JHK’s Three-Act Play
I n case anyone didn’t get ISIL’s message from their latest video in which 21 Egyptian Coptic Christians have their heads sawn off, here it is: “We’re executioners, not warriors.” Those gouts of blood spilled on a Libyan beach amount to ISIL’s welcome mat to the mass execution of the Euro-American west. The dignity of a funeral is not even on the program.
What we’ve got now with apocalyptic Jihadism spreading clear across the region from Pakistan to Morocco, and Europe blandly ignoring it across the Mediterranean, is an epochal face-off that will change the world. It comes at an odd moment in history, namely as the massive oil wealth of the Middle East and North Africa enters decline. It was that oil wealth that provoked a population spike in a desolate corner of the planet the past century. Now there is a huge over-supply of young men there with nothing to do but act out their angry psychodrama over having no future. When a whole peoples’ prospects for a decent life on Earth dwindle to zero, is it any wonder that they become preoccupied with end-times visions of feasts and virgins awaiting in an after-life?
Partly what you’re seeing over there is an internal fight to control what’s left of the treasure. That battle has already had the strange consequence of disabling the oil production capacity in places like Iraq and Libya, where there is still a lot of oil, but not enough political stability to allow the complicated business of extraction and transport to take place. What’s more there has also been tremendous damage to the oil infrastructure in these places, some from deliberate sabotage, some from shelling and bombing, and a lot from sheer neglect and deferred maintenance. Oil refineries and transport terminals are very delicate machines that require constant loving care.
It’s self-evident now that ISIL would like to control as much of the remaining oil wealth as possible — though I doubt they have the competence to run it for long even if they appear to control the terrain. The Euro-American west always has the option of completing the destruction with bombs and missiles, but then they would also be destroying their own future oil supplies and hence their modern industrial economies.
The Big Prize, of course, is the grand fortress of Saudi Arabia. The kingdom is surrounded by Islamic maniacs now, with Yemen recently fallen to the south, the ever-hostile Iranian Shi’a across the Persian Gulf, disintegrating Iraq and Syria to the north, and the festering human compost heap of Egypt and then Libya across the Red Sea. And, of course, along the saddle of the Levant there is Israel with all its enemies and problems. Arabia has a new King, 79, rumored to be weak in the head. The oil revenue is way down and the population still grows, and too many young men have nothing to do but marinate in Wahhabist fantasies. If Saudi Arabia falls apart, it’s game over for modern life as the West has known it (and much of Asia now, too).
The USA, meanwhile, has managed to embroil itself in a completely unnecessary and idiotic struggle over Ukraine, a place of no real strategic importance to us. And in doing so we’ve managed to alienate perhaps the one nation with the will and the motivation to oppose Jihadism, namely Russia, with its vast southern border facing the immensity of Islamic Central Asia.
Europe, meanwhile, is preoccupied playing games with itself over money. Today is supposedly crunch time for Greece. The so-called Troika — the European Central Bank, The European Union bureaucrats, and the International Monetary Fund — still expects Greece to continue to pretend to pay back its debt. That’s been the meaning of “austerity” until now. But Europe is a gigantic debt minefield that no one can really walk across. Other parts of it than Greece are just waiting to blow up, and will, and it’s unclear whether Europe is even paying attention to the blood-red welcome mat that was laid out in Libya last weekend. The true meaning of “austerity” will become clear when Europe finds itself forced to fight World War Three at the same time that its banking system implodes.
Note: JHK’s 2015 Forecast is available now at this link: Forecast 2015 — Life in the Breakdown Lane
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Turkey has an army of 500,000 troops. Why must we fight their battles? http://youtu.be/GeyUSDDRczo
That’s how the war economy works.–War is our biggest export. Money is taken from the public sector and given to private interests. That’s it. We haven’t won a war since WWII. BUT we keep doing it. Why do you think that is?
Beingthere, you stole my rant. I am ex military, by way of Nam and Europe as was my dad in WW2, Korea and Nam. We think we have a powerful military because we have powerful weapons. Did that help us in Korea, Nam, Iraq and in any other middle east country?
We were annihilated in Nam by guys with homemade rifles who bought their uniforms from pajamagram who were ferociously brave and brilliant militarily. Ditto Korea. Our weapons, primarily now from the air work a lot better where there is minimal vegetation but even so they will fail against a determined foe who believe they are defending their homeland against a techno military that bombs from satellite input and drones controlled by nerds in leather flight jackets at Nellis AFB and Langley. Our military forces are mercenary forces who are employed by the War Department, cleverly renamed the Defense Department when in fact should be again renamed the Offense Department. A lot of these guys now and when I was in uniform are just like the dead end Islamic youths cited by Jim Kunstler who have nowhere to go and nothing to look forward to so they are easy prey to a recruiter with a red stripe on his pants who promises job skills, a regular paycheck and a chance to improve oneself , not realizing that they are cheap cannon fodder dispatched to try to maintain oil corridors and secure resource rich terrain owned by folks who really don’t like having occupying armies in their backyards.Our military knows that soldiers like this who have nothing left to lose will stop at nothing to defend what they perceive as their sacred vision and their home land. American military supremacy at least since the Korean War has been a myth.. One of my neighbors is a Korean Vet from the Eighth Army who was swept by waves of Korean and Chinese troops at the Chongchon River and and chased all the way to Seoul. If these Islamist Armies continue to acquire improved weapons we may find ourselves being driven out along with the Saudi Army which is like us primarily an Air Arm. It is high time that we leave these lands and stop interfering in other nations affairs. It is time for a new Isolationism movement. The place may soon turn into the world’s biggest ash tray but I think it is time to let those tribes slug it out among themselves.
Points well-taken, Patriot!
If these other ‘effing rag-heads lying round about the Middle East puffing their hookahs can’t KO these ISIS bunch who are in their own backyard, let ’em stew in their own juices. Everybody deserves what he gets.
Tired…MIGHTY TIRED, of “humping the boonies” for Wall Street and Defense contractor THUGS.
“Yes,” Gen. Butler, “war really is A RACKET.”
The real problem is that the system is like “The Producers”. Some privatized interests continue to make a killing and continue to gin up new wars for their own profit. It’s the hard power of the military while the soft financial arm of war—the banksters are fighting a global financial war. I say it’s the one-two punch of hard and soft power that will bankrupt us all in the process.
The fault is ours if we don’t define this and make it clear it is untenable.
We can’t fight wars through stalking horses on all fronts the world over.
New article in The Atlantic that attempts to explain what IS and The Caliphate is all about:
http://www.theatlantic.com/features/archive/2015/02/what-isis-really-wants/384980/
Their “journey with the prophet” gets really weird when they mention Jesus Christ being part of it as well because He is also one of their most revered prophets.
It seems to me like a mass psychosis is unveiling before our very eyes.
Rather than deal with them militarily and take our role on the stage of their bizarre and barbaric drama, I think the top psychologists and psychiatrists of the world should be summoned.
Nice to see America the Totally Awesome will be going out in a bang. Even as the arctic methane bomb is exploding and the Pacific is dying from the on going Fukushima collapse, the CIA organized ISIS and set it in motion (with Saudi funding) to provide a reason for the US to re-militarize the region and is poking Russia with a sharp stick to make it stop ‘attacking’ America’s dollar hegemony.
The arctic methane bomb and Fukushima can, of course, also be laid at America’s doorstep.
Is this country great or what.
The moslems have been marrying their cousins ever since Mohammad was asked if they could marry their cousins and Allah said yes.
So, being inbred they have genetic defects that affect them mentally.
It is as simple as that.
Good point!
Ann Barnhardt pointed this out as well 13 April 2011 in The American Thinker.
This Islamic outfit has some pretty bad breeding, hence bad offspring, hence bad actions. Viz:
“…No. There is something else. There is a catalyst — absent in every other culture on earth — that has poisoned the cultural soil, thus yielding the fruit of bad harvest for nearly 1,400 years. That catalyst is inbreeding. As a direct result, the Muslim population is mentally developmentally disabled on a mass scale.”
http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2011/04/the_keystone_of_the_islamic_mi.html
IIRC, Albert Einstein married his cousin…
“We’re executioners, not warriors.”
Speaking of executioners, America got another one of its own to add to the pantheon last week in answer to your call for men of valor.
“That that grins at you — that thing — through them” ~ Quentin Compson ruminating in William Faulkner’s The Sound and the Fury
The word cultivation comes to mind. We’re being cultivated, or at least most everyone is. The stubborn seeds, well, all we can do is watch and laugh and cry and pull our hair out — those of us who still have any left to pull out.
Hate Prime
See you’ve got a new post up. Off to read that now. Finishing up Wheelmen now. Quite a tale of deceit and intrigue that spread far wider than most (even I) suspected.
And this just in this morning, yet another hammer drops on what remains of Lance Armstrong’s big lie:
http://gulfnews.com/sport/lance-armstrong-hit-with-record-10m-bill-1.1458260
This one from SCA Promotions, an insurance outfit that was basically betting against him and the likelihood that he could keep reeling off TdF wins. Of course he had to sign affidavits swearing that he wasn’t doping or cheating to win them, so that all got scuttled when the truth finally came out.
Armstrong is perhaps the most the most public example of how easy it really is to pull off a fairly elaborate conspiracy involving a fairly large number of actors and a huge amount of money, most of whom were even basically honest, well intentioned people. His keys:
* Come up with a really big, really attractive lie and sell the shit out of it. In his case, Lance Armstrong, All-American boy, cancer survivor and super-human bike racer.
* Draw your accomplices in slowly until they too are compromised. Then remind them of that fact from time to time. Use both the carrot and the stick liberally as often as required to maintain discipline thereafter.
* Maintain an iron clad facade. Practice the lie and repeat it often. And if skeptics somehow find a crack, double down and attack!
* Spread the wealth around. This is where Armstrong eventually fucked up. He turned on former accomplices who were (rather amateurishly) trying to duplicate his fraud in his aftermath. He got greedy and they turned on him!
But of course the CIA, NSA, and all the various US agencies at work now have infinitely more game and resources at their disposal than Armstrong’s puny operation ever did, so one can only wonder what their playbook looks like. Maybe one day in the distant future someone will write a tell all. One can only wish!
What we’ve got now with apocalyptic Jihadism spreading clear across the region from Pakistan to Morocco, and Europe blandly ignoring it across the Mediterranean, is an epochal face-off that will change the world.
Sorry Jim, I’m not buying it. Most of it anyway. Are there a few militant Islamic wing nuts out there actually executing westerners, allegedly for “jihad” reasons? Almost certainly. But that’s the beauty of the larger plan. Brings to mind this exchange from a movie a few years back.
“Father Merrin: Especially important is the warning to avoid conversations with the demon. We may ask what is relevant but anything beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. The demon is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, Damien, and powerful. So don’t listen to him. Remember that – do not listen.”
Or this one, variously attributed to Poe and Ben Franklin:
“Believe only half of what you see and nothing that you hear.”
Words to live by these days.
It’s Poe. ‘Loss of Breath’ comes to mind but I could be wrong about the story.
While I don’t agree with everything, or even a lot, of what Kunstler writes he is absolutely spot on with this mornings post.
Spot on.
djc
The Islamic boogieman comes and goes in waves.
Throughout history they conquer and then get pushed back meanwhile the talking heads in the west pretend the crusades happened because the West was warlike and wanted to conquer the Middle East. Self loathing is a disease and Dhimmitude at best is it’s reward at worst is a dull rusty knife sliding across your grandchildrens throats fr refusing to submit and become a zombie calling itself a Muslim.
Funny then that the whole “zombie” phenomenon is entirely a western media creation, don’t ya think?
Western media has been complicit in the conditioning of the western public to see a boogeyman/zombie under every bed since at least the end of WWII, when they rather shamelessly borrowed the recently proven techniques of the Third Reich and made them their own. Of course Hitler was just borrowing those same techniques from those who had gone before him too, but one did have to admire his propensity for bringing them all together in such an effective little package. “Achieving interactive synergies through application of diverse but complementary marketing channels” might be the pseudo-intellectual bullshit words we’d use to describe it today. Back in the day we just called it plain old propaganda.
But you do have to give credit where credit is due. These motherfuckers are nothing if not ingenious in their application of the full spectrum lie.
I do not believe the whole “zombie” phenomenon is a “western media creation”, if by zombie you are referring to jihadism. Western media is doing its best to portray it as just an aberration of a peaceful religion, but those pesky Islamic fanatics just won’t play along.
Indeed but the term Zombie encompases so much more namely a single minded obsession towards some desired end like eating brains or creating a global caliphate. But but if we could just understand them some say….What is to understand you are either part of their group, a slave to their group(protected people paying Jhiyzia tax Dhimmi) or a dead person as the Copts, Zoastrians, hindus, bhuddists, and various wrong flavors is Muslim all over the eastern world have found out through out recorded history.
Never let a crisis be wasted that can further some goal that won’t be realised without it. I wonder what the Buildaberger convention will look like this year.
Well you know, perhaps it wasn’t such a great idea for the US/NATO to have transported these extremist Sunnis from Aghanistan to Yemen to Libya to bump off Gadhafi, and then off to Syria to kill Assad. And of course, to provide them air support everywhere we use them.
You do realize who these guys are, right? You do know these guys are US/NATO/CIA mercenaries, right? They’re our proxies?
And this fiery chaos they’re spreading across “MENA” and South Asia; that’s right out of Zbigniew Brzezinski’s “The Grand Chessboard,” if one reads it with an expansive eye. Note that the chaos and smoldering dumpster-fires of civil society form a perimeter around China, Russia, and the EU; the only perceptible potential rivals to US global supremacy; and also sit atop deposits of strategic resources and the routes such resources need to traverse to get to market.
If the strategy were to put a US boot on the throat of European energy supply, the only routes missing were those from Russia, which the takedown of civil society in Ukraine moves toward. One wouldn’t be too shocked to see a “spontaneous” color-revolution in Belarus or Turkey, or a “surprising” outbreak of extremist violence there either.
I agree entirely with Mr. Kunstler’s description of what we see. I think a deeper look at why we’re seeing it is in order, however. I see a dying Empire, being strangled by the internal contradictions of its finance structure with requires infinite growth in a finite world; willing to go to any lengths whatsoever to cling to supremacy, by beggaring all potential rivals if necessary.
Otherwise, why would the US unfailingly, without exception, foster and side with the very worst elements of every society in which we intervene? Just the law of averages would suggest we’d side with somebody who isn’t out-of-control with bloodlust, but I’m not seeing it. Perhaps we actively engage such elements because they can’t surrender, can’t compromise, and can only destroy any civil society and governance. Who would take their surrender? Any ISIS heart-eater, or Ukie Nazi, who waved the white flag would find that to be their final earthly gesture. Nobody in his right mind would do anything but execute them summarily. So those are very reliable proxies, if the goal is to atomize society such that the only way to recover resources is to have the ability to project military power anywhere at any time. And which nations on Earth have that ability?
I think, for once, we’re not being cynical enough.
I think, for once, we’re not being cynical enough.
Good post, and a rejoinder:
Is it even possible to be cynical enough these days?
No matter how cynical I get, I just can’t seem to keep up.
Cynical….Brings to mind Lily Tomlin’s great quote:”No matter how cynical I get I find I just can’t keep up.”
I like J H K’s synopsis very much – overall. The devil’s in the details though, isn’t it?
Consider for instance;
UN documents regular contact between IDF and ISIS:
http://www.haaretz.com/news/diplomacy-defense/.premium-1.630359
These are regular, well documented meetings… And UN observers scratch their heads about it. And of course this:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article40803.htm
Who are ISIS allies? Look no further than NATO. US/NATO assets spend a lot of time ‘trying’ to hit ISIL and actually bombing Assad’s forces instead. The result is that ISIL’s territory doubles and “triples”…
As I’ve mentioned before on CFN, I try not to assume that I know much about the loyalties and motivations of Middle Eastern players – because everyone has been caught lying over and over again… And most often the ‘reasons’ why are nonsense.
“I think, for once, we’re not being cynical enough.”
I agree. I’ve been thinking that a lot since 2008.
How about those orange jumpsuits. Looks like Orange is the new black if you get my drift.
Yes, orange conveys the essential gravitas and appeal that I so like to see in a faux terrorist group whose sole purpose is the terrifying of the somnambulant American Sheeple as they gaze blankly at their assorted communications and entertainment devices.
Excellent post. Not just because it reflects a lot of my thinking, but because of new (to me) ideas – most especially the mention of Brzezinski’s Chess Board and the events in Libya.
It is said that we created the Taliban to help fight the Soviets in Afghanistan, and in the process the CIA funded and created al Qaeda. Also suggests the US can be found somewhere in the workings of ISIS. Pulling the strings; paying the bills. US troops are often killed and wounded with American-made weapons.
Also, when I read lurid accounts of beheadings I can’t help but think of thousands of Africans dying in ships as they were transported across the Atlantic to the New World. Or the thousands of African-Americans who lived in terror – a constant threat of random death – in this country for over 100 years! Or the thousands of Native Americans murdered in the Trail of Tears in America’s first act of germ warfare. The biggest problem with creating such monsters is the hyperbolic rhetoric we hear, and read, as people try to demonize the current monsters as though no such evil had ever been committed before. No solution will be found going down that same old path.
Seems odd to me that the US is spouting all this rhetoric when the Obama administration is turning towards Asia and the TPP. But he seems to be creating a future battlefield in the Persian Gulf.
Jon Stewart recently reported on US weapons sales to nations in that oil-shipping corridor. Most interesting to me was Qatar. Got $11 Billion worth. Population about 800,000. That’s $13,750 per person. But look at a map. Qatar is a tiny peninsula that sticks out into the Gulf like a little boy’s peepee. Great place for a fortress. Paint a great big red bulls-eye on Qatar!
Also, there are millions of men AND women with nothing to do around the word. And plenty of work to do if our priorities weren’t so fucked. In the US alone millions of hours are needed just to modernize our crumbling, inefficient and VERY expensive transportation infrastructure. But the Capitalists are more interested in keeping us shopping for gadgets and absorbed in mindless fantasies. And staring at that damn “smart” phone screen.
This is the death of Capitalism. I picture a beached whale slowly dying – and stinking to high heaven.
The United States has been financing our “enemies” for quite some time. Case in point would be the financing of Hitler by Ford and other U.S. industrialists during WW II. Yet most Americans do not know of the book “Trading With the Enemy” and would be shocked to know how many U.S. “Remington” rifles killed Americans back in the day.
Watch the YouTube video “JFK to 9/11: Everything is a Rich Man’s Trick” for detailed analysis of corporatists financing both sides in war.
Re |”The United States has been financing our “enemies” for quite some time. Case in point would be the financing of Hitler by Ford and other U.S. industrialists during WW II. Yet most Americans do not know of the book “Trading With the Enemy” and would be shocked to know how many U.S. “Remington” rifles killed Americans back in the day.”-abby.
Yes. Thanks for this. There’s a reason a career ‘imperial stormtrooper’ like Gen. Smedley Butler would testify to Congress about a coup being organized by Prescott Bush and Collaborators back in 1934, and why he would finish his career with the book ‘War is a Racket’… He had a conscience and testicular fortitude, that’s why.
Oh, and isn’t it funny how we seem to forget about the Bush Family commitment to trading with the Nazis during WW2 – to make money by killing the ‘Greatest Generation’ – and what that led to: a legal slap on the wrist (funds frozen).
When take into account the Bush Family friendliness to the House of Sa’ud and the Bin Laden clan, their consistency seems almost commendable.
Well, at least they’ve clearly picked a side.
😉
Cheers!
Excellent analysis of the US Empire’s fingerprints on weapons sales and support for jihadists all over but starting with Afghanistan, still unwon and untameable decades later.
The reference to General Smedley Butler is spot on and it appears we have a modern apostate in Colin Powell’s chief aide, Lawrence Wilkerson, who actually referred to Gen Smedley Butler and the Wars for private Corporate interests on DemocracyNow a few weeks ago!
http://www.democracynow.org/blog/2014/12/23/how_the_iraq_war_began_in
“…Go back and look at Marine General Smedley Butler, in his testimony to the then Armed Forces Committee in the Congress, where he essentially compared himself to Al Capone, and he said, “Al Capone operated on one continent, I operated on two. I was a criminal for American commercial interest.” We have invaded someone or interjected our military force into someone’s territory in the Caribbean about 35 times since 1850. This is our hemisphere. The Monroe Doctrine is still operational. And we seem to think that we can interfere in anyone’s country at any time. 2002, we tried to foment a coup in Caracas to overthrow Hugo Chávez.”…
The elite is turning on itself!
A sure sign the Empire is crumbling under its own lies, destruction and corruption which is just too obvious to cover up
Kooks to conspiracies like moth to a flame.
Just to be clear Frank’, I’m not interested in ‘conspiracies’, especially in the American context (discipline is lacking).
But history, established track-records, long-term commitments I *am* interested in.
Families inherit commitments, that can’t be helped and It’s *helpful* to remember who these people are. That they’re part of an economic elite in this country that doesn’t give a rat’s *ass about professed American Values. They’re only here for themselves.
Kooks to conspiracies like moth to a flame.
That’s always the first line of defense, isn’t it? And why conspiracies always find such fertile ground.
I read a lot about what I call “Who helped Hitler,” and find more of this all the time.
Thanks for that title. Another is “Hitler’s Cartel.” It’s about IG Farben, and it provides a glimpse of their dealings in the US – with Standard Oil, e.g.
I still ask “How did Hitler do it?” An amazing amount of work was done in less than six years – and Germany has very little in the way of natural resources. Hitler had to import a lot of scrap metal and iron ore for example. As did Japan, who got a lot of scrap metal from the US.
A lot of the world’s Capitalists got rich on the run-up to WWII, and then much more on the war itself, and then very much more since.
Ka-Ching!
Sorry, that title is “Hell’s Cartel”!
This is the death of Capitalism. I picture a beached whale slowly dying – and stinking to high heaven.
Great imagery!
I don’t know, swmnguy. I see ISIL as our Frankenstein’s monster. Sure. we created and used them to our advantage, but at some point we lost control. You can’t go around ridding Muslim countries of secular dictators like Saddam Hussein, Qadhafi, and eventually Assad without some serious blowback.
I don’t know either, “outsider.” These people certainly don’t come tell me what they have in mind. I only look at what’s in front of me, paying as much or more attention to what they don’t say than to what they do say; the white space on the page in addition to the printed text.
But I’ll be more inclined to change my mind once I see any of the bogeymen-du-jour do anything that inconveniences long-term US strategic interests, rather than invariably doing things that further those aims. Not the stated aims, of course; the aims that reveal themselves in patterns of behavior and action that contradict what’s said publicly.
In that regard, the US and all of these “monsters” have been incredibly consistent. For a long time.
Where do you people get the proof to support your absurd postulations? From the mouth of the babe posted before you? Even wing-nuts need a screw.
Mr. Frankiti, the floor is yours. Rebut away.
@Frankiti The internet’s a big place, and yet, remarkably easy to navigate. Why don’t you go find out yourself instead of inserting meaningless comments?
Gee Frank how about googling McCain admits to supporting ISIS. or add in the following words instead of funding. supports, arms, trains, intimately knows
Better yet take a look at Hillarys actions leading up to Benghazai then ask yourself what two seals where doing there looking for + or – 10,000 stinger missiles.
Try actually picking up a book or two and readig about how the United States created the Taliban and funded them through the Pakistani ISI with Hamed Ghul as the go between.
Hmm… a lot has happened after the staged moon landings and before the orchestrated demolition of the WTC.
Creation is different than control… you do understand that? For if, entertaining your belief, the US had a hand in the creation of the Taliban, that does not mean it controls it.
All your silly plots invite the deus ex machina of weak conspiratorial plots; the US, the illuminati, the 1%, etc.. ad nauseam
Food for thought, SWMN. Much of what you say is obviously true, and the rest is all too plausible. A nice analysis.
Thanks. It’s just a theory, based on watching and listening, and bearing in mind that I’m being lied to in order to herd my opinion in a direction. I posit my observations to groups of people whose opinions I’ve learned to respect, What I really like is when somebody can present a convincing rebuttal. I’d rather be wrong and learn something than go on thinking I’m right, to silence.
What we’re being told doesn’t match up to the actions we see. That’s the first sign that something’s going on, and if you can’t tell who the sucker is at the poker table—well, you know who it probably is.
“Partly what you’re seeing over there is an internal fight to control what’s left of the treasure. That battle has already had the strange consequence of disabling the oil production capacity in places like Iraq and Libya, where there is still a lot of oil, but not enough political stability to allow the complicated business of extraction and transport to take place.”
Unlike 2011, when the Arab Spring caused oil prices to shoot up over $100/barrel for the first time since the Great Recession began, the current instability hasn’t done much. In fact, the story seems to be gas rises as oil stalls. I just checked Oil-Price.net and oil has been bumping up against ceilings below $55 for WTI and $60 for Brent. So far, the markets seem unconcerned, although you may be right that they should be.
As for Americans, they’re far more interested in Fifty Shades of Grey than in any of the serious issues you’ve pointed. Once again, Americans have made their screwed-up priorities quite clear and chosen entertainment. They’ve long ago given up on reality and have decided to settle for a good fantasy.
Chris Hedges has an interesting article today about porno and the end of the world:
http://m.truthdig.com/report/item/pornography_is_what_the_end_of_the_world_looks_like_20150215
Thanks for the link. That is an interesting article, and a notion I’ve thought of for a while. I’ve always found porn fairly boring, and hadn’t paid much attention to it. Then a couple years ago, I found myself in Las Vegas, at The Cosmopolitan for a week or two working.
The Cosmopolitan, if you don’t know, is right on the Strip next to Bellagio. It caters to a young, highly-affluent scenester crowd. Vast Serengeti-like herds of 20-somethings from LA, or trying to seem like that. Young men covered in tattoos, wearing baseball caps on sideways, sneakers, jeans and t-shirts; but the ensemble costs in the mid-4-figures, rather than the $50 total when I wear nearly identical clothing (but with the ballcap on frontwards, unless I’m wearing a face shield or respirator).
It was the girls who stopped me short, however. They were all dressed like porn blowup dolls. Teetering around on gigantic spiked heels like something out of a KISS video, tiny little dresses, tattoos, garish makeup making their skin and hair look like plastic, and glassy eyes.
Porn is the fashion-setter in America today. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t noticed it before, but once I saw it I couldn’t un-see it, and it’s everywhere. I don’t move in such circles anymore, but I still can’t conceive of any of the women I’ve known, pursued, lusted after, been friends with; none of them would want to send out that message.
I have a 14 year-old daughter. She goes to a public high school, and while it’s Minneapolis and not LA or anyplace “stylish,” she is certainly aware of popular culture and fashion trends. As soon as I saw that apocalyptic bacchanal at the Cosmopolitan, I had a long conversation with her, web-surfing and looking at “fashionable” internet images with her. I asked her to describe them to me; to tell me what the people were trying to communicate about themselves and their attitudes and expectations, from themselves and from their world. My daughter was right on it, and even more incisive and despairing than I was. She described a whole generation of kids, male and female, pretty much trussing themselves up like Thanksgiving turkeys for the slaughter. And she had no sympathy.
I do have some sympathy, but mostly I’m really grateful that my kids see no attraction in that casual self-destruction, and do seem able and very willing (too willing, if you ask me) to get involved in real, emotional, sweaty relationships with actual human beings.
What a repulsive nightmare of self-debasement we offer our young people. As always, the hope lies with those who refuse to take us up on it.
And yeah, the “liberals” who think porn is about self-expression are as stupid as you’d expect them to be.
I think the tatted up culture with the scales (large ear piecings) are a self loathing group. Lost and confused sad.
From what I can get out of some of my younger coworkers, they tell me they know it’s a disaster and they’re gonna enjoy everything they can before it falls apart for them.
Everytime I’ve broached the subject of the state of this soon to fall apart union with people of younger generations. They totally agree with me and doubt the country will be a place to raise children.
So my gut tells me that indeed they want to escape for now before they get sucked down into a very bad—should I say in lieu of our weather? VORTEX.
“Now there is a huge over-supply of young men there with nothing to do but act out their angry psychodrama over having no future.”
Yes but it is not Wahhabist fantasies they marinate their jucies in. It is ‘Grand Theft Auto’ and ‘Halo 3’. Only their fingers are occupied. Their minds have no clue they have no future. As to the young men in the Middle East they have plenty to do. Hate can be a full time occupation.
As to the position of this weeks article I disagree. The ISIL message is not exaggerated but perhaps their strength and unity is.
Done for the purposes perhaps of finding something for our unoccupied young men to do. Perhaps a level head and not panic should prevail though that would not be what American leadership desires. Something must be done to maintain the status-quo and nothing like a shooting war does it better. The rich get richer and the poor get poorer. Dissent gets suppressed and the stock market soars till it doesn’t any more. Reason and higher faculties of thought are suppressed by hate and opposition gets confused and de-railed.
And that is exactly what the leadership of our sanctioned American political parties want.
America’s politics are vapid in part because of the swing vote and who comprises it, suburban soccer moms. Lose them lose the next election.
Oh, that is choice
It’s all t he fault of the soccer moms! What does that mean?
Th banksters and the oligarchy are wonderful fine upstanding citizens who really care about us all.
They don’t even want a nation state when they can have the world!
Seems to me that we’re getting a taste of the kind of fear that ordinary folks in the MENA are subjected to on an increasingly regular basis…. crushingly despotic governments, chokingly restrictive moral codes enforced by religious “leaders”, and fire and death from above from (not so) well intentioned western nations. Barbaric and sinister and evil that it is, beheadings and other atrocities on YouTube are just a monster’s reflection in the mirror, with maybe some bad lighting.
Where’s that thumbs up button…?
2014 did suck, JHKS’s right, with no reSolutions to our current and oncoming problems. The poor Ukraine, but i’s a cake walk to what it will be like here eventually. Valor then may involve thinking by men (and women too) about current and forthcoming reality. We should go to the World Made by Hand of our own volition. We’d rather be entertained by reality TV.
