put our ambition at the level of our challenges.
(The Telegraph, 12 September 2012)
It was a New World Order: A Banking Order. The banks
were giving the orders. This was no conspiracy theory.
Barrosos call for the abrogation of national sovereignty
and the consolidation of power in the hands of the finan-
cial few was being openly championed.
And who was the champion? Jose Manuel Barroso,
the former Prime Minister of Portugal, one of the eu-
rozones most insolvent and economically troubled
countries, was now telling the rest of Europe what was
good for it. Whether coming from Barroso or from the
troika (EC, ECU and IMF) with their track records
of failure, there is no reason to believe that anything
they suggested would work, and every reason to believe
it wouldnt.
Trend Forecast: What the centralization of political and
financial power would achieve, however, was to further
enrich and empower the bankers and further impoverish
the already-disempowered public. With corruption and
criminality centralized, instead of politicians and banks
in sovereign countries competing with each other for who
could steal the most, a single power base would coordi-
nate the crimes.
In effect, what Barosso envisaged, and what would be-
come reality if the current trends continue, was a Wash-
ington, DC, of Europe.
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger
Cheap Money Syndrome Complementing the
quantitative easing, stimulus and bond-buying schemes
were central bank moves to further lower and/or keep
the historically low interest rates in place for years to
come. This cheap money policy led to accusations that
countries in economic decline were devaluing their cur-
rencies in order to boost exports and in doing so, ignit-
ing a currency war:
Brazils Finance Chief Attacks US Over QE3
Guido Mantega, Brazils finance minister, has
warned that the U.S. Federal Reserves protec-
tionist move to roll out more quantitative easing
will reignite the currency wars with potentially
drastic consequences for the rest of the world.
It has to be understood that there are conse-
quences, Mr. Mantega told the Financial Times
in an interview on Thursday.
The Feds QE3 program would only have a
marginal benefit [in the U.S.] as there is already
no lack of liquidity . . . and that liquidity is not go-
ing into production.
He said it was instead depressing the dollar
and aimed at boosting U.S. exports.
He cited Japans decision this week to expand
its own QE program, coming on the heels of the
Feds decision to launch further QE last week, as
evidence of growing global tensions. Thats a
currency war, he said.
But continued QE policies would hurt trade
throughout the world, from emerging economies
to developed world exporters such as Germany
43
 and Japan.
Japanese companies
were complaining about
their strong exchange rate.
If a weaker dollar leads to
rising trade competition,
then that will also force
Brazil to adopt measures
to stop the real strength-
ening, Mr. Mantega said.
(FT, 21 September 2012)
Robbing Hoods In
the United States particularly,
the cheap-money, low-inter-
est-rate policy hit the general
public, long conditioned to
build their savings accounts,
the hardest. With Fed interest
rates now at or near zero, and
scheduled to remain there for
three more years, the old ad-
age, A penny saved is a penny
earned, had become, A pen-
ny saved is a penny devalued.
Once upon a time, in the
old pre-QE days, responsible
people would put money away
for a rainy day or to support
them through their retirement
years. The quaint notion was
that rather than spend it in on
consumer products or invest
in risky equities, people would save money in a bank and
in return they would earn interest. It had long been the
American Way but it no longer was.
People with extra earnings had two choices: invest
in equity markets and take a risk, or put it in the bank
and watch their savings devalue as the inflation rate rose.
So egregious had the saving scam become (we take your
money and give you back next to nothing) that bankers,
unable to pitch it with a straight face, hired comedians:
Theoretically, only those Americans with the means to
deposit $5 million dollars in a bank would be able to earn
a modest American median income of $50,054 at 1.00%
interest, a sum that would hardly allow them to live the
lifestyle to which they were accustomed.
But given an annual inflation rate of 9 percent using
the 1980 official methodology for measuring the CPI at
the end of the year, the $5 million in the bank had de-
clined in value by $450,000. Such a deal! Put your money
44
in Capital One and watch it lose eight percent in a year!
Needless to say, no one with $5 million to spare would
put it in a bank at 1.00 percent. But for millions of Ameri-
cans, the insignificant interest rate return has taken away
a time-honored savings safety net.
