Trends March2017

1. Disperse AI medical diagnostics 
2. Global satellite internet 
3. The religious left
4. Phone hacking
5. Aging demographic 
6. False flag "attack"
7. Economic tipping point
8. Nanotech/AI sexbot in 2020
9. Aging cured for wealthy
10. Polygamy legalized

Trump False Flag

Professor Noam Chomsky has charged that it is possible President Trump will stage a terrorist attack in order to offset initial policy problems and quell opposition. Speaking with AlterNet, Chomsky suggested that Trump could organize a false-flag incident to rally supporters who are discovering that his “promises are built on sand”.

“We shouldn’t put aside the possibility that there would be some kind of staged or alleged terrorist act, which can change the country instantly.” Chomsky stated.

“In order to maintain his popularity, the Trump administration will have to try to find some means of rallying the support and changing the discourse from the policies that they are carrying out, which are basically a wrecking ball, to something else.” Chomsky said.

The professor also hinted that such a staged attack could be blamed on “vulnerable people” in order to bolster Trump policies.

“Maybe scapegoating, saying, ‘Well, I’m sorry, I can’t bring your jobs back because these bad people are preventing it.’ And the typical scapegoating goes to vulnerable people, immigrants, terrorists, Muslims and elitists, whoever it may be.” Chomsky added.

It isn’t clear why Chomsky believes terrorists should be viewed as “vulnerable”.

Chomsky said that Trump’s “rhetoric is about helping the working man and so on, but the [policy] proposals are savage and damaging”. He has previously spoken about the possibility of the September 11th attacks being a false flag operation, saying that while he acknowledges the full truth of the attacks has not been told, he does not believe they were staged by elements of the US government.

Deep State

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist."

- Dwight D. Eisenhower

"I saw that publishing all over the world was deeply constrained by self-censorship, economics and political censorship, while the military-industrial complex was growing at a tremendous rate, and the amount of information that it was collecting about all of us vastly exceeded the public imagination."

- Julian Assange

Some notable figures in the United States have for decades expressed concerns about the existence of a "deep state" or state within a state, which they suspect exerts influence and control over public and foreign policy, regardless of which political party controls the country's democratic institutions.

According to Philip Giraldi, the nexus of power is centered on the military–industrial complex, intelligence community, and Wall Street, while Bill Moyers points to plutocrats andoligarchs. Professor Peter Dale Scottalso mentions "big oil" and the media as key players, while David Talbot focuses on national security officials, especially Allen Dulles. Mike Lofgren, an ex-Washington staffer who has written a book on the issue, includesSilicon Valley, along with "key elements of government" and Wall Street, but emphasizes the non-conspiratorial nature of the "state".

Political scientist Michael J. Glennon believes that this trend is the result of policy being made by government bureaucracies instead of by elected officials.

Throughout history, state systems with outsized pretensions to power have reacted to their environments in two ways. The first strategy, reflecting the ossification of its ruling elites, consists of repeating that nothing is wrong, that the status quo reflects the nation’s unique good fortune in being favored by God and that those calling for change are merely subversive troublemakers.

When members of the military-intelligence establishment continually disobey civilian leaders (leak information, subvert elections, ignore official policy directives, etc.), civil-military relations break down. The democratic state is put at risk of becoming a so-called banana republic, subject to military coups, or a deep-state controlled autocratic state, similar to Turkey and Egypt, wherein former military and intelligence officers pressure a weak government to carry out their agenda. 

The threat is that when the policy preferences of unelected administrators in the military-intelligence bureaucracy diverge from those of elected leaders, the bureaucrats can choose not to carry out the orders of its civilian bosses. (For those who are still skeptical, Shields notes that “the armed forces sidestepped Clinton’s campaign promise to fully integrate gays into the military with virtually no consequence.”)

"Power is not a means; it is an end. One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power."

George Orwell, 1984