Saw JHK in Prophets of Doom the other day. The title does suck. JHK cleaned up, in a manner of speaking, with few words. We get much of our oil from Canada, probably the tar sands, so we may be able to keep the circus going for a little while. As the World Burns the newest soap opera.
Saw JHK in Prophets of Doom the other day.
Saw that a while back and he did indeed clean up. Actually came off as the only “reasonable adult” in the room, who’d a thunk?
I’m curious as to why a “whole peoples’ prospects for a decent life” depend on oil? Surely, there have always been other and more, decent, ways of structuring one’s life.
No, Europe is not paying attention to the “blood red welcome mat” in Libya because 1. they were not European and 2. they were Christian.
I think China, as well as Russia, might have the will to resist jihadism if they haven’t drunk too deeply of the “Euro-American” koolaid.
In most of these countries, a great deal of what you might call “the accoutremout of modern life” is directly subsidized. Gasoline, bread, housing, water, etc. Who finances this enormous subsidy? Europe and America, mostly with the WHO and UN, as usual.
For example the. US floated Egypt to the tune of 10s of billions year, for the last several decades. When regimes changed, the money kept rolling. Last week the announcement that Dassault, the French version of Lockheed Martin, would be selling Egypt advanced fighter jets, in a billions dollar deal, giving the impression of a short of internal NATO economy where Egypt is a sort of means to an end, which is creating a bulwark against ISIL. Same sort of play going on in some degree in all the mideast countries.
From what little I have read, Egypt is extremely poor and its population skyrocketing.
Thats our USA tax dollars at work. Enabling Egyptians to breed more people and more misery.
Yikes.
Thats our USA tax dollars at work. Enabling Egyptians to breed more people and more misery.
That’s an indirect effect, but yes. Of course the real money is killing them all again once they breed!
Read sleeping with devil…this has all been done before and it lead to 9-11.
Yep. We all thought Wag the Dog was a goofy, far-fetched movie script, when in fact it was a documentary of sorts; the basic script for things to come laid out for all to see as a form of in your face bromide. They were telling us loud and clear and in no uncertain terms what they were about to do to us, knowing full well that the American Sheeple were too stupid and apathetic to do a damn thing about it, even if they did somehow catch on. Once again, when it comes to lies, these basic truisms still apply: Go MASSIVELY big or stay at home, repeat the lie over and over again until your dying day even if it’s subsequently proven to be a lie, and mix in some occasional truth for effect as well to keep them off balance.
You know I thought about what film would they put the ultimate clue in and then it hit me. “The Devil’s Advocate.” So I went back and watched it. Amazingly near the beginning of the movie Alice Lomax recites Revelation 18 and Kevin finishes it. “Fallen, fallen is Babylon and has become the dwelling place of demons. For in 1 hour thy judgment has come.” Then when we see Satan for the first time, he looks at Kevin crossing the street and then descends via a subway to the nether world. Immediately after this there is a weird time lapse film of the WTC with the Woolworth Building in the foreground. Very strange, almost spell like. The first tower fell in 56 minutes. Both towers fell within an hour. Fallen, fallen… one for each tower.
Good stuff! I’ve long thought that the passages in Revelations, metaphoric though they are, were references to the late 20th/21st century US, as the ultimate form of subservience and allegiance of mankind to the forces of greed, lust, and power – man vs man in short. I think A LOT of people are beginning to sense that now, even if they can’t put it into words, the conscious mind being but the very tip of the iceberg that is our entire being.
“Truth” to TPTB is like sunshine to a vampire.
Had it not been for the Snowden revelations the American people would still believe they have the slightest bit of privacy left in their lives.
All the torture was a secret until various whistleblowers let that ugly crime out of the bag. Of course the only ones punished for that crime were the likes of Kirakao who spent 3 years in prison. He said the torture program was “Cheney’s baby” yet what is Cheney doing today? A book tour? A $200k speech for Jeb?
And now we have the TPP being negotiated with such a level of secrecy that even members of Congress are only allowed to read certain parts behind closed doors with minimal note taking and are not allowed to bring any aides with them (especially lawyers!).
JFK said “Secrecy in an open society is repugnant.”
Now here we are.
One should follow the moves of Negreponte, if you want to mention torture from South America to the ME. What an illustrious career.
On Feb 23rd on HBO Citizenfour is a 2014 documentary film directed by Laura Poitras concerning Edward Snowden and the NSA spying scandal.
http://www.hbo.com/documentaries/citizenfour#/
And of course JFK got a bullet through his brain, a few times over just to be sure, for his troubles. Go figure. I won’t even bother speculating on who might have been involved, other than LBJ and the CIA. But they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
Nation-states that have actual response/revenge requirements regarding the ISIL pathologic entity: Jordan, Japan and now Eygypt need to get their collective heads together and form an actual military plan.
A division or two from each of these countries might meet and train in Jordan for several months to prepare for contact with the enemy.
While forces are training, diplomatic arrangements would be made to non-hostile or allied states (or proto-states such as the Kurds have) to see if a cordon sanitaire can be devised around ISIL controlled territory. This means Turkey walling off the north; Kurdish Peshmerga a border on the east; Iraqi forces ( I still think they cannot be trusted to do anything) in the south, and some agreement with Rump Syria’s Al_Assad government to have some delineated line in the west.
Once trained the combined military forces, with U.S. and coalition air power (since they are already there) are invited into Iraq and are let loose to seek and destroy all ISIL forces.
The ISIL patological entity is not a signatory to any Geneva Convention and as a result of their practices of enslavement, butchery and cold-blooded murder for-the-fun-of-it certain responses can be afforded to them to include:
-Bacon flavored napalm employed for difficult to reach resistance.
-Japanese forces are encouraged to bring their katanas for extra curricular activities with any ISIL fighters.
– All ISIL participants are to have their remains cremated with swine for good measure.
Only the most extreme actions will be understood by the ISIL pathological entity. The world had better start using some of its raw power to respond to it before it metastasizes further.
Alas, the metastases are all within our own borders and they wear nice suits and quote bible verses for effect. They hide in plain site and defy you to identify them, knowing full well that you won’t dare, even if you could.
Even worse to me – they do so in the knowledge they will never have to face an honest challenge from a US politician!
The most dangerous people in the world are religious fanatics – of any “belief.” For they think their belief system is Absolute Truth, and no one will even question that.
Note, e.g., how Sen. Imhofe (R) solved the question of human agency in global warming. God is doing it so there’s nothing we an do about it.
Are we not lucky to have him among us with his hotline to the Almighty? Guided by this insight to lead us forward into – what exactly?
And the Democratic Party? Utterly silent.
Yes, certainly, there are pathological entities aplenty here in the U.S., yet most are not the metastases of the ISIL pathologic entity. Pathologies here, as you point out, wear suits and some quote scripture; some Koran; many are atheist; and an abundant number are Satanists. Many are unknown to the lumpenproletariat and I also agree with you that they defy us to identify them.
But I think many of us at the CFN know EXACTLY who they are.
The pathological entities you refer to are long term projects as is the Jihadist disease. I am only addressing the ISIL pathology here as it is immediate, acute and requires complete eradication
I wasn’t just referring to preachers or religious people. That was a broad brush description of a whole class of people ranging from pols, corporate heads, military heads, intelligence agency spooks, misc movers and shakers in the business world, and all the rest.
Having women in the military (I believe the Kurdish forces are about 40% women) would also make the ISIS brigades wince.
Of course even if your “ISIS destroyed and degraded” wet dream were to come true there are plenty of other radicalized Muslim boys coming of age to keep the notion of “blowback” alive and kicking.
It is like those pesky ducks at the carnival. The more you shoot over the more that keep popping back up.
I think a “smarter” tack needs to be taken. Get all the greatest Imams in the world together to tell all their little Wahhabist acolytes that they will NOT get fifty virgins when they die as soldiers for the “Caliphate” and then getting the international bankers to “follow the money and oil” so any bankers/corporatists found to be dealing with them will be indicted and imprisoned.
Of course this would have to include any intelligence agencies as well who might be trying to “stir the pot”.
Abby, I disagree with two of your points:
The ISIL pathologic entity doesn’t give a rotten damn who opposes them, as long as it is not a well-equipped, professionally lead military determined, with political and popular support, and with the simple objective, to extirpate them.
Secondly what I have proposed “ISIL degraded and destroyed” is not a “wet dream.” I would like to suggest it is a practical plan to address this rapidly growing cancer. The problem is that there exists no political will to address it head on.
The same political will that is missing to do the hard work of governing – jobs for people; medical care, infrastructure that is modern and sustainable; immigration moratoriums etc
On the last point, the real “wet dream” is that a torrent of undigestible immigrants, with no work available, will make western Europe, North America and other first world countries much nicer. That is until they new arrivals decide that freedom of speech doesn’t apply to cartoonists; teenage females need to be raped for dressing provocatively, Sharia law trumps your law; that the call to prayer is compulsory in jurisdictions with certain folks in charge.
By the way if you hadn’t noticed the “smarter” tack you recommend is puzzling at best.
Sunnis hate Shia and Shiites hate Sunnis. Simple and true statement. Watch how they kill each other in the name of their Prophet. Men, women, children; anyone is fair game. Bombs in mosques are a favourite diversion. NO Abby, there will not be any Islamic Reformation anytime soon in your neighborhood or in the world. Quit dreaming and think critically.
Indeed, Kurd women are fighting ISIS on the front line, but what happens to them once they are captured is not pretty.
Or so i read in the British press, which seems to be more honest and comprehensive than the American press.
brh
Letting those young men with nothing to do move here is about as stupid as it gets. We have our own delusional state religion of diversity and multiculturalism which is intolerant of blasphemy. Western societies cannot talk about Muslim immigration in any meaningful way without admitting policies of the last fifty years were detrimental to western civilization. if we want the conditions they have there here, then we should just keep doing what we are doing now. I guess the top 0.1% wants things to be this way but the logical reason for it is not apparent from my lowly point of view
“The true meaning of “austerity” will become clear when Europe finds itself forced to fight World War Three at the same time that its banking system implodes.”
My neighbor across the street, a former economics advisor to Ronald Reagan’s cabinet, expects the French and Germans over the coming months to shun US directives vis-à-vis the Ukraine issue. Critical business and trade issues are at stake and it’s unlikely they’ll sacrifice those to appease the US. Employing that tact could buy them enough time to keep their collective banking system from imploding altogether and facilitate an alliance with Russia to resist ISIL.
http://www.thesisa.org
Germany and one other country have publicly met with Russia about the Ukraine event.
Curious as to when we will coax Georgia to kick Russia in the knee cap again.
I meant also to comment on how this resonates for me with the series of events called The Great Depression and Word War II.
Same scenario. Would make one suspect that war is part of the boom-and-bust cycle of “modern” (i.e., 19th century) Capitalism.
I am also amazed at the notion that the collapse of the world’s banking system is a FUTURE. event.
Can you actually reassemble a House of Cards?
Good point! The collapse is actually still an ongoing event, thanks to US Fed manipulation.
World War 3, the battle of Christians vs Muslims engineered by Jews. How can we be so stupid? Quite simply, we trust those in charge. Why? Because of prosperity lost. We had it. It’s gone now. Our leaders promise to get it back. We want it back. So we go along. It’s a story as old as the crucifixion. Paradise Lost. I caught the tail end of it. My parents had the real paradise. Today’s kids have inherited squat. What will happen when they realize the party is soon over? It won’t get to that point. World War 3 will provide the ultimate distraction.
Engineered by the Jews?? Fuck you, Seawolf.
Anymore like that and I’ll bounce you.
— JHK
What happened to the Jesuits?
What happened to our sanity?
Channeling Richard Nixon, are we?
I would really appreciate it if my comments were posted where I put them!
“the festering human compost heap of Egypt and then Libya”
Delicious!
“When a whole peoples’ prospects for a decent life on Earth dwindle to zero,” zero is right next to .99 and as the society of atomic scientists have said recently we are only a minute or two from high noon for an atomic world war. I do not observe that many here in this power mad failed state just how close we are to that war. Yes keep pushing Russia like we have for years and then when our corporate buddies in China join in on the “lets throw a lot of nuclear love notes to the big bully on the block and to hell with the consequences, although just hacking everything and coming up as they are definitely planning is to create a new world currency and sink the dollar like the Titanic.
The lack of culpability of the US and her proxy is telling.
Don’t even have to go back to removing democratic regime to install a puppet king, recent history will suffice.
The US uses Osama Bin Laden as a weapon against Russia in Afghanistan, and the monster turns on his sponsor. The idiots before Obama remove and alienate the Sunnis in charge of Iraq and they turn on their tormentor. Oh and kill about 100,000 people in the process.
Israel occupies and humiliates the Palestinians for decades and slaughters their population at will, in response to petty dangers of rocket attacks that nary injure anyone and they incubate hate.
Humiliation and subjugation IMHO is the prime culprit to sattisfy the thirst for oil.
Ironic how the extremists become more “hands-on” as the West gets further removed from their killing.
Kuntsler again is an alarmist here. The Jihadis are not an existensial threat to the US. This is the price of oil Jim shut up and pay.
Agreed.
I for one think the US is the an existential threat to the US.(depending on how you define the US)
I for one think the US is the an existential threat to the US.
Might be the smartest thing said on this board this week.
Historically the United States has been “the big bully on the block” from the genocide of the American Indians to slavery to our various CIA backed coups all over the world to our hundreds of military bases and on and on. It is just a fact of history that cannot be swept under the rug.
And we are still at it with Victoria Nuland fomenting a coup in Ukraine to the arming of “the rebels” (kissing cousins with ISIS) in Syria.
Changing the spots on the U.S. leopard though will prove to be impossible unless the American people awake from their technological slumber and start demanding the TRUTH from their leaders.
And if anyone thinks we will be getting it from Jeb or Hillary! and their evil twin, the mainstream media, think again.
Changing the spots on the U.S. leopard though will prove to be impossible unless the American people awake from their technological slumber and start demanding the TRUTH from their leaders.
Sadly, not going to happen anytime soon.
Regarding a loose end from last week’s thread……
Ozone,
How much is “enough” and who decides this?
Jim, if you’re reading, I notice what appears to be a conscious decision on your part to begin using the acronym ISIL rather than ISIS. Why?
The only solution to this problem is to kill our way out of it. These goofballs are running around in tennis shoes and Dallas Cowboys tee shirts without any helmets. The U.S. Marine Corps has a solution to this problem if we had a President with any balls, a Congress with any balls and a society with any balls. Thin the herd. Cut out the cancer. Send them to paradise. And wrest control from animals that are breeding like rats and are a scourge on humanity. The U.S., in league with other nations in the area, could even get tacit support from Russia and China since everyone with a brain can see ISIS is bad for the world.
It will only work if they don’t have to worry about collateral damage. Everyone over there needs to understand attacking western civilization is not in the best interest of their civilization. Of course it would easier to just export those that are here and let them continue fighting there
The members of ISIS are not only barbaric but they are cowards as well as they morph themselves on an almost daily basis in and out of the towns they are holding. One minute they can appear as a sheep herder the next they can be seen riding atop an ISIS jeep with a flag in one hand and a sword in the other.
Which of course endangers civilians.
That’s a compelling, if totally erroneous, picture you paint there, richsob. Thanks for playing and do partake of the complimentary psychotic meds we’ll be sending your way later today.
The battle of good and evil is infinite. As that wise old Zen Master said good and evil and the mind is lost. God threw us out of the Garden when we ate from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. Hey there is that other tree ,the life tree. Time to get out of the political economic religious quagmire and gain some true understanding of life.
Cut an apple in half and see why. It’s a pentagram. That is the knowledge that man is forbidden, the knowledge that will make him a God.
A Moony once proudly told me the forbidden fruit was a pear – the subtext (in this case, the real text) being: You idiots had it all wrong all this time.
If you cut inside a Pear you find a stone. Perhaps an argument in favor of Islam which worships a Stone fallen (as a fruit falls) from Heaven?
That is the knowledge that man is forbidden, the knowledge that will make him a God.
The knowledge that man is “forbidden” is the one that he’s NOT forbidden. The idea/”knowledge” that he IS god, which he currently has. Not working out so well so far, is it?
We are all gods. Divinity is within. Those going towards being an advanced soul know.
So ISIL is the new boogeyman to keep the defense industry maw engorged in new contracts for ever increasingly useless weapons like the F-35 When will we ever learn. I well remember the neocons on the telly during the run up to the Iraq debacle twittering how wonderful it would be to have Israel surrounded by democracies! Regime change ya see. Piece of cake. Bomb them back to the stone age. Bomb,Bomb Iran chanted that useless idiot McCain We are on a course to self destruct as we are controlled by venial self seekers who think they can insulate themselves from the looming implosion by moving to islands or mountain redoubts.
You’ve got it!
When will we ever learn? Never as long as it’s so profitable not to.
And staring at that damn “smart” phone screen. – Gutenberg
===============
I don’t own a smart phone and I’ve never “texted.” It drives me wild (as it obviously does you, GG) when 9 out of 10 people around me are staring at smart phone screens – my kids in particular – as though there’s nothing else in the world to do.
Like Doug Casey like to say, “I am not going to spend my life interacting with a tiny electronic device.” Amen to that brother. Amen to that.
Who needs a Smart phone when you’ve got a pyramid?
What drives you nuts, quite literally, about Smart phones and people texting in your presence is that you can’t correct their grammar and you know they’re making mistakes all over the place. I would think it’s enough to put you in a straight jacket.
The Islamic State has cell phones. In fact, the Islamic State is the Stone Age meets The Net.
Mary Christmas!!
http://imgur.com/Tiqw9h1
Ha! It’s not alabaster but it’ll do. It looks like there are two pyramids in that photo — did you build two, or did you inspire the drunk neighbor to get off his duff and build one too? If he hasn’t he should. It will change his misfortune to fortune as it did for you.
I’ve built two. The first, way off in the distance, some 6-7 years ago of landscaping concrete block, 5′ square at the base vs 6′ square for the new one.
…and “Mary” was deliberate, wpa…..Jesus, I didn’t think I’d need to point out the obvious.
They have their own slick magazine and a publicist too!
@JHK: “It’s self-evident now that ISIL would like to control as much of the remaining oil wealth as possible — though I doubt they have the competence to run it for long even if they appear to control the terrain. “
Daesh was created by Paul Bremmer and George W. Bush. Daesh ran Iraq until Sadaam Hussein was taken down by Bush.
Daesh is a resilient Sunni organization, trained and educated. In the towns Daesh has taken they have already proved their ability to provide civilians with health care, food, energy, and social services. They are competent. They can also run oil fields and refineries.
Perhaps you want to believe Daesh is incompetent. Too much wishing and hoping can be dangerous. It is best not to underestimate enemy capability.
Like a Japanese soldier in the jungle for 70 years not having got the word that the war is over, once again WPA-CCC (whose New Deal acronyms suggest wandering in the wilderness for more than 70 years) fails to disappoint.
Exactly who’s the enemy? Are we shadow boxing in the global war arena?
The New World Order is the enemy. They plan to use Islam against the West in order to cancel both out. What other reason could there be for importing millions of these devils into the West? We don’t need them as workers anymore if we ever did. The economic argument falls flat. They take more than they give so the Social Security argument falls flat as well.
I do admire your simplistic view of things Janos. I only wish I could share them. You’re holding on to a world of yesteryear where things were so literally black and white and simple. A world I grew up in too, and in so many ways, deeply miss. But it might be time to grow up and admit that it ain’t the world we live in now. And it might also be time to admit that people who don’t pass your racial purity test don’t necessarily mean to do you harm. Further, it might even be time to admit that many of the “racial devils” you’ve conjured up in your overactive imagination might just possibly exist within you’re/our own white race! Just a thought.
DA certainly knows it’s fruitless. But I will say I grew up in the fifties and the world really wasn’t this black and white even then.
So in other words, just lay back and try to enjoy the rape of our culture and the death of our race.
Greater complexity does not automatically mean more truth, but often just getting lost in the details. Details are important of course – but not at the price of losing the Vision.
George W. Bush created a quagmire. That’s it.
GWB’s coterie might have. GWB wasn’t nearly that smart.
Neither was Reagan. Oh, a lot of the same coterie!
[ Mary ] Christmas!!
[ Merry ] Christmas!!
begin using the acronym [ ISIL ] rather than ISIS.
[ Daesh ]
As mentioned earlier, I’m onboard with JHK’s analysis, it is spot-on and witty… Except for this:
“The true meaning of “austerity” will become clear when Europe finds itself forced to fight World War Three at the same time that its banking system implodes.”-J H K.
Hmmm, not so sure that these barbaric idiots have the moxie to make it all the way into Europe, or anywhere outside of the Levantine political cesspool. They’re making real enemies faster than they can conquer them. They lack commitment and *focus*. I’m not impressed.
On the other hand, if the whole point of their existence is to create exploitable chaos, they’re doing a bang-up job. They *are* effective at that.
😉
Upon further reflection, they might succeed in getting unassimilated Muslims __purged__ en masse from Europe, diminishing their effectiveness further and creating even more enemies for them to manage…
I find it amusing that Americans seem to think that people in Europe (the French, the Germans especially) can’t turn on a dime and generate a whole lot of organized violence in a short period of time. They have a thousand-year track-record of doing just that.
Organized violence actually comes pretty naturally to Greater Europe.
Well there’s never been a European Culture where most people don’t believe in God, accept Homosexuality and Transgenderism, and have birth rates below replacement levels. In short, the majority are decadent, and many are very decadent. Whether Europe can throw off the American and Globalist yoke, and recover their soul in time is the question. Meanwhile the European Elite are using the Muslim crisis to further crush their own people: Germany just cancelled a huge cultural even supposedly because of fear of a Muslim attack.
Pacifism is decadence needless to say. Those who beat their swords into ploughshares will do the plowing for those who don’t.
“Pacifism is decadence needless to say. Those who beat their swords into ploughshares will do the plowing for those who don’t.”
It depends on how smart and well trained one is. One may just change sides and become a specialist whom the enemies depend on and whom they appreciate and pay well. Think of Werner von Braun and those many other German specialists who worked for the Americans as well as for the Soviets after WW2.
Another point is, that male specialists are now often faced with many restrains by gender politics, unfair female competition, bureaucracy and austerity measures.
Pacifism is decadence needless to say. Those who beat their swords into ploughshares will do the plowing for those who don’t.
Possibly. But you do realize your philosophy condemns us to mindless violence? Surely in the age of MAD and worse there must be a better way?
Janos is an Anarchist? Like Reagan?
And you spend 25 years in the army? A life misspent? For both you and the rest of us. Maybe you should have converted to the Quaker religion or become a Buddhist monk.
I have left a comment below, on some facts to show the extremely poor state of nowadays German army.
I do not believe that Germany or any other European countries can an will fight any real war today. We do not have the military hardware. What we have is mostly broken, we will be very short of ammunition, supplies and spare parts. Remember, that F and GB were running out of ammunition rather quickly when bombing Libya. Greece has not even bought a single shot for the impressive guns of their many new battle tanks.
If Islamic states would attack Europe, on which side would those European soldiers with oriental backgrounds and/or Islamic believe really fight?
Is there still anything which is worth to be defended in Europe? War is no game but it is very dangerous. One risks health and life when fighting in a war! At least for European men, Islam might bring liberation from feminism. Islam would bring more rights for men against women, easier divorce-rights and the right to marry up to three women. For well trained European men, whether they are soldiers, engineers or physicians, it would be beneficial to convert to Islam and change sides, since the new rulers would need them too.
One must see, that Europeans today often do not have any belief in anything. So there is nothing worth to fight for and risk health and life. Today everybody is only responsible for himself. You can not fight a war with this attitude. In recent years they have even build monuments for deserters in Germany and they have made clear to everybody that our once great heroes of war deserve no honor anymore. Thus he who would fight in the next war would just be stupid. Thus the smart ones will welcome the enemies, who ever they are, and collaborate. By the way, collaboration has a great tradition in Europe, especially in Germany, but in France too. Further more one should remember, that Europeans changed their religion more than once. Why not change it again and become Moslem’s if this has advantages, as big as preventing to fight in real battles and saving ones life and health? Our leading politicians already state as political correct, that Islam is part of Germany now.
Not so different here in America. Our state religion is multiculturalism and political correctness. Many join the military because they don’t know what else to do. Many have a patriotic flame from their up bringing as I do but the battles they fight are half hearted because that is the kind of people who are in charge high up the chain of command
Seriously? 20 People executed. Only 20 people in an insane part of the world. Woopity-doo. Ask any Egyptian coptic about living as a coptic in Egypt. This treatment is nothing new, except rather than being kidnapped and snuffed in the dead of night, here and there, they were executed en masse in front of a camera. Again ISIS has succeeded because all the Henny Pennys (sure, be clever and bring up Rumsfeld) are running in circles after reading Drudge talking about the end of the world and clashes of civilizations. The reality is there exists, in a vacuum of failed middle eastern states, a rogue murderous outfit that has run out of religious to recruit, and instead recruits sociopaths (many from the west, nourished on desensitization through video games and marginalization by way of emulation of black American culture [how many of these goons are former rappers?] ) as this is the nature of viruses. Like Ebola, the treatable strains were treated, and now the more virulent forms emerge… destroying their hosts quicker have emerged. It’s evolution of a rebellion. It’s not the end of the world, although both ISIS and Drudge are happy to have you believe so… more clicks on their pages. This too shall pass.
I agree with you that Copts getting killed by Muslims is nothing new – especially in Egypt, but “This too shall pass”?
Maybe not so much:
http://egyptianstreets.com/2015/02/16/64-isis-members-killed-as-egypt-launches-first-foreign-strikes-in-24-years/
Inciting a large-scale military incursion from Egypt is a big screw-up.
The Egyptian military junta is itching for something to turn internal aggression external, and a post-NATO invasion Libya, wallowing in ‘hell’s ditch’ might be lookin’ like just the right kinda dirty in this light… So to speak.
😉
You need to get out more Frankiti. And that channellock you’ve got applied to everything except FOX News ain’t doing you any favors either.
I can say the same for you inside this echo-chamber haunted by preppers, anti-semites, conspiracy theorists, and doomsday welcomers.
The reality is that only 20 people died. 20 people executed in a violent murderous part of the world. This didn’t happen in Boca Raton or Biarritz. It happened in Libya.
If you are surprised by this, or your emotions are stirred by this… it is you that needs to get out.
ISIS loves provoking your ilk.
You really have drunk deep of the magical Kool-Aid, haven’t you? Perhaps you’d better retake that 20th century American history survey course, or take one that isn’t conducted by the local Christian university. The fact that the CIA and it’s associated black ops government agencies have been conducting nearly open and transparent conspiracies (knowing that Americans are too stupid and apathetic to give a shit either way) to overthrow and subvert political enemies the world over for the past 50+ years is no longer even controversial, nor is the fact that they openly enlist the MSM in their efforts to “sell” the idea that the world is a dangerous place and that we all are in dire need of their protection. It continually amazes me that dupes like you still exist, and yet, here you are. You have a serious case of delusional American Exceptionalism my friend that you need to get tended to immediately!
Are you confused? I’m neither fearful of ISIS nor calling for war.
I’m neither ignorant nor naive of US involvement in in various political intrigues the world over.
However, you and your brilliant mind (hitherto relegated to anonymous postings in the internet backwater) have it all figured out. A real scholar.
So tidy a theory too… blame America.
Where have I heard that before?
Time for you to surface for air… the bubbles in your brain are slowly popping.
Don’t you have a pretend polo match to run off to lil’ Frankiti? You soil them riding breeches again and you’re momma’s gonna tan that ass but good this time! You’ll never hear the end of it from your pretend prep school “ilk” after that.
So, so agitated. Tsk, tsk, tsk. You have grown so accustomed to readers readily digesting your pablum instead of spitting it back in your face where it belongs. I suppose you fancied yourself as a real intellectual in these here parts.
Please continue with the backstory you invented for me … so very creative, kind of like your theories.
General question. At exactly what point in your life did you begin to think that using the words “tsk, tsk, tsk” and “fancied” in such close proximity (never mind “pablum,” which I’ll attribute to Google) might be in any possible way a good idea, given your many other obvious mental “quirks?”
I can say the same for you inside this echo-chamber haunted by preppers, anti-semites, conspiracy theorists, and doomsday welcomers.
And by the way, why are you here hanging out on the “echo chamber” anyway?
Nigh, a wind carrying fresh thought blows…
No, just a fresh bouquet of pungent flatal gasses!
Meanwhile in Europe, this just happened;
http://www.bbc.com/news/business-31485073
Greece to Troika: Get Stuffed.
Good for Greece! Varoufakis has been a frequent contributor over a Naked Capitalism for some time, advising exactly that. FUCK the EU!
Wow. This is a great post Jim. You are on a roll! I’m reading the past few essays and thinking you’ve stepped up your game if that is possible at all. Everything you’ve warned us over the years is happening. That’s pretty scary. I know I’m scared. On another note, have you heard of Derek Diedricksen? He’s a quintessential anti-suburban sprawl guy, he’s sharp, he’s an author as well, he is “Mr tiny houses”. Just a suggestion but I think you guys would have a lot to share on one of your great and too rare podcasts.
The world now has two “economies of necessity”. One is, as several posters pointed out, constant war for constant peace. This gives the world’s aerospace and defense industries the sense that their usable-in-wars-only products are “necessary”. Just invent the conflict-du-jour and ouila … there’s your “necessity”.
The other economy of necessity in the world is real estate. Hedge funds have done their very best in 2010-2012 to create the illusion of a housing shortage by buying up huge tranches of tract homes which lie unoccupied for years in places like Henderson, NV and Scottsdale, AZ, to name just two.
However, unlike wars, which can be trumped up over trifles like the Ukraine, you can’t trump up consumer demand in a falling wage environment. And cities and states DESPERATELY need real estate at a high level to garner tax revenues. Lord knows they’re not getting it from wage hikes.
The prospects for a debt jubilee are zero simply because if country X owes country Y 10 times the dineros that country Y owes to country X, there will be no grand gestures of forgiveness for huge debtor nations. The EU is out of financial legerdemain vis-a-vis Greece and so Greece will be an eternal serf until a Minister has the onions to say “Bye bye, EU”.