Is Everybody Happy? By virtually all mea-
sures, Americas pride the once-populous and prosper-
ous middle class was being hollowed out.
Yet, during this political season, the president, his
challenger and the politicians running for the Senate and
the House are either afraid to tell the American people
how serious the conditions are (perhaps fearing they will
blame the messenger) or they still cannot see it them-
selves.
But, barely a day goes by without some socio-economic
and geopolitical story (in the headlines or boondocked to
the back pages) that captures a telling aspect of the sys-
temic decline and disintegration of Empire America:
n US incomes fall to 1989 levels. How did it happen?
Christian Science Monitor, 12 September 2012)
n Report: Median Income Worse Now Than During
Great Recession (CBSDC, 18 September 2012)
n Stagnant Incomes Signal Restraint in Spending by
U.S. Consumers (Bloomberg, 10 September 2012)
n Why Fewer Americans Are Starting New Businesses
(CNBC, 31 July 2012)
n Dollar is Near 4-Month Low Against Euro After Fed
Expands Easing (Bloomberg, 14 September 2012)
n Jobless Claims Rose More Than Forecast Last Week
(Bloomberg, 13 September, 2012)
n U.S. Debt Now $136,260 Per Household Up 50 %
Under Obama (CBS News, 4 September 2012,)
n Stakes rise and US is warned of double dip (FT, 23
August 2012)
n Majority of new jobs pay lower wages, study finds
(New York Times, 4 September 2012
n August Job Report Disappoints (CBS, 7 September
2012)
n Trading Caps and Gowns for Mops (Wall Street
Journal, 22 August 2012)
n US Census Figures Show More Than One in Five
Children are Living in Poverty (The Guardian, 12
September 2012)
n Retirees New Pastime: Cutting Costs in all Sorts of
Ways (USA Today, 9 September 2012)
n Hidden Unemployed: Too Discouraged to Count
(CNBC, 23 September 2012)
n Goldman Sachs Analysts Say Bank Slowdown Isnt
Temporary (Bloomberg, 10 September 2012)
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
 n Trade Gap in U.S. Widened to $42 Billion as Ex-
ports Fell (Bloomberg, 11 September 2012)
n Young U.S. Adults Flock to Parents Homes Amid
Economy (Bloomberg, 9 September 2012)
n US Slips Down in the Ranks of Global Competitive-
ness (CNBC, 9 September 2012)
n Food-Stamp Use Climbs to Record (Businessweek, 5
September 2012)
n Low-Wage Work Force Grows 30% as the Number of
Jobs Shrinks (Suntimes, 25 September 2012)
n U.S. Economy Expanded Less Than Forecast in
Second Quarter (Bloomberg, 26 September 2012)
n Orders for U.S. Goods Point to Capital Investment
Slowdown (Bloomberg, 26 September 2012)
Throughout the world, variations on the same theme are
revealed in the headlines and the data:
China Stocks Breach Key Level,
More Losses Seen
Chinas benchmark Shanghai Composite Index
broke below a key support level on Wednesday,
touching its lowest point in more than three and a
half years, and market watchers told CNBC main-
land stocks are set to suffer further losses in the
coming weeks.
Chinese stocks have been in a steady down-
trend since May this year, as retail investors
which account for around 80 percent of the
turnover at the countrys two stock exchanges
in Shanghai and Shenzhen dump equities in
search of less volatile alternatives. Since the start
of the year, the Shanghai Composite has fallen 9
percent.
Recent numbers out of China have shown that
the slowdown in the worlds second largest econo-
my is deeper than initially thought. Factory activ-
ity in August, for example, contracted for the 10th
month in a row.
The government has announced both mone-
tary and fiscal stimulus for the flagging economy
this year, but unlike the foreign investment com-
munity, domestic investors have failed to get ex-
cited by these announcements, Chan said.
While western watchers are looking for more
stimulus, the people closer to the market are look-
ing at the quality of the stimulus, he said.
Stimulus measures over the past, including the
$150 billion-plus in infrastructure spending and in-
centives for exporters, have failed to drive a sustain-
able turnaround in the market. While this did lead
to a temporary rally in the first week of September, it
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
soon fizzled out. (CNBC, 26 September 2012)
Honeymoon Over as Markets
Brace for Volatile Times
The message from this weeks sell off in global
stock markets could not be clearer: The summer
time rally, fueled by optimism over central bank
stimulus measures, is now over and its time to
brace for a period of renewed volatility and uncer-
tainty, analysts say.
The S&P 500 index on Tuesday suffered its
worst day in three months, while Asian stocks
slumped on Wednesday, with Japans benchmark
Nikkei stock index down 1.7 percent in early
trade. The sharp sell-off and renewed concerns
about Spains economy are likely to set the tone
for European markets on Wednesday.
A retreat in global markets, which have seen
stellar gains over the last three months, reflects a
shift in sentiment among investors, analysts say.
They add that now the worlds major central banks
have unveiled steps to help their economies, focus
has returned to the economic outlook, which re-
mains weak in much of the world.
The honeymoon period for markets is over.
There is a realization that central banks have laid
their cards on the table now and not much more
can be done to help growth, said Justin Harper,
market strategist at IG Markets in Singapore.
The European Central Bank (ECB) cheered
markets at the start of the month when it outlined
how it would help bring an end to the euro zone
debt crisis with a plan to buy the bonds of those
euro zone countries facing high borrowing costs.
Markets got another boost two weeks ago when
the Federal Reserve unveiled an aggressive asset-
buying plan to boost the U.S. economy and revive
employment growth, while the Bank of Japan sur-
prised markets last week when it delivered its own
monetary easing measures.
Protests in Spain on Tuesday against unpop-
ular austerity measures, meanwhile, act as a re-
minder that the euro zones debt crisis is far from
over. (CNBC, 22 September 2012)
Storm Clouds Darken
Over Global Economy
Central banks recent aggressive policy actions
will not be enough to spur economic growth in
the remainder of 2012 and in 2013, economists
say, with the euro zone debt crisis expected to
rumble on, growth in Asia seen slowing further,
45
 and a recovery in the United States expected to be
disappointing.
Euro zone business activity dropped in Sep-
tember to its lowest since January 2010, data re-
leased on Thursday showed.
In China, activity for mainland factories
inched a bit higher in September from August
but still stretched into an 11th straight month of
contraction.
The numbers come just two weeks after the Eu-
ropean Central Bank (ECB) announced it would
buy unlimited amounts of short-term bonds in an
attempt to restore confidence and boost growth.
Since then, the Federal Reserve has also an-
nounced a new round of bond buying in an at-
tempt to tackle slow growth in the economy.
The Bank of Japan on Wednesday became the
latest central bank to boost its bond buying pro-
gram, hoping the purchases would help to keep
blunt the appreciation of the yen in order to boost
the countrys exports.
While Thursdays PMI figures might not yet
reflect the impact of the Fed and Bank of Japans
moves, many economists feel the measures will
prove to be too little, too late.
Even with policy action, economic growth in
major countries is likely to remain disappoint-
ing in 2013, Citigroup analysts said in a note to
clients.
The bank kept its 2012 global growth forecast
steady at 2.5 percent, but cut its 2013 forecast to
2.6 percent from 2.8 percent forecast last month.
Within that, we have cut our 2013 China
growth forecast to 7.6 percent from 8.0 percent,
with our 2012 forecast staying at 7.9 percent.
In all, over the last six months, we have cut our
2012 China growth forecast by 0.5 percent and cut
our 2013 forecast by 1.0 percent.
This is among the sharpest pace of downgrades
seen in recent years, Citigroup said.
The bank also sharply cut its Japan growth
forecasts.
Todays figures confirm we are in a serious
dip. It is hard to see how we will get out of this
again, Carsten Brzeski, senior economist at ING
told CNBC.com.
In Europe we see the same old story. South-
ern Europe is in a deep recession and Germany is
keeping the euro zone afloat, he said.
Meanwhile China faces problems in commer-
cial property with signs of a bubble, Brzeski said,
while the United States sometimes looks like a
46
southern European country that needs structur-
al reforms, has an ailing housing market and by
U.S. standards high unemployment.