As for all these angry Muslims in the middle East, what would they do if they didn’t have Israel as their permanent punching bag? Then again, I really have to question the sanity of the “deciders” in 1948 who chose to plop Israel in the one-and-only place in the world where it would guarantee permanent conflict. Nice going guys.
Good points. Debt jubilee = complete unraveling of the current world order for those who are holding. Do you think for a minute they’ll agree to give it up? Would you?
Wow! Brilliant post this week. You’re on your game this week. You do seem to be connecting some dots that no one else is, as we muddle along.
Maybe no WWIII, though. Who would fight whom? America and Europe against Jihadists? Where would Russia fit in?
Russia pushes east thru Ukraine, into eastern Europe, maybe into the heart of western Europe. Why not? Who’s going to stop them? Merkel? Hollande? Bathhouse Barry?
brh
I doubt that Russia wants to repeat the Soviet Union error and try to maintain high standard of living in its satellite countries at the expense of Russian resources.
Beside, who wants poor confused Western Europeans who are having hard time looking down their pants and figuring out their gender?
Why would they bother? Europe is already a festering cauldron of shit thanks to Germany’s alliance with London and DC. I think they’re even more likely to erect the wall again to keep deserting westerners out.
Washington’s bloody miscalculation: who will stop IS militants?
Russia is ready to help Egypt in the fight against international terrorism – this statement was made by the Russian Foreign Ministry, after IS gunmen executed 21 Coptic Christians.
After news of the massacre near the Libyan border combat aircraft of Egypt was raised in the air, and the army began to pull reinforcements to the border strip. The official representative of the Libyan General Staff, Ahmed al-Mismari said that the national Egyptian Air Force launched a series of attacks on IS militants in Sirte and its surroundings. In turn, Major General Khalifa Haftarah, who heads the anti-terrorist operation “The Dignity of Libya”, has called for the Egyptian “no boots on the ground” military intervention.
This is a natural reaction to the actions of the Terrorist International, militancy terrorist organization “Islamic state”, that has long gone beyond the Middle East. Their influence is acknowledged by many other terrorist groups who identify with the organization, adopt its methods of terror. This is a serious challenge to the whole world.
IS, like Al-Qaeda, is direct product of US policy in the Middle East. More recently, the militants of the “Islamic state” were supported and funded by Washington as a moderate opposition to Syrian leader Bashar al-Assad. IS was tasked to dislodge the leader of Syria and bring the country to a “democratic change” – that is what is now happening in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya because of American intervention in the internal affairs of these countries.
Destroying Saddam Hussein and forming a government loyal to Washington, the Americans did not take into account the fact that their forcible democratization of Iraq would wake contradictions in society, which for years were held back by the previous regime. IS was once a branch of al-Qaeda. After some time, the organization has become independent, has excellent fighting capacity and extreme cruelty even among radical Islamists. Their claim to supremacy in the Middle East is becoming more distinct and threatening. But Washington prefers to ignore it.
An example would be Iraq, which in the fight against the terrorists who control most of the country, has been promised US aid. Washington promised to Baghdad F-16 fighters, helicopters AH-64 “Apache” – however, under various pretexts constantly tightened supply.
As a result, the IS militants actually came to the outskirts of Baghdad.
After that, the Iraqi authorities appealed to Russia for help. In 2013, Iraq ordered in 36 Russian Mi-28NE and more than 40 anti-aircraft gun missile systems “Cuirass-S” for about $ 4.2 billion. Last year, the country bought $1 billion of Russian arms – Heavy flamethrower system “Sunburn”, a large shipment of artillery and mortar weapons. In addition, Russia has supplied to Iraq three divisions of multiple launch rocket systems “Grad”, the same number of 152-millimeter howitzers “MSTA-B” and a significant number of mortars. Country was handed Su-25 jet fighters.
Egypt is interested in purchasing the Russian MiG-35 and anti-aircraft missile systems – S-300, S-400 and “Buk-M2E”, “Tor-M2E” diesel-electric submarines of Project 636, a number of other weapons. In 2015, a service center for Russian-made helicopters will start working in Egypt.
Only in the last few months the country was visited by Sergei Shoigu(Russian Defense Minister) and Vladimir Putin. During the visit of the Russian president, the parties agreed to make efforts to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian and Syrian crises together against terrorism, and in addition, entered into an agreement for the opening way to “Rosatom” to construct the first nuclear power plant in the country. On this occasion, Putin said that Russia could create an entire nuclear industry in Egypt.
Fight against terrorism can be different: to adopt resolutions in the UN Security Council and in in the European Parliament condemning the terrorism, or by taking concrete steps in the military and economic fields. For Russia, the choice is clear.
http://cont.ws/post/75549/
What is left behind the scenes of Minsk agreement?
I have a strong feeling that not even half of what was agreed on in Minsk was made public. A global compromise agreement covering issues far beyond Ukraine was reached. Several days and final 16 hours of non-stop diplomatic activity of two main European powers – starting with the visit of Merkel and Hollande to Kiev and Moscow, and then meeting Merkel with Obama and then the conversation between Putin and Obama – are not articulated in any public documents.
One could only judge by the shifts in policies: for instance, suddenly emerged news of delivery of French helicopter carriers Mistral to Russia. There is a definite turnaround in oil price dynamics, as well powerful strengthening of Russian Ruble.
Is that a part of mutual concessions and bonuses?
The American threat of enhanced supply of heavy weapons to regime in Kiev and immediate immersion of Ukraine into a bloody chaos was countered by Russian response, but not only on the Ukrainian front.
The unexpected visit of the Minister of Defense Sergei Shoigu to Iran several days before Minsk and non-public agreements achieved as a result of the meeting suggests that Russia and Iran had agreed to establish a real threat to the ruling regime in Saudi Arabia and the supply of oil through the Strait of Hormuz.
Simultaneously Shiite rebels captured the power in Yemen, on the southern border of Saudis – clear evidence of Iran’s transition to action.
The demise of the Saudi regime would mean the complete collapse of the petrodollar standard that has been in place for more than 40 years, the explosive growth of oil prices – $200? – and the subsequent collapse of the US dollar at least in half.
No accident that Putin and Lavrov had such happy faces after Minsk diplomatic marathon
It’s not the end of the world, although both ISIS and Drudge are happy to have you believe so… more clicks on their pages. This too shall pass.
glad to see there’s a voice of reason in all the hyperbole out here. people’ve been calling for the end of the world since time eternal.
ain’t happening bixxes. jesus ain’t coming back, the world isn’t ending. in spite of everything, things are getting markedly better – thanks to technological progress.
kontrahend
I agree with you up to a point.
Human’s linear interpretation of time will easily demonstrate improvements in technology. However, this should not be confused with “getting better”.
As an animal burdened by consciousness, technological progress and knowledge only separates the animal from its true state of happiness (serenity with ennui-the cow in a pasture). The more man progresses, away from his early protohominid days at the watering hole without concept of past nor future, the more impossible it becomes to be happy as humans lack the ability to unknow/unlearn knowledge. Intellectual development is considered progress, but as man continues down this path the more it has to confront the cognitive dissonance of its own insignificance. Knowledge, precisely, keeps it from taking solace in religion or utopian futures. Humans are dissatisfied with mortal existence, they are an evolutionary mistake, and progress only exposes more of their wretchedness.
What we are in fact seeing is humanity’s coming to grips with its pointlessness and the deception dealt to them by their ancestors vis a vis religion.
Why in the world would organized religion deal them pointlessness and deception, of all things, pray tell? And if it did, wouldn’t that by definition involve a… gasp! …CONSPIRACY among the religious and/or political elite? What are you, a WING NUT?
Religion was the height of knowledge and thought in its time. Progress brought new realities and new theories. Therefore, and I’m making this very simplistic so you may attempt to follow, it was not a conspiracy at the time, it was the theory. Its promulgation, or the inheritance of the meme across generations either in spite of knowledge, or with ignorance, is the conspiracy. Very few people can claim to have discovered their religion, it’s mostly an inheritance.
Humanity’s path to a post-religious world is not a smooth one, nor is it conspiratorial. It’s only the fulfillment of Jove’s prescient promise.
Conspiracies are never “conspiracies” among the conspirators. Always just a “gentlemen’s agreement among knowledgeable insiders” or some such rationalization BS. And who the hell is Jove?
I can’t bring you to my plane of thought. An autodidactic undertaking is perhaps your best remedy.
I can’t bring you to my plane of thought. An autodidact undertaking is perhaps your best remedy.
I see. Another pseudo-intellectual ejaculator of other idiots’ tropes, huh? Yeah, you’re on your own plane all right. Plainly fucking idiotic. You’re obviously an autodidact in that regard too. A self-taught moron!
Oh, are you upset? You need to rein-in your emotions. It is most unbecoming.
Enjoying the day, actually. And you? I trust you’re enjoying your little tea party here with us louts? Would you like some scones or perhaps a crumpet?
I would say it’s necessary.
Get ready for more atrocities.
ISIS paraded a platoon of Kurd fighters in cages, the kind of cages they douse in gasoline and set afire.
What a show!
brh
Wait till they capture an American pilot, or a US Marine or two.
There’s going to be some sh-t then, I’ll tell you what. It seems inevitable.
Israel isn’t that far away, but I notice they haven’t tried to kidnap any Israeli citizens for their gruesome execution videos. Like JHK says, WW3, so be it then. A few Israeli tactical nuclear strikes on those sonsabitches in the desert and they’ll have the apocalypse they’ve been looking for.
Its a sad commentary on what the west has become when the only nation with any balls has a population of 7 million and is besieged by enemies on all sides.
brh
Simply because Israel will cease to exist if they ever blink.
Wait till they capture an American pilot, or a US Marine or two.
There’s going to be some sh-t then, I’ll tell you what. It seems inevitable.
You’re jumping ahead several episodes there BRH. And I have it on good authority that the show’s producers are prepared to deal harshly with anyone who gives away major plot lines before they’re aired.
re | “And I have it on good authority that the show’s producers are prepared to deal harshly with anyone who gives away major plot lines before they’re aired.”
LOL!
😉
Lots of sponsorship dollars hanging in the balance!
By “good authority” he means someone who writes some shit on a blog someplace.
As opposed to…?
What a crazy attitude. Israel isn’t our ally and they aren’t Western. Ask some of them if you doubt me – but without putting the question in context. Many still support the Muslim invasion of Europe and the destruction of Western Culture. Then there is the Liberty Incident and the false flags attempting to get us into a war with Egypt. And of course the nuclear missiles pointed at European Capitals.
Have you no shame?
Don’t forget their satisfaction after 9/11 – and of course the dancing men on the nearby building.
Yes, we deserve better allies, like the Brits, who let the Lockerbie bomber loose so that BP could be awarded oil field contracts. Now that’s a friend. There are no friends in diplomacy.
Yes, we deserve better allies, like the Brits, who let the Lockerbie bomber loose so that BP could be awarded oil field contracts. Now that’s a friend. There are no friends in diplomacy.
Never mind well-connected elites and government officials, who after all perpetrated 9-11 and so much more from the safety of official US Government or official US Government connected positions. No, there are no friends when it comes to mere diplomacy. But rest assured, there are even less when it comes to money.
Hey CNH any relation to Ray Hicks in ‘Dog Soldiers’ and the movie ‘Who Will Stop the Rain’. different era, but just as disaffected.
brh
A Ray Hicks quote from that movie:
They’re animals — you can’t make a deal with animals.
The question for us, all of us, is, who are the “animals?” The answer is not obvious, at least it’s not obvious to most.
And there’s no stopping the rain — this rain — it’s monsoon season all day every day from here on out whenever out is or if there’s even an out.
It’s a great song, though. I’ve always loved that song and still do, and I appreciated Nick Nolte’s acting back in the day. He was a man’s man and played those roles perfectly.
I’m afraid Oswald the Lucky Rabbit would be as equally appropriate as Ray Hicks, if in fact you’re referring to my most recent blog post and the presaging of assassin’s names in popular entertainment. Oswald the Lucky Rabbit on The Harveytoons Show. And then it rained and rained and rained and no one could stop it, and no one can stop it and no one ever will stop it. Not even Al Michaels.
These melons are sure as hell blind if they can’t see, smell touch and feel, on their pretty boy faces, the monsoonal deluge.
Great mug shots too, right up there with Mel Gibson’s. Remember his battle with Eddie Falconetti?
‘It was that oil wealth that provoked a population spike in a desolate corner of the planet the past century. Now there is a huge over-supply of young men there with nothing to do but act out their angry psychodrama over having no future.’
The relative benignity of this trope should be reason enough to question it. It hands the market and religious fundamentalists alike a pass by positing the ebb and flow of fossil-fuel abundance as the root and branch of all extremist discontent. For one, recent studies detailing marked fertility decline in the Muslim world shows this argument to be more impressionistic than factual. Understandably it’s more palatable to reach for the end-of-ideology handbook and cite inevitable evolutionary processes as the underlying forces at work. But why no analysis of the obvious world-historical shift toward cultural homogeneity that a quarter century of ME modernization and shock-doctrine policies have wrought? To pretend that there’s been no ambivalent desires, and no real or threatened losses of cultural identity, wrapped up in the Westernized growth planning schemes is a pernicious conceit that nearly all ruling and educated elites seem loathe to relinquish.
Actually, oil has provoked a population explosion ACROSS the planet since it was first discovered in the early 19th century. Oil turns out to be the one truly genuine “tide that lifts all boats,” at least until it doesn’t. Then it turns out to unleash the deluge:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FhQM41vBKvs
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johnstown_Flood
Ukrainian Nazi punitive battalions are practicing a very innovative and original method of executing their prisoners: a captive is placed face down on the ground with his hands tied behind his back, a large cooking pan is placed upside down over his head so the upper edge of the pan is pressed against cervical vertebra and then executioner stomps down on the pan, breaking the neck.
Of course not as showoff as professionally made ISIS beheading videos, but very effective nevertheless.
Here is video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3yZN60ZW2Q4#t=32
What does this have to do with the price of tea in China?
Poor JHK, who dug up these nuts and planted them on his blog?
The inane comments here would have most anyone wishing for the end of the world.
That’s what doors are for, Frankiti-Blankiti!
No, rather, I think I will stay awhile. Much like those mediums that drive away poltergeists, there are ghosts that haunt these boards, who post day after day… the need a good douse of sunlight and sense.
Cool. Let us all know when you discover some.
Remember what Bilbo said: a road is a dangerous thing. You never know where it will take you. A road of thought is no different. Everything leads to everything else. Don’t put up your Stop and No Parking signs here. Don’t be like the demon Ravana, a whirlpool in the river of life.
DA, I haven’t read Wheelmen yet — it’s on my list first thing after I finish my Faulkner marathon.
Speaking of that, it’s obvious to me that the Islamic State is doping just as surely as Lance Armstrong was. I hate cheaters. Is that a crime? To hate, or use the word hate? Not yet, perhaps, but it certainly will be used against you in a court of public opinion if or when your lucky number’s called. Minority Report’s on its way — in fact, it’s pulling into the station. Build it (meaning write the book and make the movie) and they will come.
The Armstrong thing turned out to be little more than a flimflam right from the start. Lots of people were in on it, but because there was so much money involved, they all naturally kept their mouths shut. Pretty much the same story as all the other thinly veiled criminal conspiracies going on these days from Wall St, to K St, to Main Street in AnyTown USA. But you simply have to give credit where credit is due. Fucking Armstrong raised the bar several notches when it comes to best sustained performance in service of a bald-faced lie.
And in that vein, I once again paraphrase a Seinfeld line delivered with much aplomb a few years back by none other than the immortal George Costanza: Just remember Jerry, it’s not really cheating if you feel that you actually deserved to win anyway! A sentiment that the American glitterati and Lance Armstrong all seem to have taken to heart.
I hate cheaters. Is that a crime? To hate, or use the word hate?
Sorry Cold, I missed your reference first time around. I think using the word “hate” is, by definition, a hate crime now, isn’t it? Certainly should be anyway! LOL!
JHK wrote: “The true meaning of “austerity” will become clear when Europe finds itself forced to fight World War Three at the same time that its banking system implodes.”
Yes, just to give some ideas of the state of Europe’s defense, here are a few of my findings:
Greece has 353 main battle tanks type Leopard 2, but according to Wikipedia they didn’t have the money to by any ammunition for the impressive 120 mm guns of these tanks. Germany, which 30 years ago had more than 2000 modern main battle tanks, now has only about 250 (thus much less then Greece, and much, much less then Saudi Arabia, which alone have liked to by about 800 of those tanks from Germany). Today on http://www.focus.de ( http://www.focus.de/politik/deutschland/eingreiftruppe-nicht-einsatzbereit-bundeswehr-zieht-mit-besenstielen-ins-manoever_id_4482762.html ): The German part of Nato’s new fast deployable elite unit, installed to impress the Russians, went to maneuver in Norway with a black painted broomsticks in place of a gun barrels at their new light tanks. But that’s not all. Only 26 % of the night vision systems, 59 % of the Pistols and only 69 % of the MG3 machine guns were available. Up to date the unit has no barrels for the guns of their tanks. But according to the ministry of defense everything is fine, since the unit is “certified” (this is a way to make sure for bureaucrats that everything is fine and they can sleep well). Last autumn there were news that 150 from a total of 250 German military aircrafts were grounded because of defects. From 180 transport tanks only 70 were ready for use, the others were in to be repaired. From 43 navy helicopters only were 7 ready for service, all of the others were broken.
But in Germany we have a mother of 7 as secretary of defense. We have kindergartens in our barracks now. Instead of the once planed 1000 new infantry tanks from type Puma we now will get only 350, BUT, since we have so much money and we want to fight the next war politically correct defend gender equality, these 350 tanks are specially altered so that highly pregnant female soldiers can be driven to and on the battle field.
If this all is not enough to encourage potential enemies, especially from ISIS & Co, one may analyze the reasons why people become soldiers in western armies these days and which background these people often have.
And then there are all those female soldiers. For civil soccer games all those western Nato-nations, for very good reasons, have men only teams fighting against men only teams, and female only against female only. But when it comes to real war, where there is no mercy and no rule, now they will go or drive with quite a few females, resp. mixed gender troops to the battle grounds, to fight with the few still functioning weapons, left over from all those austerity and gender issues, while every body knows, that the battle strength of combat groups is determined too by their weakest members.
Sigh, that old canard ‘western military forces are rubbish because of …women’. Korbane showed that females can fight real well, as ISIS can attest.
Oh yes females may struggle with the ‘western way of war’, but that is obsolete and useless and has been for many decades.
The ‘western way of war’ is bankrupt (and bankrupts societies too), an over emphisis on air power (useless), hardware (designed to maximise manufacturers profits and mostly hopeless), tactics (inferior to the Wehrmacht in 1940), strategy (blindingly obvious that it is hopeless everywhere), C&C (again inferior to the 1940 Wehrmacht), training (sacrificed for useless hardware).
We could kick every woman out of our armed forces and guess what? We will still be useless.
We have had example after example of western forces (or worse western trained forces, that ‘kiss of death’) being thumped on every occasion.
Watching the lumbering Kiev forces (under at least strategic control by the US, possibly even some tactical control) being obliterated by inferior sized but far more mobile forces (and no airpower at all) is instructive. Not that western forces will learn anything from it at all.
This strange dichotomy, the west (especially the US) desires and creates ever more wars, yet we are useless at it and seemingly getting worse. Our forces can destroy (and they do a lot) but they can’t fight.
Germany can go and build as many tanks and planes as it wants…makes zero difference to anyone whatsoever and is meaningless on the modern battlefield. Never mind, means ‘ka-ching’ for some companies.
Some examples of how rubbish we are (and nothing to do with women at all):
The era of the attack helicopter formally died in Iraq war 2 (it actually died far sooner, but it took awhile for the lessons to sink in) however western Govts still spend squillions on them.
The myth of bombing airpower died in WW2, but that lesson still hasn’t sunk in yet, give it another century maybe.
CAS, apart from a few remnants of a few squadrons of A-10s, died by our own hand a long time ago, there is no western airforce that wants to do that at all.
The era of the tank mostly finally died in Lebanon in 2006, tanks can now only survive in an environment where there are lots of troops around to protect them (that was pretty much true towards the end of WW2 as well).
Soldiers, ever more loaded with ‘stuff’, carrying weights that make them as limber as a bag of cement (and causing permanent damage to their bodies, who needs bullets from the other side) and constantly having rings ran around them by lighter and more mobile forces.
I was watching some videos of Novarussian forces moving around and was struck by how lightly loaded they were, mobility for them was far more important. An equivalent western soldier in the same environment would be carrying, what, 30-40 kilos?
Never mind, ‘ka-ching’ means we will just keep doubling up on failure.
As you said, when “fighting” involves remotely piloting drones and every other manner of electronic do-dad for the actual “boots on the ground” forces, it’s pretty damn hard to imagine western forces ever losing a battle again, no matter who the actors are or how badly they’re trained. And yet, still we manage!
The “western way of war” is indeed bankrupt for everyone but the arms suppliers, and they’re the only reason we’re “fighting” in the first place. Truth is, if we were to dismantle the war economy tomorrow there simply would be no legitimate economy left. Hence “ISIS” (Little known fact: the producers originally wanted to call them ASSES as a two part shout-out to the band of Islamic miscreants the CIA were rehearsing to fill the role, and to the American Sheeple, who were being lubed and prepped to swallow this whole transparently obvious line of shit without a burp, but corporate stepped in and axed it at the last moment.), Ukraine, Iran, and all the rest of the current and rapidly multiplying insanity.
my question then is, if the western way of war is dead why are Russia and China modernizing their conventional forces? Motivation is what you are talking about. Those lighter more mobile forces are motivated. This goes all the way back to our own revolution. Although I hope I never see it, one of these days we are going to need men to fight in a war that all of us might at least think we have stake in. And when I say men, I don’t mean women or guys that wish they were women. And, I don’t mean men whose only skill is video games
Agree motivation is a key factor, but that has to be combined with skills, especially C&C ones.
High mobility warfare (often called 3rd generation warfare, or 3GW) require a totally different command mind set, skills and training. The core is ‘mission command’, where higher command sets objectives clearly and simply, the people carrying it out work out how to do it. The advantage is a fast C&C loop, as those at the pointy end know what they are supposed to achieve but can adapt/respond/take advantage of local factors as they change.
Watching inferior sized and armed Novarussians repeatedly run rings arond the Kiev forces is an example of what happens when a lumbering 2GW meets a faster 3GW force.
‘Mission Command’ is just alien to our cultures (excepting maybe the Germans who practice it in business), particularly our military ones. Which is why no western military force has managed to achieve 3GW to any great level, with the exception of the British/Canadian 21st Army Group in late ’44, early ’45. Maybe also the Israelis in ’67 as well.
Though in both those (possible) cases the military reverted back to their original methodologies soon afterwards (hysteresis, regression to the mean?) and are now just as useless as the US.
Fundamentally it requires giving up power to those down the ‘chain of command’ and no one at the top in our cultures wants to do that. We are a ‘power and acclaim to the top, blame to the bottom’ culture and we are not going to change it any time soon.
Oh and a warning to those who underrate the Russian armed forces. Where have the Novarussians gotten their 3GW skills from? We saw this in Georgia as well, though the Russians admitted mistakes and ‘holes’ in what they did. But the main Russian counter assault was straight out of the Wehrmacht’s play book and hammered the US/Israeli armed, trained (and led?) Georgian forces in a few days…….oops.
Yeah, yeah – Europe is not in great military shape. But there is still a question of (how many are there?) US tactical nuclear warheads deployed on advanced cruise-missiles right in the middle of Europe.
One could just imagine a scenario under which Poland or one of those shitty small Baltic countries (I still mix up their names) could get involved in some provocation over Ukraine – Poland is already up to its nose in it – and then NATO Article 5 gets invoked, and voila – we have a nuclear exchange between Western Europe and Russia,
Was that strange 3 days and 16 hours of non-stop negotiations in Minsk an attempt to avoid that? And the fact that it was preceded by Russian Mobile Strategic Launch systems leaving their hangars right before it happened?
There is also a small question of who is going to be hanged over 198 passengers killed in MH17 by Ukrainian Air Force over Donbass,
The fact that the Western Media forgot all about it doesn’t mean that the Russian Investigative committee did – they are carefully collecting evidence and eyewitness reports and you can bet your bottom dollar Russia will make sure that somebody’s going to hang for it – may be Poroshenko, or may be someone else…
I think the one thing you’re missing in your otherwise thoughtful analysis FTM is that, like it or not, the US seems to be in the driver’s seat in the region for now. Granted, that seat is in an out of control ancient Ugo with no steering or brakes, but they’re driving the car, for whatever reason(s) nonetheless, for now at least.
Seems the DC boys and girls have inadvertently stumbled onto a most priceless “ancient Chinese secret:” If one party to a Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD) arrangement declares that they are legitimately mad – as in fucking insane – and they intend to initiate first strike nuclear hostilities just because they can if they’re demands are not met, then as long as their assertions are remotely plausible, they will likely win.
And as good as Putin’s poker face is – and admittedly he’s a master – he’s probably got an uphill battle ahead of him as far as he can see. Because yes, the DC gang does indeed seem to be that desperate and that crazy. All of which speaks volumes about our underlying energy problems.
Current tactical nukes in Europe are of the bomb type (B-61 or something like that from memory) and need to be launched from aircraft.
The can still launch nuke cruise missles from subs and ships and from B-52s if it tasks them in.
As usual these things will start small and take on a life of their own. Start with small scale land battles, NATO fights directly, NATO gets drubbed, More NATO forces, they get drubbed, aircraft then called in for support, they get drubbed, incremental escalation, until a nuke flies.
I’d bet money on that being a US one first, (a) because they will be losing conventionally in a big way, (b) as a ‘show of strength’.
From a purely military point of view a sensible Russian reply would be to tactically nuke every NATO nuke arms dump, airbase, military base, naval base and so on through Europe.
More likely they would probably just reply with 1 nuke as a counter.
At that point there would be a chance of stopping it going further, though I’d fully expect the US to escalate with more nukes.
Something I said on the Fabius Maximus site many years ago “we are in a race between US economic and societal collapse and WW3”. 50:50 at the moment.
Solves global warming though so there is a bright side.
But I have to agree, women in the armed forces in general, and the combat arms in particular, has been and continues to be a foolish idea, and I think women themselves should be the first to recognize it. War itself is a particularly masculine form of insanity, and I think all women should be happy to wash their hands of it. It’s only widely enabled in the first place in the west by our vast use of technology, since it’s entirely arguable whether the use of drone, cruise missile, or even high altitude bombing technologies can even be construed as “war” making in any human sense. Remote human extermination for political purposes? Yes. War in any conventional sense? No.
The lunatics run the asylum now.
You know, you mindless little twit (let me guess, Asoka again in drag?), it’s remarks like that that don’t exactly endear you to the locals. If you don’t like the company, you know the way to the door. Or do you need to be shown?
There is a problem. It is not your door, is it? Let me guess, you are the self-appointed arbiter, the gatekeeper. And so angry again?! You must really learn self-control. Tell me why I would want to endear myself to the locos, particularly after I made clear my displeasure? I get it, you want to remain in a comfort zone, surrounded by like-absent-minded friends when going off… again… about JFK (you actually did, much to my amusement, bring up both Hitler and JFK on one thread, and I appreciate you embodying the cliche so naturally) the CIA, the illuminati? There’s no way you can carry-on like this with polite company, but here you can sound off with every ludicrous theory your warped mind can spit out. I’m only in it for the cheap entertainment value. There’s nothing like watching a fool strut and prance in confidence (please, pretend I’m not here and continue).
So foolish and yet so pompous! And yet, you have nothing even remotely original to add to boot! “Spit out” something remotely original you prancing little elf, or be gone. Poof! Gone in a poof of fairy dust! Frankiti/Asoka, we hardly knew you!
Hey you guys are a riot. Forget the door. Come come, please sit with me at my table… So who is this Asoka? Japanese? A Fukushima refugee by chance?
Asoka’s an old timer here that pops up from time to time under any number of aliases. Don’t know where he got the original handle. I was recently lucky enough to receive an advance copy of an excerpt from his forthcoming memoir, and it’s really quite good! He’s got quite a story to tell, and I’m glad that he’s finally going to get it out there for all the world to appreciate. I’ll post it up later after I finish digesting it.
Asoka was a Hindu Emperor who converted to Buddhism after a particularly great slaughter. He despaired even though his forces were victorious.
It’s easy to be a semi- Pacifist after you’ve won.
Looks like Asoka/Frankiti has gone dark for a while. Maybe he’ll drift back in again later, no doubt under a new guise, and we can beat on him some more.
With all this dismissal of the U.S military is someone going to jump in a remind that a considerable number of ‘Scots-Irish’ descendants are still representing in the military?
The Scots-Irish used to get a lot of play here on CFN. Prog for one used to puff out his chest pretty far when recounting some of his rough and tumble Scots-Irish stories/memories and I never thought of Ernest T. Bass with a rock in his hand when reading them. I have a vague memory, perhaps wrong, that he mentioned a wrestling match in the dirt if anyone insulted his heritage.
Patton, Stonewall and Andrew Jackson, Jim Bowie, Davy Crocket and so many more I’m sure…the 1st Alabama Calvary is very interesting and surprising history as well:
http://www.1stalabamacavalryusv.com/Default.aspx
Well I guess since my “proper” name ends with Nelson and I’m a retired US vet of 25 years + service, I guess I might qualify.
But what we’re talking about these days no longer involves the US military, and Scot’s honor, per se; nor might I add, does it require extensive US military service and/or Scots/Irish heritage to qualify.
The current use of the US military in the service of blatantly political interests in the service of blatantly and transparently elite economic interests is nothing less than the greatest socio/politico/economic fraud ever perpetrated on any people, anywhere, in the history of the world. Ever.
Period.
Nuff said?
Clear enough?
I really enjoyed Jim Webb’s book on the Scotts-Irish called Born Fighting. I know he won’t make any traction in his presidential bid but he actually has a brain. I suppose that disqualifies him
Yeah I appreciated his holding up his son’s combat boots – one of the few in Congress who still has relatives in the armed forces. On the other hand, he signed the National Defense Authorization Act along with the rest of them.
Make up your mind…are conflicts in mid east over resources or ideologies. If the world , being represented by the UN, think the latter then the war will be against organised religion. You can believe whatever you want as an individual, you can be a jew or pray five times a day, but do not organise to accomplish conversions. Russia used to be all about serving the state and now they are about demagogery…a form of extremist ideology.
note: people are beheaded be ause they will never convert to radical islam….isis/isil.
We are a tribal/band species that is out of scale and in fundamental dissonance with the cage of technological and sociopoliticultural complexity that we have welded around us.
Nothing works nor will work until Mother Nature sends us back (probably kicking and screaming) to our small-scale simple tribal/band roots.
The family unit exists and works in spite of whatever complications have come about regarding gender confusion, religious diversity, war mongering and social networking.
Population overshoot has not happened to humanity in general, only in the areas suffering war, totalitarian regimes, resource scarcity and the glorified urban centers. For every person born someone dies eventually. People migrate to better climes.
This winter has been really weird to the point of not being a winter in the SW. The NE has endured an unusually brutal winter. We do not hear JHK whining about it as much as others possibly due to the fact he is not concerned about the road conditions and having to be somewhere. He works from home. He grows some of his own food. He stocks his pantry. He might have the discretionary income to fly south and rent a furnished condo for a few months if need be and we would be none the wiser. There are more than a few fans of his around the south that would show him hospitality…that is a jewish tribal tradition.
The history of the last 50 years tells us that the US has been attempting to encircle the Soviet Union/Russia with missile fence.
In 1961 US began placing intermediate-range missiles PGM-19 “Jupiter” around Izmir, Turkey. Moscow felt that it was under attack, and to achieve parity placed medium-range missiles in Cuba. Cuban Missile Crisis ended with mutual withdrawal of medium-range missiles from Cuba and Turkey.
Further, in December 12, 1979, Americans decided to deploy “Pershing-2” missiles in Europe. The flight time of those medium-range missiles from West Germany to objects in the center of the European part of the USSR was only 8-10 minutes, which made them very dangerous weapon of first strike. Another missile crisis was resolved by the signing of the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty.
On 13 June 2002 the US withdraws from the Treaty on the Limitation of anti-missile defense of 26 May 1972, according to which the Americans could only place anti-ballistic missiles and all targeting tools on American territory only. And now we have the US missile defense system in Europe already. In deploying missile defense, we have essentially returned, on a new qualitative level, back to those “medium-range missiles” which the United States at the time deployed in Turkey.
Intention to continue the development of the SM-3 interceptor missiles suggests that we are talking about the SM-3 Block 2A, which will be able to intercept intercontinental ballistic missiles. However, no matter how advanced the declared characteristics of the SM-3 missile are, the success of its use in a nuclear-free option to capture the real modern ICBM seems low, especially if the ICBM has modern facilities to overcome missile defense and independently targetable maneuvering warheads. Therefore, experts have repeatedly expressed the opinion that the Americans to intercept modern Russian ICBMs will be forced to use the SM-3 missile with a type of low-yield neutron nuclear warheads, to disable missile computerized targeting system even in case of a miss.
A side effect of adopting the SM-3 is their potential use as attacking medium range ballistic missiles with nuclear warheads, capable with precision of up to a few meters to enter the important strategic Russian facilities such as silo launchers of Russian ICBMs, neutralizing them.
Therefore, President Vladimir Putin last year at the Security Council meeting said that “missile defense – is part of an offensive defense system that the United States deployed at the periphery.”
In addition, the American anti-ballistic missile system is a real detonator of a nuclear war.
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
“The lunatics run the asylum now” — Frankiti
Thank you, couldn’t have said it better myself.
A truth as old as dirt.
Who’s ‘we’?
Send in all those who actually start the wars to fight them, rather than the indoctrinated young men and women.
“The tragedy of modern war is that the young men die fighting each other – instead of their real enemies back home in the capitals.”
~ Edward Abbey
“The state has moved into many new areas as they become significant, such as… promoting nuclear power. This expanding role of the state helps prevent the rise of any significant competing forms of social organisation…
The obvious point is that most social activists look constantly to the state for solutions to social problems. This point bears labouring, because the orientation of most social action groups tends to reinforce state power. This applies to most antiwar action too. Many of the goals and methods of peace movements have been oriented around action by the state, such as appealing to state elites and advocating neutralism and unilateralism. Indeed, peace movements spend a lot of effort debating which demand to make on the state: nuclear freeze, unilateral or multilateral disarmament, nuclear-free zones, or removal of military bases. By appealing to the state, activists indirectly strengthen the roots of many social problems, the problem of war in particular…
Many people’s thinking is permeated by state perspectives. One manifestation of this is the unstated identification of states or governments with the people in a country which is embodied in the words ‘we’ or ‘us.’ ‘We must negotiate sound disarmament treaties.’ ‘We must renounce first use of nuclear weapons.’ Those who make such statements implicitly identify with the state or government in question. It is important to avoid this identification, and to carefully distinguish states from people…”
~ Brian Martin, ‘Uprooting War’
Former Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, whom Georgian government now wants under international arrest warrant, in a live Kiev’s TV program “Shuster-LIVE” blabbed about the future Kiev nuclear provocation to incite war between the US and Russia.
Saakashvili said that the world should not give in to “Russian nuclear blackmail” by President Vladimir Putin, since the chances that he will use nuclear weapons, are negligible. Therefore, nuclear provocation should be made by Ukraine:
“With regard to (Russian) nuclear blackmail: it is necessary to understand that the nuclear capabilities of the United States of America and Russia today are absolutely not comparable. Americans can in 40 minutes destroy the entire nuclear potential of Russia. And the second point: the doctrine of the United States clearly states that regardless of who uses nuclear weapons, the United States must respond, because it is a threat to peace and security in the world. It’s not like someone thinks that if we detonate a small tactical warhead somewhere near Mariupol, no one will respond. The mandatory response is written in the Military doctrine of the United States. Of course, Putin could blackmail, but if he were to use nuclear weapon, in 40 minutes there will be no nuclear warheads, no Russia, and Putin himself, most likely, also will no longer be alive”.
Would you like, gentlemen, to bet the future of your families on a good judgment of international war criminal?
“The most absurd apology for authority and law is that they serve to diminish crime. Aside from the fact that the State is itself the greatest criminal, breaking every written and natural law, stealing in the form of taxes, killing in the form of war and capital punishment, it has come to an absolute standstill in coping with crime. It has failed utterly to destroy or even minimize the horrible scourge of its own creation.”
~ Emma Goldman
When everything else fails, call the anarchists.
I think DC has already made the call.
“Grown men do not need leaders.” ~ Edward Abbey
As usual these things will start small and take on a life of their own. Start with small scale land battles, NATO fights directly, NATO gets drubbed, More NATO forces, they get drubbed, aircraft then called in for support, they get drubbed, incremental escalation, until a nuke flies.
Bullshit. This is Cold War rhetoric taken off the shelf, dusted and presented as relevant when it no longer has any relevance if it ever did. It’s another Boogie Man. I’m guessing all the players know they can’t use the nukes but play along like they can because it helps keep the proles in line. If they could have used them on each other, they would have by now many times over. Maybe they already have in parallel universes. Wouldn’t that be a great story no one would ever believe even it were true? It certainly would explain, and actually would be the most logical explanation, why America hasn’t invested in upgrading its nuclear arsenal and why Russia was allowed to keep its arsenal after the collapse of the USSR when America and The West could have easily had it hand over the launch codes in return for the promise of prosperity.
Sure hope you’re right, Cold.
In the good news, yesterday the UN Security Council approved a resolution on Ukraine in the Russian edition.
And, what is more important the resolution had attached “package of measures to implement the Minsk agreements” without exceptions and interpretations. After the implementation of Kiev assumed obligations will look not only Russia and Europe, but the entire world.
Russia is mentioned not as the aggressor and insidious enemy, but a guarantor of the agreement along with Germany and France.
State Department acted very strange.
UN Ambassador Samantha Power, known for her intransigence in relation to Russia, said in her style: “In the case of Ukraine, we have become accustomed to living in an upside down world . Russia speaks of peace, but in fact – is fueling the conflict. Russia signed an agreement, and then doing everything to undermine it. Russia defends the sovereignty of nations, and then behaves as if the border with its neighbor does not exist. But even for those of us who have already begun to get used to the inverted world, at least, it seems ironic idea that Russia, which is itself also created the conflict and endeavors to the escalation of violence in Ukraine – today suggested a resolution calling for peaceful settlement. ”
And then voted for the resolution.
We here in Langley and Ft.Meade are laughing our asses off….one of our assets Samantha SuperCunt reads some boilerplate off one of our teleprompters….and then you comment……..
” I’m guessing all the players know they can’t use the nukes but play along like they can because it helps keep the proles in line. If they could have used them on each other, they would have by now many times over.”
You are very optimistic Col, given how close we came in ’62,. ’83 and ’95. I hope you are right.
1. A solar flare, or a computer virus, wipes out trillions of digital dollars (the “smarter than the rest of us” gang who created the false wealth/money system outsmarted themselves);
2. One or more microscopic bugs decides to “go viral” and wipe out billions (you better live a clean, moral life to keep your immune system intact);
3. Nothing left to do but go to war and distract billions of people from the misery of being broke and sick (focus your attention on some enemy, real or imagined);
4. Hooray for Hollywood (as that pornographic filth pit sinks into the Pacific) (this has nothing to do with the first three, but I couldn’t resist).
Yah, it’s always like this before World War III. In the book The Fourth Turning by Strauss-Howe, wars are likely at a fourth turning. About every 80 years, it reads, when the majority of the people who remember the horrors of the last world war are gone, one is likely to happen. One of the few things the U.S. exports now is soldiers & money. Sad to see it all go the way It has. Death be not proud.
JHK, when you’re president of the northeastern states of the U.S., rein in Wall Street just a tad, huh. Iaye was here
Then there is the best non-fiction books of the last decade, The Long Emergency and one of the others…
Rainbows are only mentioned three times in scripture, Genesis, Ezekiel, and Revelation. It is a very powerful symbol of promise. In Heaven is for Real, seven weeks on the best sellers list, a toddler makes a trip to heaven and comes back to relate things he could not and did not have knowledge of, including a sister. When he came back he was also absolutely obsessed with rainbows! For those of us working on advanced, we offer up hurt on rainbows.
You do know that book has since been revealed as a hoax, right?
http://www.npr.org/blogs/thetwo-way/2015/01/15/377589757/boy-says-he-didn-t-go-to-heaven-publisher-says-it-will-pull-book
More likely he was seeing the pots of gold at the end of all those imaginary rainbows. Go figure!
And get this, the kid’s name is Alex Malarkey! Talk about your truth in advertising!
Nearly five years after it hit best-seller lists, a book that purported to be a 6-year-old boy’s story of visiting angels and heaven after being injured in a bad car crash is being pulled from shelves. The young man at the center of The Boy Who Came Back from Heaven, Alex Malarkey, said this week that the story was all made up.
You need to become a Tibetan Buddhist. They try to attain the Rainbow Body of Light. And when a great practicioner died, the sky is full of Rainbows.
Someone may have posted this already, I have not read through all the comments, although I still hope to do so. Anyway, here is a synopsis of some recent thoughts from Henry Kissinger:
http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/143062/wolfgang-ischinger/the-world-according-to-kissinger
I never listen to a thing that Henry says, but I do enjoy his completely unintelligible, gravelly muttering delivered through that now overly jowly and hideous facade. It’s amazing what people will accept as academic gravitas these days!
TV Weatherman states this is the coldest February on record since 1876, when the Coast Guard (or whatever it was called then) began keeping records.
I’d like to ask well known expert climatologist and noted actor Leonardo De Caprio, what’s the deal Leo? He made some bold statements at the ‘Climate’ march in NYC last year. How can I reach Leo? Is he available for questions and answers? I mean from Proles like myself, not craven sympathetic ass kissers from the New York Times and John Stewart’s TV show.
brh
funny backrow
Leo does indeed enjoy his celeb-hood.
Apparently bitter cold is being pumped from Siberia across Canada to the Midwest and East by a gigantic High and Low. Missing the Northwest entirely – warm weather records here.
I envy you the great storms. There is nothing like them. God reveals His terrible side through them. And who can stand against His Cold?
Rumor is he lives [or owns a home] above Sunset Blvd.
Beautiful place.
Remember a song ‘Blue Jay Way’? That is a ‘Bird street’ and Leo lives
there, maybe.
http://la.curbed.com/archives/2011/10/4_juicy_facts_about_the_hollywood_hills_bird_streets.php
and
The house just sold a couple days ago for $5.23 million; the Desert Sun (via
Real Estalker) hears that the sellers had to sign confidentiality agreements and that the buyer is an LLC tied to DiCaprio’s production company. The actor just sold his Malibu beach house a couple months ago.
The worst thing to do now is to listen to the foreign policy establishment. You can pretty much guess what they’re going to do and say especially wrt Ukraine. And they are always wrong.
Let’s say that Putin and his homies are feeling belligerent. Let’s say they’re feeling dissed, that they feel they need to make a point.
And so, w.r.t. Ukraine, what should we do? What should we wish for?
We should do nothing except make cooing noises about peace. Why? Because there’s no necessity to do otherwise. Russia is in no shape militarily to do much except cause some trouble around its edges.
And so it is. Russia’s “little green men” grabbed Crimea and are doing the same in eastern Ukraine.
Putin needs the political boost at home. Ivan puffs out his chest and Putin basks in the adulation. Meanwhile he and his oligarch cronies pilfer at will.
And, if we think that Russia is a threat, we should fervently wish that Russia absorb all of Ukraine. We should hope that Russian tanks roll into Kiev. Why? Because Ukraine is a huge mess. It will be a huge millstone for Russia, a source of grief as far as the eye can see.
But is Russia a threat? In my own estimation, it is not. It is a rotted kleptocracy run by leftovers from the previous rotten regime.
Russians will not take over Ukrainian territory – they learned good from Americans – why take over a territory which you’d hate to hold?
I wish Russians would take over my Island – may be they’d finally fix the fucking electrical and water problems, like they did in Donbass.
That’s what you get for living in a Black or Blackish land.
No, Janos, that’s what you get living in a country being under total US colonial management – even US ambassador here is homosexual, and that’s in Catholic country! – locals take it as great offense.
Familiar two-party (one party) political system, presidential candidates vetted at the State Department, local Central Bank under full control of IMF – 100% reserve requirement, high refinance rate making effective borrowing rate at 24 – 30%, thus eliminating any chance of development.
Local colonial management here, if they behave appropriately, get additional bonus of pushing cocaine without being reprimanded from Washington.
Jim!
Curb your dog.
You come down on Seawolf for remarks about Jews, but let Janos spew this crap??!
Sad that your attempts at moderating this clusterfuck are so transparently biased. Janos is a white supremacist, and you give him free reign. Is it just a pseudonym for you?
I really cannot get my head around your intentions here.
This is more like his platform than yours.
If some people eat as much as they type it’s little wonder the waistline has expanded. What an awful feeling that must be, a flabby gut and active fingers.
More later.
Russia is facing two threats, one on its southern frontier facing Islamic Central Asia.
The other threat has two facets. On the one hand there’s stuff happening now. On the other hand it’s not likely to blow right away. Rather it’s likely to fester for some time. As of this moment, the Moscow kleptocracia doesn’t seem concerned as it doesn’t presently threaten its looting operations.
What is this threat? China. Over what? Siberia. Lest we forget, China has a giant need for land and resources. It will shortly have one and a half billion people and a gigantic surplus of young men because of selective abortion of female fetuses and female infanticide. If I were a leader of a country along the Chinese border I’d be dreading what this portends.
But nobody in Moscow seems concerned. And so, as I’ve read in a couple places, Chinese are just walking across the border into Siberia and setting up shop. Vladivostok is magically full of Chinese. Now, where have we seen this before?
Well, one boatload at a time over two hundred years, Brits, Spanish and other Europeans filled up the New World, killed and pushed aside the folk living here.
And, as we’ve seen in this offshored world, the US is invoking extra-territoriality, making offshored branches of US firms comply with US law. And, also, making foreign based companies with US branches comply with US law. Stinky don’t you think?
Stinky or no, others are likely to take the example. How long before the boys in Beijing say to the Russians, yo Ivan, we have interests in Siberia, we have people there and money invested. Illegally you say? Cry me a river, we mean to defend these interests.
And not only that, we mean to make those people in Siberia with CHINESE citizenship and those CHINESE firms operating in Siberia, obey CHINESE law. Don’t like it? Tough shit Ivan, you neglected that border, now you can suck air.
And, in the fullness of time, but not too much time, the Chinese will claim that Siberian territory, full of Chinese, as Chinese.
Can’t happen? Oh yes it can. The Russians may be nuclear armed. But so are the Chinese. And the Chinese outnumber Russians ten to one.
IMO, in the Ukraine, the Russians are pissing away lives and resources over the territory of a messed up country it doesn’t need and can’t afford. It has big problems to its south and east. Better turn attention to these and forget this Ukrainian diversion.
Don’t worry, Volodya, Chinese are not going to take over Siberia, they hate the friggin cold. At least not in the nearest 50 years, after that the bets are off – they may learn how to grow body fur.
You’re forgetting Chinese pride – and the shame of losing some decent land in Southern Siberia to the Cossacks. The Chinese made it clear to early traders that they wanted nothing to do with Whites. I respect them for that. But the Russians forced themselves on them and ultimately defeated them. Likewise Colonial powers forced themselves into Chinese ports when China was weak.
As you well know, Chinese illegals are already setting up shop and camp in Siberia. But since you don’t really love Russia, you’re pretending this isn’t really happening.
Peking, in the North near Manchuria, can get quite cold. That settles the question of whether Homo Erectus had fire or not. They had to have had in order to survive at that latitude. They didn’t go any further north though, so they never developed the skills that would enable them to do so. Or maybe they just didn’t like the cold as you say. After all, the modern Chinese are at least partially descended from “Peking Man” – the Eastern Race of the Homo Erectus species. Modern Chinese share some of their unique dentition.
Is it true ‘inbred people’ [Finns, Japs, etc] are healthier than mixed race or ‘euro mutts’?
There are some studies that indicate that.
Interesting. Usually the opposite is emphasized – the dangers of inbreeding. But some have said that inbreeding is fine if the defective are kept from breeding. Then the genetic errors are eliminated by culling the defectives. In Nature, nature would do it by survival of the fittest.
If you something fine, why would you want to ameliorate it by out breeding? One can be too narrow though. Cheetahs for example seem to been an artificial breed, perhaps developed by the Ancient Egyptians or even the Annunaki from beyond the Earth.
Is that how it is going to go on our southern border too. It seems like we neglect that while getting bent out of shape on things that don’t matter
All by design in order to destroy nations qua nations. Only then can the Global State arise. The death of the cell is the health of the organism – or so they think. Ultimately they want the World to be just a big amoeba or paramecium. Grotesque.
Russia and China have signed a big trade pact. What gives you the idea that the Chinese want Siberia? As for Chinese just marching into Vladivostok, given currently realities the Russians probably welcome the tax dollars of new Chinese businessmen.
Vladivostok has 0.5M people and you go any distance inside of East Asian Siberia and all you have is a few tens of thousands of Chukchi people … Eskimos, basically.
The countries that are pissing away lives are the meddlers, like the USA, that were the prime backers of a thug regime that they probably now regret supporting.
Siberia is a giant peat bog with the most horrific weather outside of Antarctica. How does NINETY below zero strike you? If the Ukraine is useless to Russia, then 99% of Siberia is less than useless. I think you’re creating a tempest in a teapot.
The area around Lake Baikal isn’t that bad. I think there are minerals in parts of Siberia and of course, Lumber. Might there not be Oil?
Hello V,
re | “And, as we’ve seen in this offshored world, the US is invoking extra-territoriality, making offshored branches of US firms comply with US law. And, also, making foreign based companies with US branches comply with US law. Stinky don’t you think?”-v.
You might be forgetting about the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) being put together “in secret” right now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trans-Pacific_Partnership
Which does nothing more than make EVERY signatory nation obey the laws and regulations of every other signatory nation… Meaning: that US laws would be over-ridden by Mexico’s, Malaysia’s and Chile’s for example.
But stateless corporations *love* it. And that’s what counts, right?
/s
So, this changes the picture somewhat, doesn’t it? It looks a lot more like Russian “kleptocracia” (nice term) vs. everyone else’s.
But that’s pretty much what you’d expect in a scenario of global political destabilization, no?
V, I appreciate you bringing the Chinese vs. Russian long-term scenario into view, but I’m not sure the timeline of disintegration will support it, considering how badly China is doing behind it’s facade.
There seems to be this expectation (desperate hope, really) that China is going to keep the engine of global “growth” churning despite all. Which – if it were true – would mean that the Baltic Dry Index [*] would be still be going strong – instead of plummeting so effing badly that Chinese mega-shipbuilder COSCO had to scrap 8 ships before they’d been half-finished:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-16/chinas-cosco-dis-assembles-8-ships-amid-glut-baltic-dry-hits-another-record-low
To quote:
“Remember what is key here is that The Baltic Dry Index – unlike so much of our modern world – is not financialized… in other words, it has not become bastardized by the daily needs of algo-high-freaks and central planners ability to provide margin-buffering liquidity to any and all positions… The Baltic Dry is ‘real’, it is the world economy’s “red pill” -ZH.
To be very clear; since global finance doomed itself in 2008 (thus initiating Stage One: Financial Collapse) and we have now arrived at Stage Two: Commercial Collapse (witness the bleeding-out of global trade), I’m not sure that there will be a thing much like ‘China’ around to take territory from another nation-state like ‘Russia’ for much longer.
The picture is changing drastically.
—
[*] I’ve been tracking the BDI for eight years – since it became apparent that any metric financialized was a pack of lies. And “Zero Hedge/Tyler Durden” has too, it seems.
http://www.dailystormer.com/kenya-president-flipping-out-after-texas-judge-twarts-invasion-plot/
Here comes the Juje. Here comes the Juje. That’s the way Blacks say it. Spell almost like ju ju. Coincidence? I think not. One man’s coincidence is another man’s working out of the Laws of Nature.
JHK: ““We’re executioners, not warriors.”
Saying this legitimizes Daesh. Daesh consists of criminals who desperately want legitimacy. Using the word “executioners” gives Daesh the legitimacy they want.
EXECUTIONER
an official who carries out a sentence of death on a legally condemned person.
There is nothing legal or official about the violent criminals who form Daesh. (use of ISIS or ISIL is collaboration with the terrorists by legitimizing the term they prefer)
http://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/why-does-a-simple-word-like-daesh-disturb-extremists-so-much
Finca: “Don’t worry, Volodya, Chinese are not going to take over Siberia, they hate the friggin cold.”
Isn’t it cold in Tibet? Didn’t seem to stop the Chinese. If the Chinese want Siberia, Russia will lose Siberia.
Q, if you need to feel scared, then believe Stockman. But since Stockman last warned people to leave the insanity of the modern stock market, stocks have gone up 28 percent. You want to leave 28% on the table? LOL!
Remember though, better to get out years too early, than a nano-second too late.
Just follow the Dow. It will not fail us.
Do you know any good Drone Companies that are open to the public? Or 3D Printing?
Thanks. After you die, you’re probably not going to realize that you’re dead. So I’ll come and tell you. You’ll be busy sitting at your dream computer doing your dream trading, and I’ll knock at the dream door. Then you’ll know if you can remember this conversation. If not, I’ll try to convince you.
Hasidic Tale: A son loses his faith at the University and tells his father that he doesn’t believe anymore. He says “I can prove or disprove anything. I could even prove that I don’t have a nose on my face.” The father punches him in the nose and says, “What hurts?”
Hopefully I wont have to punch you in the dream nose….
Oy oy oy.
Janos you have a very catholic appetite for both appropriate erudite tidbits and discriminating diatribes: this Hebraic inclusion surprises me further.
Netanyahu says his political opposition would allow ISIL/ISIS/Greenwater/SillySand* to come to Jerusalem.
@ LisaM:
re | “Sigh, that old canard ‘western military forces are rubbish because of …women’. Korbane showed that females can fight real well, as ISIS can attest…
Oh yes females may struggle with the ‘western way of war’, but that is obsolete and useless and has been for many decades.”-LM.
Having served with female soldiers in Afghanistan I can say that they do _just fine_ waging the ‘western way of warfare’, such as it is.
Just as they did fine in other fighting forces (the IDF, The Soviet Red Army of the Great Patriotic War) at other times and elsewhere. As you will correctly state, the problem’s not in the human-resource ‘hardware’ but the ‘software’ they’re programmed with (US military doctrine).
“The ‘western way of war’ is bankrupt (and bankrupts societies too), an over emphisis on air power (useless), hardware (designed to maximise manufacturers profits and mostly hopeless), tactics (inferior to the Wehrmacht in 1940), strategy (blindingly obvious that it is hopeless everywhere), C&C (again inferior to the 1940 Wehrmacht), training (sacrificed for useless hardware).”-LM.
You might be interested in the books of H. John Poole. The Wehrmacht fought more efficiently than most Allied forces (citing S. L. A. Marshall, Col. Grossman), but they clung to certain flaws… fatally.
“Soldiers, ever more loaded with ‘stuff’, carrying weights that make them as limber as a bag of cement (and causing permanent damage to their bodies, who needs bullets from the other side) and constantly having rings ran around them by lighter and more mobile forces…
I was watching some videos of Novarussian forces moving around and was struck by how lightly loaded they were, mobility for them was far more important. An equivalent western soldier in the same environment would be carrying, what, 30-40 kilos?
Never mind, ‘ka-ching’ means we will just keep doubling up on failure.”-LM
Well, there you are, precisely. American Military Doctrine exists for the benefit of the American Defense Industry at this point. It optimizes everything that’s important for them. And the results are in.
😉
Most women don’t have the strength to be an infantryman. They will naturally seek male aid and men will naturally give it – and be rewarded by special favors. Thus morale and brotherhood are destroyed.
Other nations used them in times of emergency, but once the crisis was over, discontinued them in regular combat. Needless to say, women can be good snipers if the Homeland is threatened. Of course never quite as good as men since their eyesight isn’t as keen at long distances.
The Seals are a big deal now. Women “naturally” (ego) want to be Seals now. Inevitably, they will be allowed in, further destroying the morale of this Elite group. Of course their seeking personal publicity hasn’t helped, nor has the consequent in fighting.
Women are famous for becoming pregnant just as they about to be called up. Many naval ships are little more than floating nurseries now.
Just reread my post. Amazing how much information and Fascist feeling I can pack into a few short sentences. If I could change anything it would be to say “floating nurseries/brothels” instead of just nurseries. Thanks.
“You might be interested in the books of H. John Poole. The Wehrmacht fought more efficiently than most Allied forces (citing S. L. A. Marshall, Col. Grossman), but they clung to certain flaws… fatally.”
Oh yes, you can also look at Crevald’s ‘Fighting Power’ too. You can characterise the Germans as ‘tactically brilliant, strategically and logistically hopeless’, a trait they carry on to this very day in all sorts of ways.
Note I did say ‘may’ in relation to females in the military, I should have emphasised that word more and you are quite correct to bring it up.
I was intending a touch of sarcasm in response to all those many (see Janos’s comment below as an example) who think all females in the military are ‘hopeless’.
Given how hopeless western militaries have been and that they also have been exclusively or dominated by males, maybe the right answer is to get rid of the males? An all female military certainly couldn’t do any worse than the fiascos we have seen over the decades and there would be a chance of them doing better (since there is zero chance the way things are now)…….just a thought…lol.
Yes, there is secret plan amongst Radical Feminists to decimate the Male population by 9/10ths. Obviously that fits in with the Globalists vision of depopulating the Earth, they might go with it – exempting themselves of course.
This an idea long in the making. Read Herland. As you must have realized by now, Feminism is based on the hatred of femininity and the envy of masculinity. Basically the opposite of your condition. Penis envy is very real. As real as vagina envy.
Can’t be so secret if you know about it then.
‘Penis envy’? Nope, except for the small proportion of females suffering from gender dysphoria (about the same % as for males) females are quite happy with their bodies and sexual organs.
‘Femininity ‘ is a social construct that changes endlessly. What is considered ‘feminine’ now was different in the past and will be different in the future, there are also huge class and cultural dfferences as to what it is. Just a quick look at advertisements through time will graphically show that.
There is an misogynist ‘femininity ‘ concept around (amongst misogynists) , which is a ‘Stepford Wife’ kind of perfect submissiveness to and dependence on males, beauty (of course) and a blow job for their ‘man’ every day when he comes home from work after giving his feet a rub, while he gives her a good shouting at (and maybe a clout or two) for being so useless. Ah, misogynist heaven.
It must be terrible being a misogynist and straight. Just think if they were gay then they could have nothing whatsoever to do with females at all. What a mean trick for nature to play on them, you can almost feel sorry for them. Maybe someone could come up with a ‘gay conversion’ treatment for them so they can then be happy?
The other option is for all straight misogynists to take T-blockers, as it kills that traitorous male sex drive (which forces them to associate with those horrible creatures) and therefore they will have no need for females whatsoever.
Just a thought.
A penny for your thoughts – all they’re worth. Women love thugs and billionaires – anyone who is alpha at any level. Obviously the higher the better of course. The essence of femininity is to advance by means of the other – like a vine curling around a plant that has a backbone.
This is how they are made. To hate them is to hate nature. And the God that made nature. One must see them as they are – and the social order must reflect that. Men first, Women second. Men lead and Women follow. Otherwise you have what we have now: Women getting ahead at the expense of men and then having no men to look up to and marry. Women wont marry beneath themselves – but men do it all the time.