ING expects the global economy to expand by
2.4 percent this year and 2.8 percent in 2013, but
does not expect the euro zone to return to growth
until 2014.
Double Trouble in Europe
The euro zone faces additional complications if it
continues to see the divergent economic growth
rates it is currently witnessing.
Thursdays PMI readings were better than ex-
pected for Germany, but below forecast for France.
Such a divergence makes policymaking even
harder in a region already troubled by an in-
ability to set different interest rates for different
economies.
While the likelihood of a Greek exit from the
euro zone will continue to add to uncertainty,
Spain and Italys finances will also remain a cause
for concern, fueling growth fears.
Meanwhile Spain and Italy will likely tap the
ECBs Outright Monetary Transaction program,
the new bond buying scheme announced earlier
this month, Citigroup said, but the ultimate out-
come in those countries was difficult to predict.
It is unclear how the near-term vulnerabili-
ties of Italy and Spain will be resolved. (CNBC, 20
September 2012)
Trends Analysis: The above bullet pointed headlines and
wire service stories constitute but a brief sampling from
the ongoing onslaught of negative economic and geopolit-
ical news. The markets were in a downturn. The vaunted
stimulus/money-pumping schemes were running out of
steam, and the people were rioting.
Taken individually, such headlines are troubling.
When taken together, the casual reader, or even a reader
with a fixed ideology, or a Pollyanna, should be able to
see what those headlines add up to: No Recovery, More
Decline, and Potential Disaster.
Trendpost: What are the investment options in a No
Recovery, More Decline, Potential Disaster global
economy?
Precious Metals: Since we are not registered financial
advisors, and thus not permitted to provide investment
advice, speaking only for ourselves, we maintain our de-
cades-long strategy to buy gold and silver. With the world
money presses whirring away, we see no profit potential in
holding nations print on demand fiat currencies, espe-
cially when issued by nations that cant pay their bills and
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
that keep piling on more debt.
We also want to emphasis that while we continue to
forecast Gold $2000-plus, there is a real possibility for
market manipulation and/or government intervention.
Considering that rising gold prices are anathema to fiat
currency based central banks, it would be in their interest
to dramatically drive the price down.
Nevertheless, as we have also long maintained, for us,
gold is our security for our golden years. In an uncertain
world, where so-called legacy stocks and sound retirement
funds disappear overnight, gold and silver are tangible as-
sets that, even should they lose market value, will always
have value.
Again, understanding that we do not provide financial
advice, if you believe in gold and silver, one strategy to
consider is buying what you can afford each month. Thus,
over time, despite dramatic fluctuations, the price could
be favorably averaged out.
Real Estate: We are on record with our forecast that
various sectors have bottomed out. Despite the near cer-
tainty for continuing financial crises, we believe there are
investment opportunities in real estate. With the ability to
borrow at 3.5 percent for commercial properties that have
income producing potential, and the probability of higher
inflation (meaning paying loans back with devalued mon-
ey) we have personally invested in carefully selected com-
mercial properties.
One More Time No Recovery, More Decline, and
Potential Disaster is what we have been warning about
since the onset of the Panic of 08. We predicted that his-
tory would repeat itself, and it is now doing so.
First there was the Panic of 08, then the Great Re-
cession/Depression, followed by an intensifying currency
war. And, now the trade wars are beginning to heat up.
In the US, both presidential and congressional candidates
are ratcheting up the anti-China rhetoric, blaming Amer-
icas economic troubles on unfair Chinese trade practices
and currency manipulation:
News Analysis: Why China becomes
political card in U.S. elections
WASHINGTON As U.S. Republican presiden-
tial candidate Mitt Romney and President Barack
Obama are stepping up attacks in their election
campaigns against each other involving China,
the topic of China is quickly becoming a political
card in this years presidential elections.
Experts say the reason is that it is relatively
risk-free.
However, these attacks are worrying many, as
The Trends Journal Autumn 2012
they could lead to trade wars and further damage
the U.S. economy if the candidates were forced to
honor them next year when they were voted into
office.