Any attempt by China to absorb Russian territory in the Far East and / or in Siberia would be a huge strategic mistake for China. There are three main reasons to believe so:
1. China will get exponentially growing benefits from stable, progressive relations with Russia, not from hostile takeovers of Siberia. The main motivation for this absorption is usually to gain access to the vast natural resources of the Russian Federation. However, China already has access to these resources, without resorting to risky schemes of land grabbing. Such access will only expand in the immediate diversification of the Russian economy under the “turn to the East” in the face of Western sanctions and sustained hostility from the United States. In addition, Russia has to offer China a lot more than just natural resources. Emerging market with about 145 million consumers with an average income, partnership in all international organizations, balancing force to unlimited US hegemony, as well as a source of nuclear energy and military technology. But perhaps the most significant in the coming decade will be the fact that Russia is one of the most important overland routes in China’s plans to build a new Silk Road. All these strategic benefits are at risk if a hostile takeover attempt in the Russian Far East will provoke Russia to close its doors to China and return to the hostile policy of the 60s.
2. Hostile Russia – even if it is weakened – will be a real strategic threat to China. Any attempt by Chinese to capture the territory of Russia will destroy all comprehensive partnership and goodwill accumulated since the beginning of the 80s, and will cause a sharp anti-Chinese reaction. Russia has at its disposal a range of responses, the most obvious of which is material and political support for separatist movements in Tibet, Xinjiang and Taiwan. Moscow may also use their continuing regional political influence to break the Chinese economic relations with Central Asia and to roll back the Chinese achievements in the Silk Road Project. If by some miracle, China still be able to seize territory in the Far East, it will get 4-6 million local Angry Russians and Russia will undoubtedly provoke a political disobedience and armed insurrection against the Chinese occupation. Even if Russia does not want to respond from ethnic hatred, it will be forced to do so from a strategic necessity, just to distract China from further invasion and to ensure their national survival. These threats may increase if future improvement of relations between Russia and the United States will encourage the two forces of cooperation and common efforts. Do you think China wants another Donbas on its territory and face united Russia and United States?
3. There is no real scheme of capture, which would have even a little reasonable chance of success. You can name all scenarios into four main categories:
– Military action will fail. Military conquest of the Far East / Siberia will require full-scale invasion into the territory of the largest state in the world, possessing nuclear weapons. It is clear that no amount of Russian land or natural resources can compensate for the devastation that will bring to China a single nuclear warhead.
– The mechanisms to overthrow Russian political regime are not available. Unlike the US and Europe, China does not have a network of well-trained and experienced NGOs, activists and other political operatives, by which to overthrow the government and orchestrate regime change in Russia.
– Demographic “invasion” just is not happening. The ethnic Chinese constitute about 3% of the population of the Far East. There is more Chinese living in New York than in the entire Far East.
– Economic “hegemony” is not possible in a competitive environment. A common argument against the expansion of Sino-Russian trade is that it will lead to the transformation of Russia into a raw material appendage of China. This argument ignores the fact that Russia – until recently – was practically the only raw materials appendage to the European Union, which remains a major trading partner of Russia, despite the rapid growth of Sino-Russian trade. Neither the EU nor the major economies of East Asia will easily agree with the Chinese economic hegemony in Russia.
http://www.studychinese.ru/articles/9/192/
It is obvious that all attempts by Western propaganda machine to discredit Russian-Chinese relations have to be considered as lame attempts to put a wedge into growing anti-American Union of Great Euro Asian Nations.
Actually, I should have said not anti-American, but anti-American undisputed hegemony and anti current american political establishment.
I sure hope that US will find strength to change its current doomed economic and political course and future Russian-American relationship will be much better, as they were during the Presidencies of Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Just 3%? Ah Devil! what about the REST OF THE STORY? Three percent is huge – and what was the percentage ten years ago? Maybe a bit less? Or a lot less?
You people did the same thing about Muslim and Hispanic Immigration. Too little to bother about and then when it gets more, the line becomes you’re a bigot to mention it. And then it’s all resistance is hopeless, you will be absorbed.
Dear Readers! I didn’t look hard for this. I just googled “illegal Chinese immigration to Siberia” and countless entries popped up. An abundance of riches to refute the Lie and the Liar.
Putin adds insult to injury:
“Of course, it is always bad to lose. Of course, it is always a problem for the loser. Especially if you lose to yesterday miners or tractor drivers. But life is life. It just goes on. There is no need to dwell on it.”
Amazing changes are taking place in the world. Until yesterday, the Security Council held three dozen meetings at which monotonically and sometimes loudly urged Russia (mainly through the mouth of Samantha Power) to stop the Ukrainian crisis. This time, State Department explicitly allowed his and Lithuanian representatives to shoot their mouths off as they see fit, but approve the resolution.
UN Security Council resolution has transformed the conflict in Donbas into the Ukrainian domestic crisis. To be addressed with not a dead-end military means, but through negotiations, at least give some hope for a peaceful settlement. With the adoption of this resolution, the world finally has become multipolar, and Russia took one of its poles.
Barack Obama had to know it from the beginning of the impending geopolitical upheaval and for some reasons approved it. Angela Merkel and Francois Hollande would not go on a crusade against the White House. There is nothing in the world that could force them to do it.
German Chancellor Merkel did not stand on the sidelines. On Wednesday, Feb. 18, she made another significant statement that she wants to work with Russia on establishing peace in Europe: “We want to build a European world order, along with Russia, not against it.” Merkel, who in the past year, when Barack Obama hesitated after the Crimea, was the first among Western leaders to offer to impose sanctions against Russia. This is the second landmark Merkel’s statement over the past two weeks in support of Putin’s plan for Ukraine.
No less significant were the words of the speaker of the State Department Psaki, who on Wednesday said that the US does not intend to adopt new sanctions against Russia: “I’m not ready to announce new sanctions or plans to introduce such measures.” This is a serious statement which is yet another link in the same chain.
While the whole world was watching what the outcome of the Minsk-2 would be, it was nowhere to be found in the US national media. What was it? – There was only fighting ISIS. And this topic Barack Obama has consistently kept central to American public opinion for the past week. As a result, today out the two options where to send American troops and weapons – to Ukraine or to Iraq, most Americans are clearly in favor of Iraq.
Everything that is happening in the United States says one thing – some trend, the essence of which is that Obama, probably for the first time of his term, is determining the foreign policy of his country, coming out the influence of those who have defined US policy for the last 50 years. The last such approach was attempted by John Kennedy, and we all remember how it ended for him.
Obama over the past year made a number of high-profile and threatening statements towards Russia and Putin. His last statement was in the spirit of the fact that Russia is second-hazard on global agenda after the Ebola (which is most likely was American test of weaponized virus) and obviously to ISIS. But that’s the nature of politics – sometimes to distract opponents, one must make sweeping pronouncements. That is what Obama did all last year in order not be eaten by the entourage of Clinton and Biden people as well as by media hawks that deliberately lowered his ratings in the summer.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1897149.html
CIA HEADQUARTERS IN LANGLEY REPORTEDLY ON LOCKDOWN
According to accounts from a McLean, Virginia resident, the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia are on lockdown for an unknown reason.
http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2015/02/14/cia-headquarters-in-langley-reportedly-on-lockdown/
According to Russian “conspiracy site”:
Two of the special agents of the CIA were ordered to deliver a powerful thermonuclear charge (several megatons) to Iraq and detonate it in such a way as to destroy the Islamic state. Since the explosion was planned to carry on the ground, during the complete cessation of activity of the US Air Force in the region, nothing would have pointed to the United States.
The territory of the headquarters of the CIA was infiltrated by a group of employees the US Secret Service to check what is happening on the spot – under the pretext of a possible threat to the security of the President. In other words, ostensibly to prevent a coup attempt. The group was met at the gate of a high-ranking intelligence officer, who invited “guests” inside.
Federal Secret Service agents arrived without reinforcements, only wearing personal weapons. Their arrival was preceded by several days of a series of misunderstandings between the CIA and local law enforcement officers.
=============================================
I have NO way to independently verify those obviously crazy stories. Anybody know anything about it? Is it total BS or there is some merit to the story?
Putin adds insult to injury:
“Of course, it is always bad to lose. Of course, it is always a problem for the loser. Especially if you lose to yesterday miners or tractor drivers. But life is life. It just goes on. There is no need to dwell on it.”
No, it’s not always bad to lose. Sometimes you have to lose a few battles to provide sufficient motivation to win the war, but let’s take Vlad’s word for it and apply his words and logic toRussia and the USSR.
You’re right, Vlad, it’s always bad to lose and it’s always a problem for the loser — especially when the loser doesn’t accept it’s the loser and that it’s lost — like you and the former USSR. You lost Putin. The USSR lost. The Russian people lost — again. The Russian people always lose — it is their fate until there is no longer a “Russian” people. It can only get better Vlad, for you and all the Russian people, if you accept that you’ve lost and move forward, not backward. Then losing will always be a good thing and will always be good for the losers — Russia and the implacable, thick-skulled Russian people.
Absolutist terms like “always” and “never” are the rhetorical vanguard of potentates.
Well, I guess Putin forgot to mention a sour loser at that.
Sorry, Mr.Q, that was meant to be a sore loser.
Somehow, I always mix it up with the sour cream.
How many times can Breitbart jump the shark? And to think, people read that tabloid trash as though it’s real news. Any day now, I’m expecting Breitbart to inform us the aliens have landed and the alien invasion has begun — the real alien invasion with spaceships and grey creatures with large eyes.
Well, since there are no independent confirmation, you’re probably right. The only indirect confirmation may come in couple of weeks, like some sex scandal forcing John Brennan to resign.
Obama over the past year made a number of high-profile and threatening statements towards Russia and Putin.
Hogwash! He has gone out of his way to rhetorically scuttle and diminish the notion that Russia is a global threat. He went so far as to call Russia a “regional concern.” I have to give him, or his puppet masters, credit for that statement. It was a bitch-slap to Putin in front of all the world. Don’t worry, though — when Jeb occupies the clown seat in 2017 he’ll patch things over with Putin.
I’m betting Jeb, like his brother, will be able to look into Putin’s eyes and see his spleen and by virtue of that he will know, even though Dubya already told him, Volodya is a good, decent and honest man — a man of solid character and unwavering integrity. A man you can sit down and have a vodka with, or a tequila.
Yes, he did say that, but that was before he elevated the Russian threat to a second place, somewhere between ISIS and Ebola. That’s quite a few notches up – don’t you miss those color-coded DHS security threat charts of early 2000s? Those would explain everything in an easy to understand “Idiots guide to security threats coming out of Russia.”
Well, I guess Putin forgot to mention a sour loser at that.
Yes, he forgot to mention he, as representative of bastard Russia, is a sore loser. Putin is sour grapes.
May be that is you who misunderstand the history, and it was Russia who lost a battle, but not a war?
There’s a very informative article about ISIS in the March issue of Atlantic magazine. I recommend it.
Friends inquire: “How can we tell that an especially large fecal mass is about to hit the oscillating air-moving unit?”
I tell ’em: Simply go to the clusterfuck-nation blog’s comment section and check the general “tone” of the disinformationalists. When they become peevish, shrieky, shrill and extraordinarily declarative, then you’ll have a fairly good idea.
Here comes economic collapse (your local impacts will vary widely) and by the nature of our just-in-time, rubber-tired infrastructure, commercial collapse will follow in short order. (“Investors” get your money-for-nothing into railroads while the floating electrons will allow this unwarranted extraction of wealth by proxy.)
Find some [other] subset of the oppressed to direct your frustration and hate toward (besides the one you’re presently a member of), and git yer war on, bitchez! (At the very least, it’s a stunner of a diversion.)
“They hate us for our jobs”, ain’t working.
They hate us for being the Covenant People. That’s the ultimate root of White Genocide.
Is that terrorism summit (or violent extremism) that just just ended in Washington going to amount to anything, or just more bullsh-t, forgot about already by next Monday? The conclusion seems to be, as I understand it, that more jobs and economic opportunity needs to be provided for ISIS militia fighters. I’m not kidding you; this is what i heard Maria Harf, noted State Dept. spokeswoman say, on MSNBC the other night.
Much was made about the cease fire agreement in Ukraine last week but it doesn’t seem to be holding as of last nite. What now?
brh
Yes she really needs a man. Her cats can’t do what she needs done. Wouldn’t you like to make her cry Geronimo?
Generations of White Women have fantasized about being ravished by Arab slavers or Dance Hall Sheiks. Now they’ve gone even darker. In other words, we’ve been far too nice for far too long.
Mr Darling, I’ve heard about the TPP.
There’s also the example of FATCA (Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act) that has a lot of people outside the US riled. No matter, if foreign banks want to do business in the US then the foreign home offices of these banks will have to comply. Doesn’t matter that it amounts to US law applied overseas.
You know what I’ve seen? An amazing flexibility when it comes to applying principle. You know the old joke, if you don’t like these principles, well, I’ve got others. You see it a lot in politics, especially lately with Republicans. The only agenda being to obstruct, they’ve become the most amazing philosophical shape-shifters.
In the business world there’s a contortionism that no circus act could rival. On the one hand multi-national corporations disdain national borders (and the national laws that apply within those borders) as unwarranted interference with what really matters. And, no surprise here, what really matters is their own enrichment.
But, at the same time, or, in the very next breath (in a most spectacular example of Orwellian double-think) those same corporations demand services from the very entities that maintain those same borders, those entities being nation states.
And then, if that wasn’t amazing enough, they’ll say, again as if there was perfect consistency, that you can’t tax those very same people that demand those services. You remember: “job-creators”.
You know, we’re talking about those same “job-creators” that gutted the American economy via offshoring. Those “job-creators” apparently want the protection as given by the military and police and a judicial system that the nation state maintains. They just think that the corporation, and rich people like them that benefit from the corporation, shouldn’t have to pay for it all.
Regrettably, we’re not done yet. Because, you see, government is not the solution, government is the problem. Government is only good when it does what the oligarchy wants, that is, facilitate its looting by making it legal. What the oligarchy doesn’t want is acknowledgement that other people have legitimate interests.
I could go on. But time is limited. Maybe you can keep track of all the twists and turns if it would do any good. But it wouldn’t because what we have here is just straight forward hypocrisy.
People, especially Oligarchs, will do what’s in their own interest and say whatever is convenient today to justify it in the sure knowledge that they won’t be held to account for contradicting what they said yesterday.
You can holler like hell and it won’t matter. Governments won’t help you because governments are subverted by oligarch interests.
Laws? What laws? Oh, those laws. Well, you know, proving anything is so damn difficult and besides, they’re too big to jail. The courts? Good luck.
And so, aside from not buying what that same hypocrite Oligarch has to sell, there’s not a damn thing you can do.
You make an excellent point, that China is doing very badly behind the façade. And that is the crucial point.
China has massive problems. What regimes have done since the beginning of time, when problems become insurmountable, or when they threaten the existence of the regime, is to start a war. That is, get its troublesome young men to inflict themselves on other countries. Which is what I think the Chinese gangsters-in-charge will do. A time tested solution that comes with great risks but can be very effective. To put it another way, the Chinese regime will do what’s in its interest and they will do whatever mental gymnastics necessary to rationalize it.
Maybe you’re right, that events will overtake and bury the Chinese. There’s many possibilities, many of them dreadful.
Or maybe the Chinese will do what Muslim regimes do, that is, to follow the corporate playbook, ie to out-source. In this case to out-source military action to alleged “non-state” actors supposedly out of reach of national authority.
Imagine. Armed “patriotic associations” of young Chinese laying claim to tracts of territory outside China for the greater good and glory of Chinese civilization.
And the Chinese regime saying gosh what these crazy kids are doing we of course cannot countenance but we do not control them. IOW it is what it is. How did they get those arms? A great mystery, that. Somehow they got them.
Or, as you say, China could come apart politically. A question maybe of which way the house of cards topples. Many horrifying scenarios imaginable. But, given past history, is the imagination up to the task? To paraphrase what’s-his-name, the world is not only crazier than you imagine, it’s crazier than you CAN imagine.
I can’t bring you to my plane of thought. An autodidactic undertaking is pehaps your best remedy.
Thank you for a very thought provoking comment on humans being animals burdened with consciousness etc.
Regarding DA’s trite answers, she is a smug know-it-all who won’t engage you in point-counterpoint, she just makes unfounded statements such as “Oh that’s right, there won’t be an internet.”
No facts offered to back up the assertion, of course.
It’s best to ignore DA, she’s not worth responding to.
kontrahend
Capt Spaulding: “There’s a very informative article about ISIS in the March issue …”
Captain, the article contains errors, does not name Bush, and does not contain numbers. It ignores how small the Daesh cult is.
Daesh can quote the Koran chapter and verse, but Daesh is .001 of the 1.5 Billion Muslims. The article you mention neglects that and tries to say Daesh is Islamic. Daesh is a fringe cult that cannot claim to represent Islam.
It would be like saying there are some Christian preachers in Kentucky who handle snakes, they cite the Bible chapter and verse and they represent Christianity. No, they represent an extremely small fringe cult.
I would recommend an antidote to the Atlantic article from a scholar who knows much more about the Middle East than Bernard Haykel.
Today’s Top 7 Myths about Daesh/ ISIL
http://www.juancole.com/2015/02/todays-about-daesh.html
Islam is a religion of peace. And thank God it is so. It would be terrible to have 1.5 Billion people committing violence every day. Obviously that is not happening.
Indeed. They make a desert and they call it Peace. Peace through submission.
The rapes in Sweden will stop once all women are Muslims. Just like Bush’s solution to illegal aliens was just to legalize them. He too is a terrible simplifier. I want to simplify in the opposite direction: reunite families by sending the children back to Mexico to be with their sires and dams.
“Moderate Syrian Rebels” to be trained and hosted by Turkey, supposedly to fight ISIS. In reality, they will attack Assad from the West even as ISIS attacks from the North and East.
Janos: “They make a desert and they call it Peace.”
Janos, did you read the article Captain Spaulding referred us to?
Daesh is rigidly bound by their own fundamentalist interpretation of the Qu’ran. By their own religious belief they cannot fight with anybody except those CONTIGUOUS to their so-called Caliphate. That means Europe is not in danger, the United States is not in danger, Russia is not in danger. (Russia cannot even fight; they got their asses kicked out of Afghanistan).
The dangerous ones are Al-Qaeda because Al-Qaeda does believe in attacking enemies from a distance. Al-Qaeda took down the towers.
In any case, Bush was wrong to use the word “crusade” because we are not at war with Islam. We are at war with a small number of fundamentalist extremists who are a threat to us. Obama is killing Al-Qaeda leaders. Obama got Bin Laden… because Al-Qaeda was a threat to the USA.
Daesh does not qualify as an imminent threat to the USA.
Top 7 Myths about Daesh
http://www.juancole.com/2015/02/todays-about-daesh.html
I’ve never heard of Desh. This is an attempt by you to divert attention from ISIS. The Atlantic article is superb and I advise readers to go there and not to “Desh” – a Hindoo name.
America’s most prominent Muslim says The Atlantic is doing PR for ISIS
In September, Nihad Awad, the executive director of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), held a press conference in Washington and, flanked by other Muslim figures, announced that 120 Muslim scholars had produced an 18-page open letter, written in Arabic, to ISIS leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi.
An English translation of the document is a tough slog. As Awad said at the time, “This letter is not meant for a liberal audience.” He even admitted that mainstream Muslims might find it difficult to read.
The letter is an extended exegesis, heavily salted with quotes from the Koran and the Hadith, arguing point by point about the nature of jihad, the slaughtering of innocents, the taking of slaves, and other not-so-savory elements of the distant past — and in the past they should remain, the text argues. It makes the case not only that ISIS was wrong to commit horrific acts of violence in modern times, but that it was interpreting Islamic law incorrectly to justify such acts.
ISIS not only doesn’t represent Muslims. It isn’t, in fact, Islamic at all, the document argues.
http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2015/02/americas-most-prominent-muslim-says-the-atlantic-is-doing-pr-for-isis/
From the article Captain Spaulding referenced:
“the Islamic State regards Shiism as innovation, and to innovate on the Koran is to deny its initial perfection…. That means roughly 200 million Shia are marked for death. So too are the heads of state of every Muslim country, who have elevated man-made law above Sharia by running for office or enforcing laws not made by God.”
Daesh is bound by their idea of religious duty to first target the Shia and all Muslim politicians, not the infidels outside Islam. Daesh plans to murder 200 million Muslims. Daesh must be stopped before they murder more Muslims.
Non-Muslims are not in danger until Daesh first kills 200 million Shia Muslims and all Muslim politicians. Anybody think that is going to happen? If so, I have a bridge in Brooklyn to sell you.
Obama’s strategy of degrade and destroy using airpower is frustrating Daesh. That is not what Daesh wants. It is why Daesh could not take Bhagdad.
The article Captain Spaulding mentions makes it clear that Daesh will not leave the Caliphate to fight infidels. What they want is for the infidels to go to the Caliphate where they can be killed. Daesh wants the West to send their infidel soldiers to the Caliphate. We should not go along with the Daesh’s wishes.
Daesh is a small death cult that is a perversion of Islam and in no way represents mainstream Islam. Islam is a religion of peace.
For those who think all religions have engaged in violence, you don’t know the history of the Jains.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/religion/religions/jainism/ataglance/glance.shtml
wpa-ccc,
I agree that all religions, with perhaps the exceptions of Jainism and certain Christian sects i.e. Quakers & Mennonites, have shown themselves, apodicticly, to be prone to hate and violence of the most horrific kind to include genocide.
However, I also think you are delusional if you really believe that Islam is a religion of peace.
Obviously you know nothing of history to make such a claim. The original Caliphate was spread by the fury of the scimitar ( and that continues today.) See the activities of Charles Martel; El Cid; Don John; King John III Sobieski at Vienna, and other very great leaders who have saved the West over the centuries from subjugation by Islam.
I suggest you consider that across the world today – from Boko Haram in Nigeria and west Africa to Muslim fighters in the Phillipines southwestern archipelago and everywhere in between and outside too: a torrent of blood is flowing from the sword of Islam. EVERYWHERE! No other group-think project can come close on the contemporary world stage, murder and mayhem that many, many Islamic believers engage in (well maybe except the world “policing project” of the U.S. of A.)
Killing Jews at a Paris food shop to celebrate the Charlie Hebdo murder spree; murderous mall attacks from Mumbai to Kenya; Pakistani weekly mosque bombings; Chechnian movie theatre mass-murders. Don’t forget Maj Hassan Nidal at Ft Hood and his “workplace viokence” escapade. The list is endless and you say Islam is a religion of peace? Nonsense.
Until we face the brutal cold fact that Islam ( until it collectively has an actual Enlightenment) is a religion of violence and war (read your Qu’ran closely now) the only response is to bring the full weight of collective military action to confront active threats and to ensure that the enemy does not acquire weapons of mass destruction because I truly believe they will use them. This is not to say they would be the only ones to use them but the potential a rogue Islamist organization would be my first choice as the agent to introduce that horror to the contemporary landscape.
Having said all of that – yes the U.S. of A., and the evil bastards in charge, have really set the world up for this problem and are also deserving of the most severe consequences as well.
Too bad it’s always the innocent who have to suffer.
Jeez — just when everyone, except JHK perhaps with his use of the descriptor ISIL this week, was getting used to ISIS it’s now being referred to as Daesh. What a nice new poetic name for such a lovely pleasant endeavor. What will it be next month? Rand-y? Or better yet, Greenwater. It could call itself that and no one would even blink.
Greenwater hmm – not bad Cold……
My submission (the Islamists love that term) for name the entity is:
* SillySand – the new name for big fun in the Levant and Mesopotamia.
(Or we will cut your fucking head off kafir)
Daesh plans to murder 200 million Muslims.
It’s going to take them a while one head at a time. Not very efficient but it makes for great theater. Pufferfish.
Cold: “Not very efficient but it makes for great theater.”
Cold, did you read the Atlantic article Captain Spaulding referenced?
They are taunting us. It is an open invitation. Daesh desperately wants infidel soldiers to be sent to them because, by their interpretation of the Qu’ran, they can only fight in or contiguous with their “caliphate.” They cannot come after us. We have to go to them. So they are inviting us.
They are so strict about use of alcohol. I wish their strict interpretation would also prohibit the use of Toyota trucks and AK-47s, things which did not exist in the 7th century.
You’ll like this one guys – a homosexual director of Financial Aid soliciting sexual favors in exchange for grants at North Idaho College.
http://www.kxly.com/news/north-idaho-news/fake-student-helped-catch-nic-admin-in-sex-for-scholarship-sting/31365530
Now, not only do you have to pay back your college loan, you have to suck cock too.
They are so strict about use of alcohol.
What? The recruiter didn’t say anything about that to me. What about cannabis? Are they strict about that too? If so, I’m throwing the application in the ash can. Oh well, another job opportunity down the drain.
I think they have it part right when they indicate jobs will hinder Islamic State recruitment. More specifically, blowjobs will do the trick in addition to cannabis and video games to include Mindcraft. Enable that trinity and Daesh/Greenwater withers on the vine.
I will say this, I don’t know what the Islamic State is thinking. There’s nothing better than kicking back and enjoying a few Cold ones after a rigorous day of beheadings. Are they sadists?
“Bartender — make sure there’s no head on that beer before you pass it this way.”
Cold, did you read the Atlantic article referenced by Captain Spaulding? Daesh wants to implement Sharia law. Not just the penal code, the the social services part of Sharia that not one Muslim country is implementing. According to Daesh, the Muslim countries:
“don’t provide the social and economic justice of the Sharia—the whole package—they simply engender hatred toward the Sharia.” That whole package, he said, would include free housing, food, and clothing for all, though of course anyone who wished to enrich himself with work could do so.”
Many people would gladly give up alcohol in exchange for free housing, food, and clothing for all… although in Daesh’s fundamentalism lies its destruction. For every town they take over they now have a religious duty to provide for the citizens.
Daesh will go broke faster than Detroit and will collapse under the weight of its own ideology. Plus, they’ve got those 200 million Shia Muslims to murder… it’s a lot of work for a small group of psychopathic criminals.
Of course, Americans are even more stupid: a majority now favors giving Daesh the pleasure of GI boots on the ground… exactly what Daesh wants.
Cold, did you read the Atlantic article referenced by Captain Spaulding?
No, I’m still healing from my Christmas Day interview with their Communications Director. It requires lots of alcohol. And other stuff.
Why not sandals on the ground? Lawrence of Arabia wore them and look how successful he was.
Alexander Geskin: Geopolitics of Debaltsevo and the US
Newswires of Western press are filled with one word – Debaltsevo. Only lazy ones didn’t cover the fact that Hollande and Merkel had feared escalating of the Ukrainian conflict into the major European war. And no wonder. It was decided under Debaltsevo who – Russia or the United States – will have the strategic initiative in the geopolitical confrontation in Ukraine. But nobody covered the fact that Obama understood that the citizens of the United States would be watching that war not on their TV sets, but right through their windows.
Meanwhile, the energy with which the President of the United States is trying to send the US Army not to Europe, but to the Middle East to fight ISIS, says that he has no illusions about it. And he is not just trying to send the army into Iraq, but declare war on ISIS “officially”, by the vote in Congress, which, according to the US Constitution can only declare war. And if he succeeds, it will be the first “real” war after 1945, with the participation of the United States, and everywhere else, including Korea and Vietnam, not to mention Serbia and Libya were peacekeeping or police operations authorized by international organizations such as the UN.
There is a huge difference between an officially declared war and other military operations, since it will enable Obama to use “Trading with the Enemy Act” to send to jail those people who will be seen as aiding the enemy (or merely having financial dealings with him), because as life has shown, just firing them is not enough.
These people (let’s not name them for time being) continue to stick to their line, and after the dismissal, despite the fact that the laws of war very often could be applied retroactively. And as you probably know, the ISIS subordinates to the former head of Saudi intelligence Bandar bin Sultan – about the same relationship as Al-Qaeda with Pakistani intelligence. And this analogy becomes even more relevant when we remember that it was Barack Obama who gave the order to kill Osama bin Laden right at the headquarters of the Pakistani intelligence, without asking permission of the Pakistani government.
Moreover, the famous photograph of the Situation Room, where the “inner circle” of President Obama going to see in real time the elimination of Osama bin Laden, was clearly selected by President Obama to show that not all members of his “inner circle” endorsed the decision. In particular, the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was clearly and unpleasantly surprised by the broadcast from camera of the Navy SEAL, who takes aim at the head of “Al-Qaeda”.
So clearly and so unpleasantly surprised that inevitably there is an assumption that she was invited to watch the elimination of Osama bin Laden unexpectedly, at the last moment, in order to make her highly visible during this TV show instead of blabbing on the phone with God knows whom. And the fact that Obama ordered to hide this operation from US allies in Pakistani intelligence, can become even more interesting if it is for the same reasons he ordered to hide the operation from his Secretary of State. Particularly if it is assumed that it is by virtue of these measures, this operation has been so successful, in contrast to many others.
Another thing is that most of the American public did not understand the subtle hints, but the US elite had well understood, and now it is turn of Russia and Novorossia to understand, as the fate of US elections in 2016 is being decided there.
Indeed, those who have contributed to the arming, and to the emergence of ISIS, announced as a major threat to the US, for some strange coincidence are the very same people who always sought to saturate US-Russian relations with all sorts of conflict situations, which could now easily develop into the very European war, which Hollande and Merkel are so afraid of. They understand how dangerous the situation is, especially if the US will start openly supplying weapons to neo-Nazis like Parubiya, Yarosh and Avakov.
And it’s not just interpreter talents of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and not even the fact that it is in this capacity she supported the territorial claims of Japan to Russia and only the tsunami and the accident at Fukushima prevented these territorial claims to provoke a major war.
The fact that she was accountable to the American elite for the destruction of Russian missiles RSM-52, which would resulted in the Russian submarines of Project 941 to become a pile of useless metal up to successful testing of missiles “Bulava” and “Sineva” and Russian submarine fleet would become almost decorative. And the American elite – and that is a bunch of very serious people – and if it turns out that on September 7, 2012 when Hillary Clinton was representing desired as accomplished, reporting the complete elimination of an entire class of Russian nuclear missiles RSM-52, the US Congress would not recall her those missiles, but the fact that the American Ambassador in Benghazi, was killed by the very champions of the “Arab spring” against the Gaddafi regime, which she actively welcomed, as US Secretary of State.