The first draw of this round of attacks was made
by Romney. The former Massachusetts governor
told supporters at a Virginia campaign event last
week that it was Chinas undervalued currency
the Chinese yuan that forced U.S. manufac-
turers out of their jobs. His campaign, meanwhile,
released an ad blaming Obama for being soft
with Chinas cheating, turning a blind eye to the
fact that the Chinese currency has so far appreci-
ated more than 30 percent against the U.S. dollar
since Beijing began to reform its exchange rate
regime in 2005.
The Obama campaign responded this week by
criticizing Romney for sending American jobs to
China by investing in Chinese companies during
his tenure at Bain Capital, a private equity firm
Romney ran before entering politics.
The Obama administration also brought up a
major trade case at the World Trade Organization
(WTO) against Chinas subsidies to its automobile
industry on the same day as Obama visited the
industry-heavy swing-state of Ohio. The admin-
istration has brought up two major complaints at
the WTO against China in the past two months,
both during the same week as Obama visited the
crucial state.
These subsidies, claimed Obama at a
campaign rally Monday in Cincinnati, Ohio, di-
rectly harm working men and women on the as-
sembly lines in Ohio and Michigan and across the
Midwest.
The president also used the event to accuse
Romney, saying Romneys experience has been
owning companies that were called pioneers in
the business of outsourcing jobs to countries like
China.
Newspapers such as The Washington Post and
The Wall Street Journal ran editorials in the past
week, calling for a stop in China-bashing, while
cautioning protectionism tendencies exhibited in
both campaigns.
The business community also has reason to
worry. The Conservative policy group the Club
for Growth, which champions pro-business, free-
market views, issued a statement Monday, ac-
cusing both candidates of threatening to enact
anti-growth policies against China that will raise
prices, incite a trade war, and do real damage to
47
 our countrys economic recovery. (Xinhua, 19 the Iraq War that has turned into civil war before the
September 2012) experts and authorities call them endless wars?
n How many more bases must the United States open
up in Africa and how widely must it spread its military
The 1st Great War of the 21st Century presence throughout the Asian/Pacific theater before
Even though the media covered the intensifying China it becomes clear that a Chinese/Anglo conflict is in-
bashing and the possibility of a trade war, no one was rec- evitable?
ognizing the situation as an instance of history repeating n How many more conflicts must erupt between China
itself. The times had changed and the countries involved and Japan, Philippines, South Korea and Vietnam over
were different, but the underlying circumstances were disputed islands and resource-rich territorial waters
nearly identical. before it is called a regional war?
Just as the Crash of 29 was fol- n How long would it be before sim-
lowed by the Great Depression, mering political and social unrest
then currency wars and trade wars in Hungary, Belarus, Romania,
that led to World War II, so too, Bulgaria, Georgia, and the Cau-
the Panic of 08, followed by the cuses boil over into civil war and/
Great Recession currency wars, or regional warfare?
and trade wars will lead to The 1st n How many more threats must Is-
Great War of the 21st Century, that rael make against Iran before one
we have been forecasting. attacks the other and the major
In fact, the world was already at war: powers join in the conflagration?

n How many more riots and As with the economic headlines

protests would have to erupt in cited above, while all of these geo-
India, Spain, Portugal, Greece, political hotspots are serious and

Anthony Freda / Dan Zollinger

Egypt, Tunisia, South Africa menacing in their own right, once
and other depression-ravaged again the experts and authorities
countries before the experts and do not take into consideration the
authorities would call it class full extent of their explosive poten-
warfare? tial. Moreover, it is only when all
n How many more civil wars had are added up and viewed as a whole,
to break out in Syria, Libya, Ye- that what the future holds can even
men, Bahrain and other Middle East/North African/ be contemplated: The 1st Great War of the 21st Century.
African countries before the experts and authorities Whether or not it is already too late to do anything to
would call it regional war? forestall it is impossible say with certainty. But what is
n How many more people had to die in the decade- certain is that if that global prospect is not recognized and
long Afghan War (that has bled into Pakistan) and in acknowledged, it will very soon be too late. o

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