Only by the Bandera Ukraine dealing a decisive defeat to pro-Russian militia at Debaltsevo allows the Ukrainian Armed Forces to meet the terms of the Minsk 2.0 agreements, leaving Debaltsevo for themselves, can create an illusion of (at least until the presidential election of 2016) that the historical Russia is defeated forever and no missiles are going to help. Only in this situation, the former Secretary of State and a potential candidate for the presidency of the United States would be able to introduce to these elites a new roadmap for the collapse of the Russian Federation, despite the failure in overcoming the above-mentioned “disarmament.”
Otherwise, it cannot be expected that the blind eye of the state will continue to look kindly at the consequences of the “Arab Spring”, especially if the US Army will have to go to Iraq to fight against ISIS, and there will be corresponding loss of lives of US Soldiers. US media now is openly saying that the emergence of the ISIS in Libya is a direct result of the power vacuum formed after the overthrow of Gaddafi.
But everything can be solved right now, not in 2016, as Mrs. Potential Candidate for the US presidency, has not yet put forward her candidacy, but is already in full campaign, trying to convince everyone that in the case of the nomination her victory is assured. Therefore, it is necessary to stop her now, even by handing Obama a second Nobel Peace Prize.
Meanwhile, the most important part of this drama is that the Minsk 1.0 and Minsk 2.0 agreements are separated by two newest Russian submarines – nuclear submarine “Vladimir Monomakh” and SSK “Rostov-on-Don” – entering the service, and the largest US investors are talking about the fact that ISIS offensive in Iraq and Libya could trigger a new wave of global economic crisis, compared with which 2008 would seem like a child’s play. And in dealing with the economic crisis and Islamism Russia and the US are allies, and this combination is not only devalues the previously drawn cards of Russian collapse, but also casts doubt on their priority in US policy.
Indeed, the new naval power of Russia, becoming a fact, not a prospect, paradoxically removes Russia from the list of immediate threats to the United States, and Coptic Christians killed in Libya, attract, and not distract attention to the suffering of the people of Donbass, shot at from howitzers of Ukrainian army.
It will so much change the logic of the political situation in the United States that its revision becomes inevitable, despite the reluctance of all parties involved to wash dirty laundry in public, and the situation in Ukraine may be the very straw that breaks the mad world war camel’s back.
Every time you say Donbass, I think of Dumbass and think of you.
Finca’s muse is “Debka”– it’s been obvious from the moment I read his stuff.
Whas that? An evil spirit?
Solzhenitsyn said,
http://www.dailystormer.com/you-must-understand-the-leading-bolsheviks-who-took-over-russia-were-not-russians/
Daily Stormer? No thanks, I visited that site once and once was enough.
I grieve for thee.
Hello LisaM,
re | “Oh yes, you can also look at Crevald’s ‘Fighting Power’ too. You can characterise the Germans as ‘tactically brilliant, strategically and logistically hopeless’, a trait they carry on to this very day in all sorts of ways.”-LM.
Nicely put, and regrettably true enough (from my standpoint).
The reason that I brought up a ‘B-list’ author like Poole is that he has come out with a few interesting insights – like why Western European cultures focus on the _Tactical_ over the _Strategic_ – and it goes like this; that Europe is geographically segmented by deep rivers and high mountain ranges. Because of this armed conflicts could tended to be shorter and sharper, and could be concluded in one decisive engagement. The battlegrounds of the Central Asian Steppe and the enormous river basins of the China and the rest of the ‘Far East’ were the opposite, and it was not possible to end a war in a single battle. Opponents needed to be more than ‘hurt’ or ‘shocked’ – their logistical *capability to resist* had to be neutralized – and this led to the Eastern emphasis on Strategic Thought, training, leadership, tools and organizational assets…
This goes a long way toward explaining why there’s an intellectual blind-spot in ‘The West’. For example: you can quote Sun Tzu’s famous observation: “Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat” and decision makers don’t see how it applies to anything tangible – even when it’s happening right in front of their faces.
I don’t believe that the ‘western way of warfare’ is “hopeless”. It isn’t in that it succeeds at what it __intends__. And there’s the fundamental problem: it’s intended and designed as a tool for short-term gain.
Ultimately this is stuff that’s deeply rooted in western cultures and we’re not going to change that in anything like a timely manner. After all, we’re talking about people who excel at winning battles and losing the war – and they act like everything’s great and going just ‘dandy’ – until they have to live with the aftermath.
re |”Note I did say ‘may’ in relation to females in the military, I should have emphasised that word more and you are quite correct to bring it up…
I was intending a touch of sarcasm in response to all those many (see Janos’s comment below as an example) who think all females in the military are ‘hopeless’.”-LM.
Understood. By the way, I’m primarily here to cultivate conversations with informative adult members of the community. I’m not here to correct spelling, convert others to my point of view or get persnickety about slights (real and imagined). You’ll find me consistent and easy to work with.
Cheers!
I don’t believe that the ‘western way of warfare’ is “hopeless”. It isn’t in that it succeeds at what it __intends__. And there’s the fundamental problem: it’s intended and designed as a tool for short-term gain.
Very true. Population reductions and intimidation are secondary, but still considerable, benefits.
One of the better posts I’ve recently read here on CFN!
Interesting argument MD, would explain a lot of things, such as how intellectually unprepared for a long war (due to railways eliminating that geographical segmentation) the European political and military elites were before WW1, despite the prior glaring example of the US Civil War.
Overall I agree with your thesis about the western ‘hyper focus’ on short term tactical thinking. I’d add, with few counter examples, that we are not that good at tactics either. Rather, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon cultures, monomania seems more the order of the day. A complete focus on just a few simple things (variables) to the exclusion of everything else, the infamous Vietnam ‘body count’ being a classic example, seemingly carried on in one form or another to this very day..
This monomania then often excludes ‘inconvenient data’ when this ‘crash through or crash’ approach usually ends up with an often far too predictable ‘crash’.
When you add monomania to what Bill Lind called the “curse of maximalist intensions” attitude by the now dominant neo-cons (that they expect not just to win, but to win BIG, every time), then you have the current recipe for disaster after disaster.
There seems to be a complete lack of anyone in the halls of power asking “what if this goes wrong, or if this happens instead of that?”, or even just as simple as “and then what?”. Libya and very nearly Syria being poster children for that attitude.
Like a losing gambler doubling up on every bet, “Oh well we lost in Afghanistan and Iraq, Libya is a disaster, Syria a failure… how can we fix it, I know, lets attack Russia….”.
Now how this is linked to an overall western (particularly the US) tendency towards ‘ignorant optimism’, combined with a large dose of cognitive dissonance, is open for speculation. But if you examine our economic, technical and political fields these days you can’t help but be struck by how failure has become almost ubiquitous in our societies.
Obviously neo-liberal economic policy is the poster child of ‘doing the same that doesn’t work over and over again’ but think about large technical and/or civil engineering projects (let alone military ones) that get undertaken, they have a near 100% rate of being massively over budget, usually under delivering too, if not outright failures (the 787 being a poster child for that).
Despite the incredible advances in computing power and mathematics, our capacity for dealing with real world complexity seems to have actually declined, instead of growing with those advances. We have societally locked ourselves into a (very) narrow bandwidth of allowable thought, where any relationship to reality seems accidental at best.
There also seems to be an endemic childishness in behaviour and thought. I have been struck by that last point by following the disaster in the Ukraine. You listen/watch/read our current leaders and they act like little (sociopathic) children, stuck at a “ya boo sucks’ level of discourse, where lying is the norm, not the exception.
Then you do the same for Putin and Lavrov. Now whether you like/dislike, or agree/disagree with them, they both come across with a gravitas, a thoughtfullness and a depth that is totally lacking in western leaders now.
Thus I have little optimism in western elites (of all kinds political, economic, military, etc) being able to deal with any of the dangerous and complex issues our societies now face. I fully expect (and I’m seldom disappointed these days) a near 100% failure rate in whatever is attempted.
Maybe even more so than our disasterous wars, the poster child for western failue has to be ‘the war on drugs’ our longest ‘war’
Everything about the ‘American way’ of dealing with this has been a total failure. As an example of Eistein’s famous dictum you cannot find any better.
Read this (and chase up an excellent poscast interview on the Australian ABC, Late Night Live radio show):
http://readersupportednews.org/news-section2/318-66/28672-everything-you-think-you-know-about-addiction-and-the-war-on-drugs-is-wrong
“Everything You Think You Know About Addiction and the War on Drugs Is Wrong”
“What if everything about the way we thought about drug addiction was backwards? What if the war on drugs was the purest distillation of this backward thinking?
Those are the questions that animate Chasing the Scream: The First and Last Days of the War on Drugs, a new book by journalist Johann Hari that’s brimming with shocking findings about the origins and misadventures of America’s century-long war on drugs.hat if everything about the way we thought about drug addiction was backwards? What if the war on drugs was the purest distillation of this backward thinking?”
Hi volodya,
re | “People, especially Oligarchs, will do what’s in their own interest and say whatever is convenient today to justify it in the sure knowledge that they won’t be held to account for contradicting what they said yesterday.”-v.
True. And this is why it’s ridiculous to talk as if belief systems and ideologies were the primary driver of events. Human beings ultimately have one creed: Selfishness. We are well socialized civilized people only to the extent that we can curb, control and channelize that fundamental impulse. But when push comes to shove, and that get’s to be the least bit difficult, civilized norms go out the window.
That brings me to this: “Laws? What laws? Oh, those laws. Well, you know, proving anything is so damn difficult and besides, they’re too big to jail. The courts? Good luck.”-v.
We’re talking about an incredibly rich class of people acting like feudal lords. In the European Middle Ages a ‘land’ was a simple & convenient way to quantify and organize a lord’s possessions – it was there when they needed the tax revenue, and not when it came time to make necessary capital investments in it to generate that revenue. And therein lies one of the essential weaknesses of Feudalism, et al. Feudal Lords SUCK at running things.
They are good at sucking things dry and moving on or sucking dirt when they get rubbed out because they won’t, but they can’t bring themselves to make improvements without being threatened with extinction by outsiders – and they lose that contest in the end anyway.
So when we see things devolving to that level, and we see people adjusting their sights and aspirations accordingly, we know that the end of the race to the bottom is in view… Because Feudalism is just one step above complete bedlam (and I do not mean the healthy, self-regulating state of ‘natural anarchy’ that applies to Nature).
When Feudalism is what people are hoping for, they’re already f**ked.
MD,
We got yer ‘fucked’, yer ‘double fucked’, and then we got yer full-on FUBAR. (Psychopathic Kleptocracy and Tyranny with progressively thinner veils of deceit and perfidy.)
“It may be hard to believe, but either one of the two status quo choices for U.S. President currently being force-fed down the American public’s throat will be almost unquestionably more imperial and warlike than Barack Obama. The reason is simple. Any society that apathetically stands by as one President after the other tramples on the Constitution will be subject to a litany of increasingly tyrannical, and even insane, leaders. This is why the oligarchy isn’t even pretending that we live in a Republic or a Democracy anymore. They are shoving our pathetic servitude right in our face by putting up these two preposterous and dangerous candidates.
If you still had any doubt, today we learn that Jeb Bush is actively surrounding himself with the exact same people who under the George W. Bush administration, masterminded the terrible tragedy known as the Iraq war.” — Mike Krieger
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-19/oligarch-rules-jeb-bush-surrounds-himself-architects-his-brothers-iraq-war
“This is another fine clusterfuck you’ve gotten us into!”
We’ve entered the post-ironic phase of the empire, where we stumble blindly into bigger and bigger, entirely foreseeable, fiascos, and then point the finger at anyone and anything other than the true culprit: ourselves. Should be mildly amusing watching it all collapse anyway. At least for us older folks.
Go Jeb!
I actually think Jeb is the best of the candidates too. His retarded older brother sullied the family name, largely due to his choice of Dick Cheney to actually run things, but Jeb is much more like his dad, who wasn’t all that bad either. In the end, there’s only so much influence Presidents can actually wield anyway, but Jeb is likely to do the least damage of them all IMO, and that’s probably the best we can hope for these days. Certainly HillBillary would be an unmitigated disaster for all involved. She’s pretentious, cloying, and just altogether irritating to see and listen to. I can’t imagine watching that fucking hag get older and fatter every night on the news while she pontificates about this or that bullshit faux social issue that she’s going to get behind.
How about Scott Walker?
Somebody to take on the Public Sector Union Parasites that have made DC counties the richest in America, by sucking the life out of the United States, sucking it dry leaving just a dry husk.
because the way its headed here what we’re going to end up with is 2/3 of the population on welfare, and the other 1/3, elitist whites, in high paid government jobs handing out the welfare. and that’s your whole body politic.
brh
It’s not who you want, or who you think will be best for the job, but rather it’s who will be. It will be Jeb. You heard me call it two years in advance and I can’t wait to say “I told you so” when that time comes.
Go Jeb!
Over at Moon of Alabama blog (where I’m a “hole”) I told the Russian propaganda goons Ukraine is Yugoslavia 2.0 back in the Spring and linked to my blog posts underscoring that contention. I was ignored and overlooked, but just yesterday a “serious-minded” armchair analyst commented at that space that Anti-War.com posted an article that Ukraine is Yugoslavia 2.0. Cheaters. I hate cheaters. But I love them too. It’s like Sweet & Sour Chicken — which I hate by the way.
The only catch against Jeb is that he’s now too centrist for the GOP. Imagine that! HillBillary is probably actually to his right politically.
Watch the money ahead of time to see where it flows. Presidential elections almost always come down to that alone. Maybe one day we’ll eliminate voting altogether and just decide it on that basis alone.
Yeah, I’d much rather he funneled all the loot to his rich cronies on Wall St who would be responsible for getting him elected.
This sudden onset of these infectious diseases in the US, the likes of which we haven’t seen in decades — measles, deadly superbugs, enterovirus 68, meningitis, polio, rare forms of pnuemonia, leprosy — where are they coming from, and do they result from the hundreds of thousands of unscreened migrants pouring across our border from the jungles of Central America and then distributed thru out the US? Not only is it hard to get an answer on this, nobody is even asking the question. Who is responsible? Why aren’t the major news organizations trying to find out?
March, 1942 Washington, DC
The White House.
President Roosevelt is convening a conference on the menace of extreme carrier born fighter and bomber aircraft, and the danger it poses to the civilized world. In attendance will be representatives of Nazi Germany and Imperial Japan, as well as hundreds of Japanese Americans who served with the Japanese Army in the invasion of Manchuria in 1937.
Additionally, President Roosevelt has announced the US will not be using ground troops in the conflict, as it might make the enemy madder than they already are. Also announced is a jobs program for any potential enemy fighters, good government jobs with high pay, lavish benefits, plenty of paid time off, and early retirement.
The President also stated Normandy would be invaded on June 6, 1944, and Okinawa in April 1945. With what troops is not yet determined.
How do you like it now, Gentlemen?
brh
The el kika (long i) and joohadi boogeymen are our favorite useful idiots……here in Ft. Meade and Langley we enjoy the antics of these assets immensely……
Here in Boston, we laugh at your useless idiocy.
Stuff it, kraut pig.
JHK writes:
“If Saudi Arabia falls apart, it’s game over for modern life as the West has known it…”
==
The mayhem in the ME is US made, with the purpose of denying this oil to Asia.
JHK did not read Immanuel Velikovsky, so he does not know the implications thereof. Contrary to the current nonsense fossil fuel theory, oil in actuality is an extraterrestrial fluid that rained on the Earth in last several recent thousand years, when the Earth experienced multiple cataclysmic near collisions with the now planets Venus and Mars. That’s documented in the mythologies of all our ancient civilizations including the TaNaKh (which Immanuel Velikovsky used as the starting point for his research).
The point is, Immanuel Velikovsky published his research and studies in the 1950s. Since then many years have passed and many have confirmed this work. The Vatican/CIA gov mafia knows all about this, and it knows it is sitting on the worlds largest oil reserve. All those beautifully strange rock and mountain formations in the American Southwest are a testament to interplanetary electric plasma events. And that is where the oil is.
Poor JHK, who dug up these nuts and planted them on his blog?
I guess I owe Frankiti/Asoka an apology, or is this you applying some well-placed satiric humor?
When you’re a gov mafia propagandized ignoramus and all you know is the lies the gov mafia feeds you, the truth will always sound “nuts” to you.
Possibly, but that’s one of the more outlandish things I’ve heard recently. I did a cursory review of Velikovsky’s Wiki page and didn’t notice the fossil fuels thing you referred to above, but like I said, it was just a cursory review. I did notice that he wasn’t highly regarded by the scientific community in general, but I could keep an open mind about that.
Wikipedia = Vatican/CIA gov mafia propaganda
Open mind? How so?
Why do you defer to others? Why not read him for yourself?
I’ll take that under advisement. My reading list is full for the moment. Thanks.
Velikovsky documents ancient records from around the world (including the TaNaKh) that speak of oil raining down for a prolonged period of time. That is also why you find human remains preserved in cavities containing oil and coal.
Yes, underneath the Vatican is the largest oil reserves in the world – which is why Baghdadi wants it so bad. There are also tunnels to the Center of Earth and the world beneath. The horizon goes up and the Core is the Sun. Nazis took refuge down there after the defeat and even now are marshaling their forces to take back the Earth – reinforced by the giant Aryan natives (read Vril).
Some say Baghdadi is a crypto Jew. What have you head? I value your input and collaboration.
What defeat? Surely you don’t subscribe to the propaganda theater? It’s all scripted theater to serve a dialectic.
Vladik, you know as well as I do that Islam is a Vatican spawned and sponsored creation. So too the Nazis. So too the Soviets. So too the Anglo-Fascists. So too ALL “our institutions”. When one understands these facts one understands the game of predation and genocide that’s played on the “heretics” by the left-hand Vatican muppets and the right-hand Vatican muppets, and that’s been played on the “heretics” for thousands of years.
As for the Nazis, they received Vatican passports and those that are not on farms in Canada, or dancing the tango in Argentina, are in the US and EU, employed in fat cat gov mafia jobs.
Meanwhile, while the world focuses on the death, mayhem, and butchery of ISIL/ “Daesh”, Israel continues to make breathtaking advances in the realm of medical science. Rarely does one see such a dichotomy between the utterly destructive and the amazingly creative/beneficial.
Funny, ain’t it? Spend $millions on killing some people, and then $millions more on developing technologies to save others. Yet no money available to possibly prevent the need for either. Common denominator? Money. Imagine that?
Well put….
😉
Ozone, see it’s like this, we’re in a mighty fix, and the guys that got is into this don’t know how to get out. Not that they really give a damn. Nor have they given it much thought.
Ultimately, they’re not terribly worried about crashing everything because they are sure that they will be ok. They are so sure of it because they are sure that the world cannot do without them. They are as utterly, absolutely convinced of this as they are about the rising and setting of the sun. See, there’s always an Aunt Janet to bail them out. Isn’t that proof enough?
You weren’t mistaking the central bank alphabet soup of shenanigans like ZIRP and NIRP and QE as being well meaning policies to save the economy? Were you? HA-HA-HA-HA Ozone, you’re so touchingly naïve.
Er, what’s that you say? Unwarranted extraction of wealth by proxy? Hmmm, maybe you’re not so naïve. In fact, that’s maybe a long way of saying NIRP.
Well, in any case, you’re right, all this wasn’t to save your sorry ass and mine. No, it was to give the oligarchs more ways to steal our money. You see, they must think there’s some left to steal. Hence, negative interest rates coming soon to a bank near you. An easy scam, the easiest in fact. Do you have a few bucks left Ozone?
Anyway Old Bean let’s get to the issue at hand, the dis-informationalists. Aren’t they something?
Lying is a time tested way to take your eye off the ball. And so, there’s people to comment on sites like this to steer conversation. Or to spread the news of plenty, to re-assure us that, as long as we do what we’re told and keep plugging at those part-time, minimum wage jobs, things will presently get better.
See, they have the job creation numbers to prove it. Didn’t you see them? And isn’t the Dow in record territory? And hasn’t the price of gas dropped? And aren’t interest rates at record lows?
And look at all that energy just waiting to be scooped up from that dazzling, bright blue sky. And, so they say to you, Ozone, you cranky, old fart, what are you complaining about? Matters are well in hand. Can’t you see? Don’t worry. Yes, Ozone, Obama is your friend.
But tell me Ozone, just between us girls, do you have one of those TV screens that transmits what you say in your living room back to the corporate database? Wasn’t Orwell just the man? Hmmm, how long will it be before all of us are required by law to have one of those? You know the argument, if you aren’t breaking the law, what are you worried about? Or, how long will it be before it’s a condition of employment? I mean, it’s a free market ain’t it? If you don’t like the terms, find another job.
The cover of anonymity. Great stuff. So, is this drum beater a paid government flack? For which government? The US or Russia? Or some other? Or for some rotten oligarch? Isn’t the internet a wonderful thing?
The more garbage the drum beaters post the closer we are to the mark don’t you think? Or, as you so eloquently say, the closer the fecal matter is to an airborne distribution.
The Druid was wondering what happened to all the Soviet propagandists that used to write for Pravda. Maybe some crossed the pond?
V.,
I gotta say, your assessment is much better than mine. As is proper, the fecal matter you’ve observed scudding by has more of a piquant aroma.
Couple things:
“You weren’t mistaking the central bank alphabet soup of shenanigans like ZIRP and NIRP and QE as being well meaning policies to save the economy? ” -(youse)
Nosiree bob; not a’tall. Notice though, that the ZIRP and NIRP (and zippedy-doo-dah) are cute little acronyms that avoid having to broach forbidden topics. Free money for a select few to play with (zero interest) and outrageous usury for the rest of the slobs. (Negative interest is just sooo… I dunno…… *negative* sounding!) If the bed that was shat in was left alone to stink up the place, we might have seen the true valuations of all this worthless paper-swapping leveraging that was going on, and we certainly couldn’t have THAT, now could we? -(meez)
“The more garbage the drum beaters post the closer we are to the mark don’t you think?” -(youse)
I most emphatically think so. 😉 -(meez)
“Buckle up; it’s going to be a bumpy night.” -Bette Davis
Cold: “Go Jeb!”
His name is John Ellis Bush. (for Mika: pssst! he is Roman Catholic)
His 20 foreign policy advisors all worked for his father and his brother.
Elect John Ellis if you want the same foreign policy and more war.
Elect? Silly you. There’s no electing except electing to watch and laugh.
Elect John Ellis if you want the same foreign policy and more war
Correction: elect anyone,/i> who’s actually capable of winning office if you want the same foreign policy and more war. That’s one of the prerequisites for even getting traction these days. John Ellis Bush, J-E-B. My, ain’t them smart boys clever!
Fucked that up, didn’t I?
DA: “The only catch against Jeb is that he’s now too centrist for the GOP.”
John Ellis is actually good on immigration. He married a Mexican and speaks fluent Spanish. In his foreign policy speech he tried to say he is not his father and not his brother. At the same speech John Ellis handed out a list of his foreign policy advisors: they all worked for his father and/or his brother. You are guaranteed to get more Bush foreign policy if you vote for John Ellis. But at least we’ll have a better immigration policy, maybe even a long overdue amnesty.
But at least we’ll have a better immigration policy, maybe even a long overdue amnesty.
Yeah, but that’s damn near a “flaming liberal” policy, at least to hear The Tea-Partiers tell it. If you wanted truth in advertising IMO, Jeb would run as a D and HillaBeast would run as an R. The correlations aren’t perfect, but they’re a lot closer that way.
In truth, it’s actually about the money. Jeb comes from the old variety, which no one respects anymore. HillBillary comes from the nouveau trailer park trash variety, and everyone just loves that shit, since they foolishly imagine it signals that they could someday do the same. The bitch only talks liberal, and not very well at that. Her and her dipshit husband are more elitist than almost anyone out there these days. They can just smell a family dynasty in the making, and they’ll do damn near anything to get it.
[Her] and her dipshit husband are more elitist – DA
===============
[She] and her dipshit husband are more elitist
Thanks.
Cold: “Elect? Silly you. There’s no electing except electing to watch and laugh.”
Yes, John Ellis “Jeb” Bush, was governor of Florida in 2000 and Florida managed to get the vote count stopped when it looked like Jeb’s brother was going to lose the election. In fact, Gore defeated Bush in vote count, but the state went to Bush. No, there was no election of Bush … he was a court appointed president, and as incompetent as a court-appointed attorney.
But with John Ellis as President and Columba Bush as Mexican first lady, immigration policy will be more liberal… I can’t wait.
But with John Ellis as President and Columba Bush as Mexican first lady, immigration policy will be more liberal… I can’t wait.
I can just imagine the sight of the Tea-Partiers spinning themselves right into the fucking ceiling tiles! That would be quite a sight! She looks like quite a little firecracker too! Bet she gives every bit as good as she takes.
But of course he’s gotta get elected first…
Isaac Newton was off a few dozen years on his prediction. It’ll be before then, 2030 or 35. There’s a real good chance we may not get to the World Made by Hand. The few who may, salut. Meanwhile Scott Walker for president 2016!?!? Koch brothers’ front boy. and meanwhile, develop your soul. Only souls and love are real. Any other ladies getting rainbows in their yard. I didn’t think so. But sooner or later, they go to. We’ll be meeting our soul groups soon. Until then…
Link to said prediction:
http://isaac-newton.org/statement-on-the-date-2060/
First time I’ve heard of it. Pretty interesting.
As most of you know from the ‘Twerking’ thread I am transgendered.
What is interesting is the gulf between science and a lot of society (and the associated legal structures).
Research is more and more showing us that gender and sexuality are a lot more flexible and indeterminate than society allows for in its binary thinking.
Here is an interesting article from Nature:
http://www.nature.com/news/sex-redefined-1.16943
Snippet:
“Yet if biologists continue to show that sex is a spectrum, then society and state will have to grapple with the consequences, and work out where and how to draw the line. Many transgender and intersex activists dream of a world where a person’s sex or gender is irrelevant. Although some governments are moving in this direction, Greenberg is pessimistic about the prospects of realizing this dream — in the United States, at least. “I think to get rid of gender markers altogether or to allow a third, indeterminate marker, is going to be difficult.”
So if the law requires that a person is male or female, should that sex be assigned by anatomy, hormones, cells or chromosomes, and what should be done if they clash? “My feeling is that since there is not one biological parameter that takes over every other parameter, at the end of the day, gender identity seems to be the most reasonable parameter,” says Vilain. In other words, if you want to know whether someone is male or female, it may be best just to ask.”
‘As most of you know from the ‘Twerking’ thread I am transgendered.’
I think that ‘more than yr Boobs are fake’.
Actually they are real…..
Pequiste: “Having said all of that – yes the U.S. of A., and the evil bastards in charge, have really set the world up for this problem and are also deserving of the most severe consequences as well.”
Interesting. You are willing to condemn a religion of 1.5 billion for the actions of a few who falsely identify as Muslims. Do you even know any real Muslims?
You never use “Christian terrorists” to assign blame. The word Christian (as in Christian George W. Bush) is not used to condemn the massive bombings, the invasions of multiple Muslim countries, the kidnapping (“rendition”), the secret torture prisons, the drone assassinations (done by Christian Barack Obama), the death of 133,000 Iraqi civilians murdered by Christian soldiers. All of those acts were committed by Christians (2003-2014) in seven Muslim countries.
I’m sorry. Christians reap what they sow. Daesh was created by Christians. Christian Reagan gave arms to Iranian terrorists. Christian Bush gave arms to the mujahideen in Afghanistan.
Christian Rumsfeld shook hands with Sadaam Hussein and Christian Reagan gave arms to Iraq. Check out Mark Phythian’s 1997 book Arming Iraq: How the US and Britain Secretly Built Saddam’s War Machine (Northeastern University Press). In 1983 Reagan asked Italy’s Prime Minister Guilo Andreotti to channel arms to Iraq.
The few thousand criminal terrorists, who falsely claim to be Muslims, fall far behind the reign of Christian terror and torture in our time. When it comes to organized terror and organized violence, Christian nations are far bloodier, with body counts no other religion can match.
And FYI, Pakistan is a Muslim nation… which does have nuclear weapons… and has never used them. Can’t say the same for Christian USA. Janos has told us about the Christian violence at Dresden, which he says was even worse than the Christian violence against Japan.
Janos has told us about the Christian violence at Dresden..
==
Yes, but why Dresden?
Dresden = Protestant = Heretic
When you start to look at history in this light you start to understand history.
No I told of the Judeo-Masonic pogrom against the German people in an undefended city of no military value – after the war was won. Just pure cruelty and genocide.
Gurl, u cray cray.
Good one Wpa. What is forgotten is that European (and it’s offshoots, US, Canada, Australia, etc) histories read like an endless bloody war.
We are barbarians, we have always been at war with each other and with non-Europeans, with all the associated death, torture, ethnic cleansing and genocide that goes with it.
It is steeped in our genes.
Nowadays it is fashionable to talk about the ‘peace loving EU’, que?
Since when has one or more parts of it not been at war?
Post WW2 to 1990.
France: Korea, Vietnam, Algeria, Egypt, Africa.
Holland: Korea, Indonesia (where those lovely liberal Dutch just fresh from a horrible occupaton by the Gemans showed that they could be just as brutal and cruel as anyone else).
UK: goes wthout saying, all over the place.
Belgium: Korea,Congo.
Australia: Korea, Vietnam, Iraq 1, Iraq 2, Afghanistan, Timor (the only one that made any sense whatsover).
US: Well why even start listing.
And so on, maybe easier to make a list of who didn’t have some sort of war over that period.
In every case the levels of brutality we employed were as ‘good’ as anything ever seen elsewhere. All by good democratic Christian countries as well.
Equally it is hard to think of a Muslim ‘terrorist’ group that we have not directly or indirectly created, supported and funded.
We repeat the same old mistakes, over and over. We create/support some monsterous extremist group to attack someone we don’t like such as Afghanistan (and hence the USSR), Syria, heck even Chechnya and US support for the IRA. And then we get all surprised when they ‘go off reservation’ and do things we don’t like…..what part of “monsterous extremists” don’t people get?
Nowadays we seem to be going beyond ‘let’s keep making the same mistake’ stupidity, to ‘lets double up on even more’ stupidity. The poster child of this is Syria, where ‘our boys’ IS have gone way off reservation, so now we want to create other new terrorist groups to fight them…and Assad at the same time of course (the real enemy), while still supporting AN as well, which is sort of still on the track we want.
Watching Turkey and Israel using artillery, troops and bombs to support AN in Syria and the US about to start training neo-nazi malitias in the Ukraine (afer the training they got earlier from Poland) is like waking up in a 1970s dystopian SF book. Not even John Brunner could have made this stuff up.
What could possibly go wrong? This is stupidity squared or even cubed. But it comes from our core militaristic and violent cultures and histories, we can’t help ourselves. We have always been like that and, seemingly, we always will. And it doesn’t matter one whit that we endlessly fail, in fact it seems to motivate us to go and fail again (and again…..), “this time it will be different” is our mantra.
Answers that age old question though “are humans smarter than yeast”, well at least for Europeans (and the offshoots) the answer is clearly “No”. The book is still out for the rest of humanity (which is probably hoping and praying for us to pull back to our home countries and do what we are really best at…fighting each other).
are humans smarter than yeast
Funny you should mention that. That’s exactly the analogy (humans as yeast in a fermentation vat) that William Catton uses repeatedly in his book Overshoot. Kind of ironic too, given the current renaissance in craft wine and beer here in the US. Even more amazing to me is that he wrote that book way back when I was but a wee lad in the 1970s. I read Future Shock, but somehow missed out on Overshoot then.
New Report Details How Military Leaders Overtly Promote Evangelical Christianity
Christian fundamentalism is on the rise within the United States Armed Forces, a trend evidenced by the explicitly sectarian behavior of senior military leaders. This is the conclusion of an important new report from the Center for Inquiry on the influence of religion in the U.S. military.
The report, authored by James E. Parco, a retired Air Force lieutenant colonel, illustrates how a fundamentalist brand of Christianity has infused with American military culture. Parco details how commanders use the power of their positions to evangelize and force a narrow sectarian view on U.S. military institutions and service members – and all in broad daylight, with little to no accountability.
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/For_God_and_Country_Parco.pdf
The USAF is way big on this stuff. Pretty amazing to me, as most of the pilots and maintenance people I knew were extreme drunks and womanizers. Maybe they’re reforming now, albeit not for the better.
Brussels. Today. Another CFN prophecy goes down the toilet.
Remember, they can kick the can down the road forever.
How do you like your EU collapse now, gentlemen?
You can have the EU wothout the Euro, did for many decades after all.
But the design of the Euro system means it MUST fail, sooner or later.
I remebr an interview ith one f the Euro’s designers and he was horrified at how it turned out. A transfer payment system was always supposed to be included to deal with indivdual memebr surpluses/deficits.
Plus Germany, which was a basket case at the time, got a free ride because the DM/Euro exchange rate was set too low for it. A more sensible exchange rate would have made things overall a lot better, though still with systemic issues.
However, that being said, a deign based on Keynes Bancor would have been a much more sensible and workable system.
mika, I know you suspect the Vatican was behind the bombing. More Christian violence. Catholics are Christians with a very violent history.
Whatever the reason during WWII, if it was to favor Catholicism, it failed.
Dresden is now 45 percent Protestant, 37 percent Catholic, and 18 percent Muslim. 72.4 percent of the population are German, 20 percent Turkish and Indian, 7.6 percent others.
Sorry, mika.
When Dresden was targeted it was the center of Protestantism and the Enlightenment. Today, both are no more. The counter-reformation has won the day and ALL the churches are under Vatican control. We’ve entered the new Dark Age, aka, NWO, aka, old ROMANISM.
How would the next world war be funded? The world is bankrupt and run on steroid banking.
Debt’s only a problem for the little people. For wars they open the purses.
Hello LisaM,
I’m rolling my response to two of your previous comments into one:
re | “Rather, particularly in the Anglo-Saxon cultures, monomania seems more the order of the day. A complete focus on just a few simple things (variables) to the exclusion of everything else, the infamous Vietnam ‘body count’ being a classic example, seemingly carried on in one form or another to this very day…”-LM.
The thing about one-stop metrics is that they seem to say a lot while saying almost nothing taken out of context, and they simplify reporting, while at the same time narcotizing the recipients. So from that standpoint, MSM’s cooperative ‘reporting’ for the military this is successful – because it succeeded and succeeds in doing what it’s designed to do: get the sheep back to sleep.
re | “Obviously neo-liberal economic policy is the poster child of ‘doing the same that doesn’t work over and over again’ but think about large technical and/or civil engineering projects (let alone military ones) that get undertaken, they have a near 100% rate of being massively over budget, usually under delivering too, if not outright failures (the 787 being a poster child for that).”-LM.
Again, this is another ‘victory’… You just need to look at it from the standpoint of Means, Motive and Opportunity and it all makes sense. After all, it’s not a defeat for __Boeing__ (et al.) if it can milk a project for 3-5X the projected initial budget.
😉
re | “Despite the incredible advances in computing power and mathematics, our capacity for dealing with real world complexity seems to have actually declined, instead of growing with those advances. We have societally locked ourselves into a (very) narrow bandwidth of allowable thought, where any relationship to reality seems accidental at best.”-LM.
Again, it makes no sense if you look at it from the very rational standpoint of things being done for the ‘Greater Good’ – which is clearly not what America is about anymore (if ever). Regarding the direction of our scientific and engineering advances – you’ll notice (if you follow the money) that 80% went into IT and other Command/Control/Surveillance applicable technology. This is not by accident. It was meant as a fail-safe and a way to increase the rate and depth of wealth/power extraction.[*]
re | “There also seems to be an endemic childishness in behaviour and thought. I have been struck by that last point by following the disaster in the Ukraine. You listen/watch/read our current leaders and they act like little (sociopathic) children, stuck at a “ya boo sucks’ level of discourse, where lying is the norm, not the exception.”-LM.
Joan Didion wrote about the “infantilization” of America in the wake of 9/11. This is pretty much you would expect from a late-stage Imperial Culture. It doesn’t change or get better – other than by being removed.
It’s helpful at this point to consider how decadent and utterly “baroque” the mercenary armies of Renaissance Northern Italy got… Until they were invaded by French, who proceeded to kick their cans from one end of the peninsula to the other.[**]
The bottom-line to all of the above is that these things you’re pointing out aren’t seen as ‘bugs’, they’re considered ‘features’ by those calling the shots. The good news is that the shot-callers are short-sighted sociopathic idiots – yeah sure, some of them might *like* to ‘think big’ and make long-term plans but they can’t pull that off without losing ground to all the other sociopathic little twists ready to climb over their backs and stomp them in the dust… So the whole train-wreck rolls forward, until it can’t.
Cheery Thought ‘o’ the Day: Who keeps the Sociopaths in check? *They* Do…
Cheers!
—
[*] And *away* from Space Exploration, Medical Science and the like. These areas of advance might’ve disturbed the status-quo, after all.
[**] This might be a useful parable about the limitations of the ‘profit motive’ and ‘enlightened self-interest’…
😉
Come on already! The pensioner/unemployed perdedores posting away here are nuttier than squirrel turds. It’s so unfortunate and such a waste that JHK has allowed this forum to be hijacked by the insane when he is needed most (tech companies getting into the POV business) a new life being granted to happy (electric) motoring, etc. Instead, we have full blown kooks believing that it’s going to go 19th century any day now… if the CIA, the Pope, and the Sanhedrin get their way. This site needs to be carpet-bombed with antipsychotics…
Hello Frank,
re | “Come on already! The pensioner/unemployed perdedores posting away here are nuttier than squirrel turds.”-f.
Yes, it’s completely obvious that there are a *number* of whackadoos taking up space on CFN. It’s also true that there are a lot of folks that aren’t. I suggest that you do what we all do in when confronted by the wild-eyed crazies on the street-corners of *Anywhere USA*: give them no eye contact and keep moving.
re | “It’s so unfortunate and such a waste that JHK has allowed this forum to be hijacked by the insane when he is needed most (tech companies getting into the POV business) a new life being granted to happy (electric) motoring, etc…”-f.
I don’t claim to be an expert on ‘All Things Kunstlerian’ but I’m pretty sure that the whole “Going Medieval” meme was his idea. Mr. Kunstler has written a number of things saying that we as a civilization are overdue for some big changes – that do not include more ‘Happy Motoring” (electrically powered or otherwise). If that’s a problem for you, perhaps you should take it with him.
Personally, I don’t look forward to a giant leap backward at all, but I do agree with a number of his ideas, and I see that he was, is and will probably be right on a number of issues.
re | “Instead, we have full blown kooks believing that it’s going to go 19th century any day now… if the CIA, the Pope, and the Sanhedrin get their way.”-f.
If you know something that the rest of don’t, then it’s going to take more than just kicking sand to get the attention of the un-medicated set on CFN.
Produce some documentation, cite some reasonably respectable, cross-referenceable information and back your statements and claims up. I will read and consider them. If they’re convincing I will change my mind. I will say as much and I’ll even throw in a compliment or two. I’m completely uninterested in always ‘being right’ for it’s own sake.
Cheers!
The Archdrud has raised this, what is we all went back to the energy/resource consumprion levels of the 1950s.
That’s not actually all that bad when you think about it, especially if we also maintain low energy/low resouces/high knowledge items and infrastructure.
No need to go back to 1950s medicine for example. Viceo on demand internet might not be pssible, but an internet for knowledge sharing and email quite pssible. Massive public trasport, of course.
Even high tech (and energy positive) items like nuclear power is not an issue, Ditto more basic solar panels (maybe lower efficiency due to not using rare elements, offset by better design).
But I remember the early 1960s in Britain and they were not that bad, given our greater knowledge could even be pretty good.
So collapse is a choice we are making by what we are doing now, there are alternatives such a gradual ‘slide back’.Off setting reduced energy/resource usage with greater technical knowledge.
Not that the current bunch of moronic sociopaths who dominate our world today will do it of course…..
The Archdrud has raised this, what is we all went back to the energy/resource consumprion levels of the 1950s.
Nice sentiment, but that’s not even remotely going to happen with current population levels and environmental/habitat degradation. As dire as Catton’s warnings were all the way back in the 1970s, we’ve since done pretty much what he thought we would: doubled down on the failed project of industrialization. We were completely unsustainable at 4B asses back then, now we’re north of 7B and headed for 10B. To make matters worse, any magical technological “fixes” we discover along the way are inevitably plowed into creating even more of us and expanding the environmental footprint of the fortunate. Recipe for disaster.
[B]elieving crash can’t happen to us is one reason why it will. The principles of ecology apply to all living things. By supposing that our humanity exempts us, we delude ourselves. It is not just the yeast cells we put into wine vats that bloom. It is not just the recognized detritovores that crash. We have been backing into the future with our eyes too firmly averted from the detritivorous nature of our modern lifestyle. It is time to turn around and see what’s ahead.” p. 213
“Mankind is condemned to bet on an uncertain future. The stakes have become phenomenally high: affluence, equity, democracy, humane tolerance, peaceful coexistence between nations, races, sects, sexes, parties, all are in jeopardy. Ironically, the less hopeful we assume human prospects to be, the more likely we are to act in ways that will minimize the hardships ahead for our species. Ecological understanding of the human predicament indicates that we live in times when the American habit of responding to a problem by asking ‘All right, now what do we do about it?’ must be replaced by a different query that does not assume all problems are soluble: ‘What must we avoid doing to keep from making a bad situation unnecessarily worse?'” p.262
William R Catton , Overshoot
Instead, we have full blown kooks believing that it’s going to go 19th century any day now… if the CIA, the Pope, and the Sanhedrin get their way. This site needs to be carpet-bombed with antipsychotics…
Damn, look who’s gone psychotic now? Same finger pointing hysterics with absolutely nothing positive to say yourself. What’s the phrase? “Tsk, tsk, tsk?”
Hard to disagree with all that.
“This might be a useful parable about the limitations of the ‘profit motive’ and ‘enlightened self-interest’ “.
I do wish those people who go on and on about that and ‘The Market’ (always in Capital Letters) would actually read Adam Smith, he was much more cautious in the The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.
re | “I do wish those people who go on and on about that and ‘The Market’ (always in Capital Letters) would actually read Adam Smith, he was much more cautious in The Theory of Moral Sentiments and The Wealth of Nations.”-LM.
Fine point. It’s relatively rare for people who quote The Canon to have actually read any of it, cover to cover… [chuckle]….
In response to your thoughts (and “the Archdruid’s”) about downshifting to a level of fuel consumption on par with the Mid-50’s-60’s level, I agree. That scenario is far preferable to enduring a full-blown Collapse, and crash back to a badly-degraded version of the 19th Century (because the environment has been degraded and the resources extracted, and that’s before we factor in all those derelict nuclear power plants). [*]
Realistically however, we both know that’s not going to happen. It’s not politically or cultural achievable. To start to make it happen on a large scale would require that ‘we’ as a civilization 1) agree that there’s a problem, 2) come to roughly the same conclusion about what it is, 3) then get busy doing something about it… Then it could get done.
But that’s three steps outside the realm of reality, isn’t it?
What *might* be possible is salvage and pack up everything that a city-state sized polity with a 100km hinterland might need to bulk-up and stave-off waves of post-collapse refugee “nut-meggers”. There’s going to be a lot of liquidation work coming down the pike as the Retail Sector shrinks to fit the new discretionary-income baseline… It would be a terrible thing to let that go to waste, would it not?
Why do I suggest the ‘city-state’ as the optimally sized cornerstone of post-Collapse civilized survival? Because that’s what worked in the Middle Ages (re: Northern Italy and the free cities of Germany) and what is working now in the post-Collapse environments of today’s failed states (re: Eastern Europe – specifically Bihac , East Africa, Afghanistan and elsewhere). Hamlets and villages aren’t big enough to stabilize a resource hinterland and repulse raiders of various types. They become satellite outposts of city-states.
Basically, it doesn’t have to be _inevitable_ that we wind up back at the horse-and-buggy stage (with all that implies). Other fates are possible – with a plan and smart, capable people.
—
[*] the mitigating factor is that the resources have been processed into salvageable, steel, copper, aluminum, durable plastics, useable lumber etc. So mining the trash of today’s overhang would be easier than processing materials from scratch.
MD: “you’ll notice (if you follow the money) that 80% went into IT and other Command/Control/Surveillance applicable technology. This is not by accident. It was meant as a fail-safe and a way to increase the rate and depth of wealth/power extraction.”
This is an interesting area, because it is one I have studied and worked within for many, many years.
C&C systems obey the laws of cybernetics and information theory (as per Beer, Ashey, et al, and Shannon). And most are rubbish now…..
If you think of one of the most successful of all time (and endlessly copied) the C&C systems by Fighter Command in the Battle of Britain. Fast, robust, high redundancy, correctly balanced between being centralised and decentralised. It was the UK’s secret weapon, without which they would have lost the BoB. The Wehrmacht’s ‘Mission Command’ one also a logical cybernetic system and was their ‘secret weapon’ against the US, British and Soviet armies.
How many C&C systems as good now? Not a lot. Those worked because it followed and used the laws of cybernetics and information theory. As per Beer’s work in Chile with the Allende Govt.
Now read Most Secret War by Prof R. V Jones (my father knew him in Aberdeen), his little group managed some of the greatest intelligence coups of WW2…..because he was a physicist and knew how to filter out the ‘noise’ to find the correct signals….
Nowadays…NSA ‘collect the lot’ is nonsense, the signal to noise ratio is infinite (in the wrong way), no one can work out anything useful from all those petabytes of data, much of it unstructured. This is not intelligence gathering it is Compulsive Collecting Disorder..
Now I work with ‘big data’ and let me tell you most of what you hear is total rubbish. It is very hard to analyse and come up with statistically meaningful results. The noise to signal ratio is immense, with most of the data crap and full of errors. I typically spend at least 50% of my time cleaning and filtering data before I do any analysis whatsoever.
Then there is the issue no one wants to talk about …non Gaussian distributions. Now in the statistics classrooms they just deal with Gaussian and a few easy variants.
Do you know that statistics has no easy formulas for working out the uncertainty of ratios, even when the numerator and denominator are ‘normal’ and their uncertainties are well known? That is how under developed statistics actually is. Yet people, over and over, forecast ratios….not understanding it is totally meaningless….
In the real world if I find a normal Gaussian distribution in any data I am analysing I double and triple check it…because it happens so seldom….I could count on one hand the real world analyses I have done that had a normal distribution……
The real world is full of skewed distributions, many Chaotic (ie non analysable by standard statistics) and then the very fat tailed ones. I have read so called ‘analysis’ of things, where the idiots doing the work didn’t realise they were dealing with a Cauchy distribution…which has no mean or standard deviation, which meant their analysis was crap..
So technical capability going up, matched only by stupidity going up at least the same rate.
Heck one big challenge is just working out people’e names and addresses. free form text, different ways of giving the same name.
Almost impssible to work with (trust me you cant do this in SQL as some try to do), you need serious maths and mathmatical programs and then the best you can do is assign probabiities.
I have actually done this work so I know what I am talking about.. So trying to analyse (say) Facebook posts to determine a criminal or ‘terrorist’ (whatever they are these days, last week AQ was bad, this week AN, which is AQ, is good) …piffle.
Suffice it to say, I’ll be giving you as little personal information as possible. Consider my suspicions [highly] aroused. (That would be my default position anyway, I suppose. 😉 )
An end to this kind of snoopery in service to the grasping status quo is what I most look forward to in a scenario of energy constraints.
(Energy constraints = No more giant server farms and explicit decentralization.)
Oh when I do this sort of thing I always insist that the data is made anonymous and follows the national and State privacy laws.
The work I do is for trend analysis and forecasting. Basically answering “This is where we came from, this is where we are at now and this, if nothing changes, is where we are heading”.
Plus I like to get ‘dirty’ and look at and talk to people on the ‘front line’, to find out what is really happening. That’s the phsyicist in me (there is a classic WW2 Operations Research story about that sort of thing)
Classic ages ago was a supermarket chain, trying to do analyses of purchasing clustering (if you buy this then you will tend to buy that), pretty dodgy stuff because clustering analysis is really tricky and it is so easy to get misleading results, even if you do everything right..
Now none of the people there actually went to the supermarket and bought things theselves. After listening to a lot of puffle from people rabbiting on with some very dodgy stats I had to interject. “Do any of you want to know when I recently changed the supermarket I go to?”. Silence. “Because Supermarlet #1 stopped selling my favourite bread, this was a keystone purchase for me and I couldn’t be bothered going to 2 of them them in the same day (parking hassles and all that)”.
More silence, they hadn’t thought of that, because they never did any shopping themsleves. ‘Keystone purchase’, let alone weighting purchases by importance….radical thoughts….. Never mind boys, go back to your GLMs…..
And then there is SQL and how it (badly) deals with dodgy data. There is default error trap, which unless someone writes a proper error trapping routine (and no one does these days, yet another lost art), means a lot of data can incorrectly selected or excluded. In one place I did work for, the data error rate was huge, I spent weeks creating a clean data set. When I analysed it there were massive differences between my results and their standard reporting…yep and my stuff was correct. For years they had been running their organisation off incorrect reporting…..sigh….
‘Big data’ analyses…don’t make me laugh. The Piffle to Sensible ratio is very large indeed.
As I’m sure you’re aware, paranoia is highly divisive, in and of itself.
More fun:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-21/jeb-bush-believes-unconstitutional-nsa-spying-hugely-important
Hello LisaM,
re | “Nowadays…NSA ‘collect the lot’ is nonsense, the signal to noise ratio is infinite (in the wrong way), no one can work out anything useful from all those petabytes of data, much of it unstructured. This is not intelligence gathering it is Compulsive Collecting Disorder..”-LM.
I wholeheartedly agree with all of the above. There’s also a strategic cost to *drag-netting*: it signals the opponent that you don’t know WTF you’re looking for, AND that you are prioritizing making a political statement over a nuts-and-bolts tactical concern… It’s a ‘two-fer’ of counter-productivity.
As a ‘bonus’, by going big and wide with their surveillance program they set the whole thing up to compromised and neutralized as the contact surfaces multiplied… While at the same time taking the leading edge of their economy (the Tech Industry) along for a ride straight down to Davy Jones’s Locker.
Wasn’t that brilliant? [*]
/S
🙂
Please do not think for a second that there weren’t dissenters when they rolled this approach out, because there were. But in the end The Money (read: defense/intel industry) won – as they typically will on the UK/US axis – and the resignations rolled in… It simply wasn’t acceptable to be directly involved with that level of foolishness.
By the way, I can tell by the way that you’re discussing this that you very *probably* have hands-on experience with the subject matter. I will also say that we might actually have some overlap in our personal and/or professional networks.
How nice.
[chuckle]
Cheers!
—
[*] while at the same time providing another example of how the ‘profit motive’ does not always make organizations “better” in the ways that a nation-state would define it
“It’s a ‘two-fer’ of counter-productivity. “..oh yes.
“up to (being) compromised and neutralized”, double yes.
I predicted ages ago that, given there are 3/4 to a million people with access to the data, it would quickly become corrupted and subverted. In fact become a huge national security threat all on its own.
Think about it, (say) a Chinese spy ring. Going to do all your own bugging etc…nope just bribe/subvert someone with access to the NSA (GCGQ, DSD, etc) stuff and you too can read Obama’s emails.
I will cheerfully predict that this is happening right now as we speak. Plus organised crime, corporations wanting to spy on other ones or polticians for leverage, polticians wanting dirt on other ones, and all the rest.
People being people, some of those with access will actively seek out others for financial gain (selling that politican’s/corporation’s/etc secrets).
Plus, again people being people, some will misuse it, track girlfriends behaviour(this has actually been done), cyber stalk females you are interested in, misuse it against that neghbour/co-worker/etc you don’t like, blackmail that female you want into having sex. And so on.
And once someone does it and gains from it then, following Gresham’s Rule, more and more will.
Then there are the indirect affects of constantly subverting/degrading commercial security systems. I wait with bated breath for the great cyber heist from someone utilising the ‘back doors’/degarded security (etc) that the NSA has created (maybe by an ex NSA person themselves, or yet another thing that some insider will sell the secrets to).
So, “no biggie”, right?
No worries, no citizens of the indispensible and extraordinary nation need be alarmed…
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-16/moscow-based-security-firm-reveals-what-may-be-biggest-nsa-backdoor-exploit-ever
Then there’s this trust-inducing chicanery:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-02-21/jeb-bush-believes-unconstitutional-nsa-spying-hugely-important
See? It’s all a tempest in a teapot, and if you’ve got nothing to hide, no worries for you!
Next time you’re in the mood for slapping yourself onto a supermarket’s data base, use a dead person’s name; that’ll fuck up their metrics good ‘n’ proper.
Bill O’Reilly has a Brian Williams problem. At least Brian was in theatre, in the helicopter behind the one that was hit. O’Reilly was 1,200 miles away from the war zone!
O’Reilly has said he was in a “combat” situation during the 1982 Falklands War between the United Kingdom and Argentina. But O’Reilly, like other journalists covering the conflict, was based in Buenos Aires, more than 1,200 miles from the remote islands.
It is always refreshing to see a blowhard get his comeuppance.
German Chancellor Act
By the end of World War II, Americans imposed on Germany so-called “Chancellor-act”, according to which Germany had all its major political and economic decisions to be approved by Washington. US for a long time, if not forever, would prevent the threat of the return of Germany to position as one of the leading global players. China at the time was simply not visible. The sources in German intelligence service say that the Chancellor Act ends in 2045, i.e. one hundred years after the Second World War.
When Germany, thanks to Soviet politicians, was ready to unite and become a global player, which was not allowed by Anglo-Saxons from the time of Bismarck, foolish France intervened in the case, which (I wonder whether she thought of this by herself, or was it suggested?) was ready to agree to the unification of Germany only if Germany agrees to the introduction of the single European currency. It was the purpose of the 1992 Maastricht Treaty on European Union. The report, entitled “The single market, common money,” published in 1990 by former French Finance Minister Jacques Delors, called for the creation of a single currency, arguing that the single market cannot function effectively otherwise. In order to justify the idea of a common currency, it was stated that that this will unite people as the Europeans, and that the creation of a single European Central Bank will mark the transfer of power from national governments.
Germany, which perfectly lived with the Deutsche Mark and in a couple of years would have imposed it across the European Union as primary currency, collecting profit for issuing main European money in the same way US do, but on European scale, received headache in the form of the Euro, as now Germany, as the most powerful economy in Europe, not just receives the emission benefits, but also the risks of the need to support all Member States indiscriminately, which sucks all the juice out of the national economy and banking system.
It is therefore natural that Germany resisted the introduction of the Euro, arguing that full political union must be established first. But because there was no chance that other countries will take the idea of political union, Germany’s position was viewed as a technical maneuver to prevent the establishment of a single currency. Germany was not eager to abandon Deutsche Mark – a symbol of its economic power and a commitment to price stability. In the end, Germany has agreed to the creation of the Euro only when French President Francois Mitterrand said that France would support the unification of Germany only with the consent of the latter on the creation of the euro.
It’s interesting that France insisted that the requirement of the Maastricht Treaty that countries can adopt the Euro only if their national debt will be less than 60% of GDP, has been removed in order to attract countries to adopt the Euro. This modification allowed Greece, Spain and Italy to enter the Euro zone, which is now threatening the integrity of EU.
As a result, in 2012-2014 situation in Europe ends up with what should have ended: the German economy is overstrained, carrying all very different European economies and there is maturing understanding that country over the past twenty years has been rudely used. At the same time, the economies of all European countries stagnate. The main reason for that is already officially recognized – the single European currency.
The main profit from this situation, as always, is carried by the Anglo-Saxons on both sides of the pond. Europe for them, in principle, is not important, even France, which last time was major geopolitical player in the nineteenth century with a brief flash of Napoleon. The main thing was to take control of Germany, which, in turn, was created as a geopolitical project to stop Russia in the nineteenth century. After the collapse of the Soviet Union with the help of the Euro zone Anglo-Saxons managed to re-take another twenty years of control over now unified Germany.
Of course, Germany understands its position and tries to do everything possible to reverse this situation and despite the onerous conditions imposed on it, still pull the entire Eurozone and put it under her, then to wrap a coordinated mechanism of the “Fourth Reich” against the Anglo-Saxons. In anticipation of this the economies of the southern countries of the European Union, which at the insistence of the France at the time entered in the euro zone, “suddenly” started to go south. As a result, the economy and finance in Germany – the motor of European integration – has quickly gone into the funnel of more and more effort to maintain the Euro.
Of course, Germany cannot bury Euro all by itself, as on this matter the “most democratic world media” would immediately accuse Germany in the restoration of the Empire and begin slamming its leadership, remembering all the well-known sins, including the chief sin – the Holocaust. Such a policy perspective is not attracting the Germans. Once they have already paid for a banquet for all, and the second time do not want to. How, then, do in this case? Only one way out, in public to maintain its pro-Euro stance while at the same time doing everything possible to bury it.
Possible withdrawal of Britain from the EU, by the way, makes this an excellent opportunity.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1857201.html
DA writes:
“Well I guess since my “proper” name ends with Nelson and I’m a retired US vet of 25 years + service, I guess I might qualify.
But what we’re talking about these days no longer involves the US military, and Scot’s honor, per se; nor might I add, does it require extensive US military service and/or Scots/Irish heritage to qualify.
The current use of the US military in the service of blatantly political interests in the service of blatantly and transparently elite economic interests is nothing less than the greatest socio/politico/economic fraud ever perpetrated on any people, anywhere, in the history of the world. Ever.
Period.
Nuff said?
Clear enough?”
Lol, speaking of “Blowhards” how about those last three sentences. If DA were visible he might look like a fat Peter Ustinov portraying a declarative Roman Senator; belly hanging in toga and mouth working overtime; food going in, words going out, with great bouncing abundance.
But never mind that. What kind of person gives the prime years of their working life to an organization that is, according to DA, “nothing less than the greatest socio/politico/economic fraud ever perpetrated on any people, anywhere, in the history of the world. Ever.” ?
Wow.
But perhaps DA only discovered the horrendous truth and felt the waste of his career in service of a fraud after the fact. Which tells one all they need to know about DA’s “prescience”.
Good come back. We all do what we do and many of us later come to regret it. But at least some of us learn from it and move on. I might add that there’s quite a few former military people that feel that way and that it’s not the military that makes policy. That comes from the pols who get elected by everyone. And since everyone is not subject to a draft anymore, it’s easy for them to be hoodwinked into voting for pols who see perpetual war as a perpetual profit making opportunity. There was a time at least that the military wasn’t solely the enforcement arm for US corporate capitalism, but that time is long gone now.
Well now, Rudy Giuliani said in a speech at a Republican fund raiser, that Barry wasn’t raised like the rest of us and doesn’t love his country like we do.
So, another Republican chicken-hawk flaps his mouth. That’s how this will be played without a stitch of doubt.
So let’s acknowledge right up front that it isn’t always necessary to join up to show patriotism or love of country. Sometimes – maybe often times – maybe even in most cases – the opposite is true.
So, now that we’re done that genuflection let’s get on with it.
I heard this bit on the PBS News Hour last night. Mark Shields un-loaded with both barrels. Not that he used the Chicken-hawk word. But he might as well have.
He said here we have in Giuliani someone grading patriotism, someone that obtained six draft exemptions and then got a judge to write a request to re-classify him so he didn’t have to go to Vietnam. Which, of course, he never had to.
Now, let’s not be TOO cynical. See, Rudy probably had, um, legitimate objections to the war. You know, objections based purely on strategic grounds, given his vast knowledge of world and military affairs, as, er, a 20 year old.
Yeah, I know, the immense folly of the war was in plain view. Anyone could see it. But, not all those people that could see the lunacy could get student deferments. Deferment was especially for the college set, the Yale-Harvard-Romney class of society. Get their asses shot off in the jungle? Hah.
Ok, while we’re at it, let’s also point out that Chicken-hawk-ism isn’t solely a Republican phenomenon.
But it seems that it’s always Republicans that can’t put a lid on it, that it’s always Republican that set themselves up. It would behoove these knuckle-heads to shut their holes. At least, if they want a shot at 2016. Keep this up and it’ll be President Hillary.
President Hillary with Bill as First-Whatever. Just picture that. First Philanderer maybe. Nobody cares what he’s up to now. And, I’ll bet, least of all Hillary.
But, if Hillary wins, he’s gonna have to tamp it down. A discrete “friendship” with a rich, middle aged widow (one that can keep her trap shut) may pass muster.
But stay away from the curvaceous, yappy 20 year old who’s sure that he loves her and is just as sure to go off like a nuke in the tabloids when she finds out otherwise.
The question is can Bill do it? We’ll see. Or maybe he’ll have MD’s with a fire hose full of Viagra on stand-by.
Imagine that, the Clintons back in the Big House. The Presidency as bedroom farce. Can you see it coming, leaked accounts of scream-fests, of an exasperated, fed-up Hillary taking swings at Bill, of Secret Service agents stepping between them.
And then, as sure as night follows day, damage control: a grim-faced Lady President walking up to the lectern. Maybe to announce that, rumors to the contrary, her and Bill are NOT on the outs.
Or, maybe even more entertaining, a contrite, downcast Bill, with a dutiful Hillary at his side, confessing to having sinned. And that with prayer, self reflection and with the help of a spiritual advisor they will heal.
No questions from the assembled press being taken, shouts of Madame President! Madame President! ignored, the contemplative couple retreating together into the doorway, arm-in-arm.
It’ll be hilarious. Can’t wait. Go Hillary Go.
[her] and Bill are NOT on the outs. – Volodya
===============
[she] and Bill are NOT on the outs.
Thank you. I stand corrected.
Giuliani said exactly the same thing that Newt Gingrich said during the campaign of 2012. Word for word re: anti-colonialism and not brought up like ewe and me.
Sounds like Luntz may have manufactured this meme, but it works on their pets (constituency) used as code to keep them from voting their own interests.
It’s pathetic and scary that nobody in the media seems to remember these phrases uttered by Mr. Gingrich. I do hope Jon Stewart does the job they don’t do….but then what else is new?
The Clintons would indeed make for an entertaining 4 or 8 years. That’s always been Jeb’s one serious downside. Maybe he needs to start hanging with big brother and get his stupid drunken face on again?
This is worse, I’m reading that Paul Wolfowitz is on Jeb’s policy team. So is Stephen Hadley.
Why don’t people learn? Why?
Tell me, are the Republicans hell-bent on losing in 2016?
Not just Hadley, but the beast John Negroponte. Torture seems to follow him everywhere you don’t want to be.
I remember his illustrious career in Central America and he left Iraq before the Abu Garib debacle was exposed……hmmmm he’s on the list of those used by daddy and brother W.
Like the NFL coaching carousel, both parties recycle the same cast of characters for cabinet positions every four years. Which only makes sense, the policies never change, so why should the people implementing them?
Known as the permanent government.
Volodya: “Deferment was especially for the college set, the Yale-Harvard-Romney class of society. Get their asses shot off in the jungle? Hah.”
Volodya, do you walk your talk?
John Kerry went to boarding schools and then to Yale. Then Kerry enlisted and did a combat tour in Vietnam. He was awarded combat medals, a Silver Star, Bronze Star, and three Purple Hearts.
And does John Kerry get your respect, Volodya?
Or are you with JHK and other hypocrites on CFN who disrespect Kerry and call him names every week?
He is unfit to command. He’s neither Irish nor Catholic, but Skull & Bones all the way.
If you crave authority, why do you not bow down to The Caliph, Allah’s representative on Earth?
Giuliani said: “I would go anywhere, any place, anytime, and I wouldn’t give a damn what the President of the United States said, to defend my country. That’s a patriot. That’s a man who loves his people. That’s a man who fights for his people. Unlike our President.”
Rudy Giuliani had a chance to show some love for and defend his country when Uncle Sam wanted him.
Rudy may have forgotten the half-dozen deferments he won ducking the Vietnam War, even getting the federal judge he was clerking for to write a letter creating a special exemption just for him.
Good one, the world is full of chickenhawks……..
Hello LM,
There’s a huge disconnect between political leadership and people that actually know WTF a war actually entails, and that’s not an accident either.
People like Mr. Kerry were getting into politics the old-fashioned way: by becoming a ‘war hero’ first… That’s such an anachronism nowadays:
re |
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/05/27/opinion/americans-and-their-military-drifting-apart.html?pagewanted=all&_r=1&
re |
http://taskandpurpose.com/dramatically-diminishing-number-veterans-congress/
Cheers!
Ain’t all these man crushes for the imagined USA just adorable?
I have been keeping a set of data involving the DJIA and Nasdaq indexes for the past 30 years, every business day without fail. This data goes into an algorithm (a fancy word for formula or method) whose output is a number between 0 and 1. The purpose of this number is to spot when ‘the market’ is over-bought or over-sold. A high reading such as above .800 indicates over-bought and a low reading such as below .250 indicates over-sold. Depending on your faith in this ‘signal’ (which, I confess, tends to be quite fallible) you act accordingly with your investments.
For what it’s worth, as of Friday’s close the DJIA number is .792 and the Nasdaq, .876. Remember though, as Yogi said, making predictions is very hard, especially about the future.
l will not be surprised if next week begins a setback for the market, perhaps starting as early as Monday.
Q., the markets love round numbers. The next round number for NASDAQ is 5,000. Right now it is 4955.56.
I predict when NASDAQ reaches 5,000 the market will begin going down for a while. I don’t know if that will be next week or the week after… but soon.
In the NH train station I picked up an abandoned copy of Matt Tiabbe’s ‘Griftopia’, read it on my to NYC and back.
The events he writes about, the financial collapse of 2008, already seem dated, almost like ancient history. What’s more, the same bullshit he was describing is still happening now, in spades. No lessons learned, nothing changed.
In fact the fiduciary shenanigans of Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley seem rather quaint when compared to Christians getting their heads sliced off and Yazide women being buried alive. No crystal ball here, but I think we’re looking at one bloody summer, in Iraq, in Syria, on the urban streets of the US, and places we don’t know about yet. Its the great unravelling.
brh
Did you buy the ranch in New Mexico or are you going for Robert Frost’s farm?
I love this book.
Read about the Sovereign Wealth funds fronted by JP Morgan Chase.
They allow foreign private interests to fund the public infrastructure (highways) and offer them guaranteed profits (that’s capitalism?)
That means that government cannot build more trains because that would be competition, or even parades can’t be allowed because that gets in the way for one day of profits, so the govt has to pay them for lost income!!
This is why I rail against privatization!! It’s not democracy and it sure isn’t capitalism!
Alexander Geskin: Whose grandson became the President of the United States on January 20, 2009?
John F. Kennedy made his trip to London after graduating from high school in September 1935 to study at the London School of Economics. But the future president of the United States ended his visit so quickly that in October 1935 he was back in the United States and, contrary to the rules enlisted in the Princeton University in the middle of the fall semester.
Despite this, he immediately found himself somehow at Boston hospital, known for its neurological department, and in January continued treatment of a neurosis in the winter home of the Kennedy family in Palm Beach. He consolidated his cure on a cattle farm in Arizona, the place where he and his brother Jeff were forced to work for the full program: get up at 5 in the morning, drive out cattle to pasture.
It looks like John Kennedy-Senior pulled his son out of London for some serious offense, and after a series of unsuccessful attempts to find the right treatment for his neuroses, expelled the 35th president of the United States to Arizona to twist cows tails.
It turned out that about this time, namely about 18 September 1935 the African beauty Habib Akuma Obama became pregnant and in 9 months gave birth to Barack Hussein Obama-Senior. But then something very interesting begins. In 1995, when Barack Obama-Junior after graduating from Columbia University served away from prying eyes in the provincial legal firm in a not very safe neighborhood of Chicago, he published in Time Books his “Dreams of My Father.”
I must say that Obama is likely to have been “activated” and won election to the Illinois Senate in 1996, after the penultimate representative of the Kennedy clan was accused of sexual relationship with a minor. But his first attempt to reach the level in politics on a national scale took place only after the tragic death of last male Kennedy – John F. Kennedy – the younger. Therefore, this book can be trusted in the sense that it was written long before the idea to take part in the struggle for any elective office appeared in the author’s head.
And according to this book, John F. Kennedy – Senior took a very active part in the fact that Barack Obama – Senior arrived in the United States in 1959. It was in connection with this event the famous “Air Bridge for students from Africa” in 1960 was paid for with personal money of the future president of the USA, then Senator from Massachusetts, through the grant of the Kennedy Fund named after Jeff Kennedy, with whom John F. Kennedy worked so hard on the cattle farm.
On the other hand, Obama’s opponents in their unsuccessful attempts to challenge his election on the grounds that his biography was faked and he was not born in the United States, it is reasonable to suggest that his father was in the University of Hawaii in 1959, a year ahead of “Air Bridge”, and it is unclear how this was possible. And this is one of those gaps in the biography of President Obama, which his supporters have not been able to answer. However, it appears that President Kennedy still paid educational expenses of the father of President Obama, just he did it retroactively by paying the debts of African-American Student Foundation – an organization that paid for “Air Bridge for students from Africa “, and educated Barack Obama – Senior at the University of Hawaii.
Thus, all falls into a coherent logical chain, especially when you consider that the establishment of the African-American Student Fund was initiated by an old friend of the Kennedy family, William X Sheinmann. Sheinmann in 1956 traveled to Nairobi and not only made friends with the Kenyan leader Tom Mbou, but, apparently, was very impressed with the remarkable success in the studies of the future father of the future President Obama. Anyway, it was he who drew the attention of African-American Student Fund to monographs of Barack Obama – Senior, which were published by the Ministry of Education in Kenya in 1959.
And before Tom Mbou – trade union leader and a great friend of Patrice Lumumba – gave Barack Obama – the senior grant of trade union funds of unknown origin, so that he could write this monographs. It is interesting that Barack Obama – Senior graduated from high school in 1953 and almost immediately married, but how in this period he was earning his bread is unknown. Although these monographs suggest that he worked in the Ministry of Education in Kenya. The important thing is that it was after his trip to Nairobi and allegedly meeting with Barack Hussein Obama – Senior William Scheinman, after returning to the United States almost immediately met with Jackie Robinson, Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier and Martin Luther King, that, in fact, led to the emergence of African-American Student Fund.
It took three years for the Fund to get on its feet, and Mbou used this time to persuade Barack Obama – senior to leave his pregnant wife and son and go study in the US to Hawaii. Naturally, all this time Mbou supported Barack Obama and his family with all sorts of grants and fees. And when Mbou appeared in the US in April 1959, i.e. almost simultaneously with Barack Obama – senior, it was Scheinman who introduced him to Senator Kennedy.
The fact is that at the time when Senator John F. Kennedy for personal reasons decided to support the project “Air Bridge” in American universities for 230 students from Africa, he entered the fight with US Vice President Richard Nixon, who was then monitoring the work of the State Department. Nixon repeatedly blocked the grant awarded by the Kennedy Foundation for the project, and when the State Department had finally approved this project, it became clear that the root cause of this turn was a sudden turn in the position taken by the representative of Nixon James Shapley.
The US Congress has made a scandal and started proceedings on the topic “Who is James Shapley?”, almost accusing him for bribery. As a result of the proceedings before the elections in 1960 the story resonated across the country, already agitated by Eisenhower’s desegregation, and there is every reason to believe that this resonance brought the voices of African-Americans to Senator John Kennedy, and determined his victory in the elections, despite the association of the Kennedy family with the founder of McCarthyism.
Indeed, Kennedy dynasty, carrying the title of “Royal Family of the United States” has played dual role in the history of United States. Founder of the dynasty, Joseph Kennedy – Senior was famous for his raids on the then unregulated exchanges, but it was he who created the Securities and Exchange Commission, which has made such raids impossible. In addition, he expressed sympathy for Hitler and justified the state anti-Semitism of the Nazi regime, but he maintained as his friend Franklin Delano Roosevelt in his determination to force the US to take part in World War II on the side of the anti-Hitler coalition, largely guaranteeing the defeat of Nazi Germany.
The political career of his son John began under the shadow of a family friend Senator McCarthy, who became the personification of the fanatical, zoological anticommunism and the forces in the United States, which after a very mysterious death of Franklin Delano Roosevelt virtually destroyed the political elite associated with him and they began to openly say that during World War II the United States fought on the wrong side. But it was John Kennedy who had stopped a nuclear war with the Soviet Union, they wanted to unleash, and inflicted a decisive blow for the racist America that President Eisenhower announced as a major threat to US national security.
Similarly, Barack Obama – the younger, honestly earned his first Nobel Peace Prize by not letting Hillary Clinton to the White House, then made an application for a second, refusing to give a command to bomb Syria’s Assad, though he had all the necessary powers. On the other hand, it is now President Obama who brought relations with Russia to the level of the Cuban Missile Crisis 2.0, and now constantly compares Putin to Ebola. However, many highly influential and informed British believe that he thus “alludes to the fact that Ebola – it is a political and not a medical problem,” but that could be probably attributed to their English humor.
In any case, today the continuity by President Obama of President Kennedy, I hope, quite convincingly shown in this article, by no means is another attempt to look into someone else’s private life, but, on the contrary, is a source of hope that, despite the risks posed by the current confrontation, the solution of current problems still could be found, moreover, that this continuity allows us to understand the struggle of political philosophies and clans in the United States, which to a large extent can contribute to finding a common language with this really great country instead of personalizing irritation from her actions with the face of the US President, who very likely has little to do with it.
http://www.regnum.ru/news/polit/1868475.html
mhmm.
The Kennedy thing is nonsense.
The Obama story you’re telling is a fiction.
Don’t believe everything you read—that’s just crazy and btw your problems with this country started around 40 years ago with the Chicago Sch of business and global Neoliberalism. That’s when the protections for the average citizen disintegrated. The idea of global monopoly went into full swing to compete globally.
We had our economic system turned on its head by an economic ideology that claimed that economics is a pure science and there is no social issue relevance to macro or micro models and the market. Only algorithms count and you and I are out of the picture.
When people in power use a theory like that they subvert it even more so there is no rule of law or law of supply and demand, only that which enriches the top eschelon more.
Please don’t fall victim to revisionist history it’s just absurd. Kennedy and Obama have little to do with what’s happened here.
“We had our economic system turned on its head by an economic ideology”
There’re always somebody’s particular interests behind every ideology. Ideology is sufficiently expensive thing, needs to be funded.
Regarding Obama/Kennedy story, I wouldn’t dismiss it out of hand. There are some public leads and dates in the article, that could be followed by a savvy researcher with some available time – obviously not the food for consumers of semi-digested and spitted out propaganda materials.
Also, there are some computer algorithms that could run behavioral/articulate comparisons, short of existing DNA samples, which I am sure both NSA and FSB have.
But, nevertheless, it is definitely original and gives some food for thought.
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China went Communist but didn’t open its borders to the 3rd World. Such a thing doesn’t happen by accident nor is Capitalist or Communist ideology a sufficient cause. Our Communism is bound and determined to destroy the White Race. Chinese Communism was never that vicious and self hating. Our Capitalism is hell bent on the same thing. This is hardly coincidence but the long term plan of an Elite, alien either by blood or by class interest.
Likewise, Japan is a part of the Global Economy but hasn’t sold its people out – despite calls by the UN to do so. It didn’t have to happen, Be. It happened because people wanted it to. And you accept it all as natural because you’ve been taught to do so in million different ways ever since you were a little girl. It’s not natural – and you would know that if you could only learn to think for yourself.
P.S. It remains to add that in 2008, the author of the article had managed to find on the Internet photo of Habiba Obama and young John F. Kennedy in high resolution on the shores of Lake Victoria in Kenya.
And the fact now no one could find these pictures anywhere in principle, even – in the “Google” (!), rather confirms the version presented above about whose grandson became president of the United States January 20, 2009.
Obama’s birth certificate was an obvious forgery. He’s not American and future historians will mark his presidency as the beginning of the end of America. But the American Pravda is undeterred and just keeps the lies coming.
The White House commented on the participation of the head of the Russian FSB(fmr KGB) in anti-terrorism summit
Spokesman for the White House Josh Ernest during a briefing on Friday, February 20, commented on the participation of the head of the Russian Federal Security Service Alexander Bortnikov in Washington’s counter-terrorism summit.
Ernest did not comment in his the statement on the fact that Alexander Bortnikov is on the anti-Russian sanctions list that prohibits him US travel, because of the events in Ukraine. Director of the Federal Security Service (FSB) of Russia Alexander Bortnikov flew to Washington on Wednesday, February 18th on behalf of Russian President Vladimir Putin heading the Russian inter-agency delegation to the summit to counter violent extremism.
In the FSB Public Relations Center said that at the summit in Washington, he had to make a presentation about “Functioning in Russia of National system to counter extremism.”
If you have ever scratched your head, as I have, trying to understand money, here is a terrific history lesson.
http://davidstockmanscontracorner.com/a-brief-history-of-money-fiat-and-otherwise/?utm_source=wysija&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Mailing+List+Sunday+10+AM
Money should be “currency” a transmitter of value and never a value in itself. It must be kept close the actual physical world which is supposed to represent. Creating money out of thin aire is the height of evil and those who practice this dark art should be tracked down and imprisoned.
Read “Economics for Helen” by Hillaire Belloc if you want a glimpse of sanity. Helen was his niece I believe, a little girl at the time who wanted to know what money is. If someone can’t explain it to a child, they are being too complicated and they either don’t understand it themselves or they are trying to trick you. Krugman is in both camps. Greenspan and Ben Shalom Bernanke, in the latter.
Hello Q,
That was an interesting article. It’s nice to review one of the more salient issues from a new(ish) perspective when time allows.
Thanks.
Of course, the situation when Americans randomly move the price of oil back and forth, does not suit anyone. Arabs and Russians need a stable price, so not to redraw the budget in case of falling prices. The Chinese and Japanese need a stable price, not to pay too much for the oil and at the same time not to have oil producers stop investment in mining and exploration because of the strong decline in prices.
In addition, of course, no one wants to pay tribute to the dollar parasites from Washington. For all it would be much more profitable if oil traded on several peer platforms in the world – and not in dollars, but in the local currency.
However, attempt to immediately start trading oil in local currencies is very dangerous. So, Gaddafi, who had tried to open his own oil exchange, was killed by US-supported rebels in revealing and cruel manner, and his own country, Libya, was looted. When in 2008 Iran’s oil exchange opened, making in addition point of oil delivery not a city Cushing, Oklahoma(point of delivery of ALL current oil futures), but in some port on its coast, Washington seriously tried to strangle Iran with economic and political sanctions.
In the nineties, the British had tried to break the monopoly of the United States. They opened in London trade exchange for Brent, Rotterdam was chosen as a point for the delivery (and a couple of European cities). However, US took it as a personal insult and incited the environmentalists from Green Peace to fight the exchange. However, the London merchants, many of whom were former rugby players were hard nuts. Environmentalists went flying down the stairs, and out into the street. The attack was successfully repulsed: http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2005/feb/17/activists.climatechange
Then the Americans went through the back door, and in 2005, after a series of preparatory operations, they have bought the London exchange through the buy-outs of European banks from the shareholders. London Exchange was renamed ICE Futures Brent crude and came under the full control of the United States.
In general, as the politicians say, “don`t fuck with America”.
Therefore, the same Saudis who are tired of the American BS, move cautiously, like a hungry student who goes on icy road to his dorm room with two packages of eggs purchased on his last money.
Saudis formally opened their own exchange in Dubai and trade there two brands of its own oil – that is, committed the same sin of daring that Libya / Iran. However, the Saudis do everything very slowly, slowly, teaspoon in a week: so that Americans grumble, but tolerate so far.
Similarly act the Japanese: they also opened their exchange and sluggishly trading there black gold. Russia’s heading in the same direction. This year China will join the club: it will launch futures trading of imported oil on the Shanghai Stock Exchange, and the oil will be traded in yuan, not dollars. Step by step, hiding behind each other, the major players of the oil market with forks at the ready are preparing to enter US playing ground.
Approximately in 2011, the Arabs began to use an interesting tactic. They began to actively enter into contracts with reference to the price of US WTI, but at a discount. First, this practice was no different from the usual practice of wholesalers – permanent and large buyers received quite a small discount to the price tied to WTI. Americans did not notice the trick. And in 2014 the Arabs “yanked the switch” and began to introduce a very serious discount – from $ 1 per barrel and above, the discount was valid only for buyers from Asia. Formally, the unspoken rules were not violated: oil traded in dollars, oil was trading with reference to WTI. But in fact, this tactic led to the ousting of multinational oil companies from Asia to the United States: for customers in China, there was no reason to buy oil at $ 100 at BP, if they could buy oil for $99 directly from the Saudis.
Thus, once the Arabs took Asia for themselves, multinational oil companies were forced to take on a native American market. And here began a big problem for the US and Canada shale oil companies: optimized for import American pipeline system does not allow the United States to organize a massive export of shale oil, and shale oil companies have no other option but to sell their oil in the United States. A significant part of the American and Canadian oil is simply “locked” in North America. Shale companies are forced to fight in a relatively small market with transnational corporations, and in the context of current low oil prices, they do not have enough money to sustain production.
Arabians have got something like a good kick in billiards: it seems like they just reduced the price by a couple of dollars, but put American shale companies on the verge (or already beyond) ruin. Arabs at the same time with a wicked smile shrug and say that they just want to remove from the market “inefficient producers.” The invisible hand of the market, you know – nothing personal.
http://fritzmorgen.livejournal.com/762255.html
From the article Q linked to:
“Imagine three men living on a small island. Toni is mining the local salt mine, and apart from him there are Pete the fisherman and Tom the apple grower and their families. They have a barter trading system set up: Toni exchanges his salt for Pete’s fishes and Tom’s apples, who in turn exchange fishes and apples between each other. ”
See, right there you have shown the built-in problem: private property.
What three men on an island should do is form a democratically controlled worker’s cooperative. The work should be shared equally as they teach each other skills and abilities. Likewise, the fruits of labor should be held in common, distributed, and shared by each one according to need.
Private property is theft.
What’s the problem? They each have something the other needs so they trade. Sheesh.
Janos: “What’s the problem? They each have something the other needs so they trade. Sheesh.”
No, one of them has a monopoly on protein. By sharing in a workers’ cooperative they all get what they need and no one can threaten the others with starvation. Sheesh.
Private property is theft.
Private Property puts a check on state tyranny and allows individuality to develop and flourish.
You are completely out of touch with Western Civilization. You are peddling an alien philosophy penned by Moses Hess and his protégé Marx – both servants of the nascent global elite.
Janos, fascism does not offer a solution for the three men on the island because fascism requires government/state/corporations.
Communism is easily implemented on the island because sharing does not require government/state/corporations.
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34 cars parked at Daytona with a few laps left. Logano looks to be the winner at the checkers. Fantastic 3 row NASCAR racing.
“I would really appreciate it if my comments were posted where I put them!” – gutenberg guy –
That’s the comment of the year, gut! And I don’t generally read comments unless they are posted at the bottom of the thread, myself. Too much trouble to look for responses and mentally reassemble them into some sort of coherent pattern, for my taste.
And I do thank you for the week’s work, jhk. A multiple-day power outage (due to ice) kept me off the internet for a few days this week. And I just got around to reading through the comments. There’s some good stuff here but, boy, do you have to look hard for it.
And jhk, Europe is almost done for, as a place of Western civilization. 50 more years of immigration and high immigrant birth rates will be more than enough to destroy what’s left. Serves them right and Sharia is better, as one of your most frequent posters will be quick to tell us. That is, if he can stop trying to roll back the concept of private property for a moment. sheesh. Talk about your pointless points, repeatedly and repetitively made.
Out.
P4W: “Serves them right and Sharia is better” (Spoken like a CFNer.)
As if Muslim Sharia would be the end of the world!
You need to brush up on European history. In medieval Spain Muslims, Christians, and Jews lived together in peace, sharing irrigation canals, bathhouses, municipal ovens, and marketplaces.
The peaceful coexistence of Muslims, Christians, and Jews meant medieval Spaniards were able to introduce Europeans to paper manufacture, Hindu-Arabic numerals, philosophical classics, algebra, citrus fruits, cotton, and new medical techniques. Her mystics penned classics of Kabbalah and Sufism.
More astonishing than Spain’s wide-ranging accomplishments, however, was the simple fact that until the destruction of the last Muslim Kingdom by Christian terrorists in 1492, Spain’s Muslims, Christians, and Jews demonstrated tolerance and there was freedom of worship for minorities. Multiculturalism was a success. Sí se puede!
But no, P4W. In the 21st century all you see for Europe is gloom and doom.
“But no, P4W. In the 21st century all you see for Europe is gloom and doom.”
Not true. I also see the death of liberty, the death of rights for women and gays, and eventual cultural collapse. So there.
And you did deliberately change “Ferdinand and Isabella” into generic “Christian Terrorists,” in that book jacket you plagiarized. You also failed to include the author’s conclusion concerning Christian/Jewish/Muslim multiculturalism when Spanish society entered a period of decline.
Here it is: “He (the author) reveals how these three faith groups eventually veered into a thicket of resentment and violence, and shows how our current policies and approaches might lead us down the same path.”
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/a-vanished-world-9780195311914
Yes, I made the blurb truthful. Because the genocide of indigenous in the Americas by Spanish conquistadores was the work of Christian terrorists.
The ‘Spanish Requirement of 1513 (“El Requerimiento”) was a declaration by the Spanish monarchy of its divinely ordained right to take possession of the territories of the New World and to subjugate, exploit and, when necessary, to fight the native inhabitants. The Requirement was read in Spanish to Native Americans to inform them of Spain’s rights to conquest. Those who subsequently resisted conquest were considered to harbor evil intentions. The Spaniards thus considered those who resisted as defying God’s plan, and so used Catholic theology to justify their conquest.
The Aztecs killed hundreds of thousands a year in sacrifices to the devil gods. The Conquistadores put an end to these atrocities. They deserve our deepest reverence. Cortez was a saintly gentleman.
So, I’m sitting here playing an on-line pool game and I’ve got the Oscars on TV in the background with the sound muted. I look up and Birdman has just taken an Oscar for something. The camera flashes over to Michael Keaton in the audience…he is vigorously chewing gum with his mouth wide open. There goes all my respect.
Your “saintly gentleman” Cortes had a son with a native woman, Doña Marina, his interpreter.
Glad you are finally OK with miscegenation, Janos.
The flesh is weak. That doesn’t negate all the good he did. Glad you’re beginning to realize how evil Non-Whites can be.
We did in fact buy a ranch out west Vlad, 10 acres, house and outbuilding, surrounded by a sturdy fence. All for $75,000, which wouldn’t get you a decent outhouse in CT. Also the yearly taxes of $400 per year is about 2 weeks worth of taxes in this,The Nutmeg State.
Not far from Amtrak so I’ll be able to ride the rails to get there.
Plan to do plenty of shooting and prospect for gold and meteorite rocks in surrounding mountains.
Last I heard Robert Frosts’ Farm in New Hampshire has been severely vandalized by local teens using it as a place to drink, party, hang out, who knows what else. ‘Good Fences’, indeed.
brh
Tonite the coldest nite in perhaps 100 years.
How do you like it now, gentlemen.
Sigh, US puting more fuel on the fire in Ukraine….
http://www.moonofalabama.org/2015/02/us-pushes-for-escalation-arms-kiev-by-laundering-weapons-through-abu-dhabi.html#comments
Smippets:”The U.S. is circumventing its own proclaimed policy of not delivering weapons to Ukraine and is thereby, despite urgent misgivings from its European allies, increasing the chance of a wider catastrophic war in Europe.
The Ukrainian coup president Poroshenko went to an international arms exhibition in Dubai. There he met the U.S. chief military weapon salesman.”
“Poroshenko, urged on by his neocon U.S. sponsors, wants total war with Russia. Porosheko’s deputy foreign minister, currently on a visit in Canada, relayed the message:
Ukraine’s deputy foreign minister says he is preparing for “full-scale war” against Russia and wants Canada to help by supplying lethal weapons and the training to use them.
Vadym Prystaiko, who until last fall was Ukraine’s ambassador to Canada, says the world must not be afraid of joining Ukraine in the fight against a nuclear power.
In the mind of these folks waging a “full-scale war” against a nuclear superpower like Russia is nothing to be afraid of. These are truly lunatics.”
“The major European powers, Germany, France and Russia, try to tame the conflict down. The U.S. and its poodles in Kiev continue to poor oil into the fire. If the Europeans do not succeed in pushing back against Washington the Ukraine with burn and Europe with it.”
Sigh. I made 2 predictions years ago (over at the Fabius Maximus and a few other sites) about what the US would end up doing , that unless trends (going back to 2004) changed then the US would:
(1) Start WW3, unless is totally collapses economically before it can.
(2) Do the ‘big round up’ of dissenters into all those ‘camps’ that have been built and the pretence of ‘rights’ and a ‘constitution’ are finally dropped. The threadbare gloves coming off.
(1) is well on its way and now here comes (2).
US Govt (of all kinds) strategy has been to bring in legislation that takes away rights (except corporations) and gives the bureaucrats more and more power. They then push the legisation/rules/etc to the limits. Then bring in new even more restrictive legisation.
So we see a continual ratcheting up affect, where the ultimate end is unlimited Govt power to repress.
I think the end game is close now with ” “Border Security, Economic Opportunity, and Immigration Modernization Act”. S. 744 ” and ” Clause 122 in the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012″.
In the first case the inital interpretaton is:
“the Bill gives the Secretary of Homeland Security unlimited power to imprison anyone without charge or trial. She will have total and complete authority over the United States with the power to ignore the US Supreme Court, the US Secretary of State, the US Attorney General, the Secretary of Defense, etc. and rule by decree in any matter anywhere in the United States. Jurisdiction is removed from the US Supreme Court to even decide the Constitutionality of this Act. In short; the Act turns the United States into a tyrannical dictatorship ruled by an unelected bureaucrat.”
The second one?
“The ‘material support’ clause allows the President to hold any American without charge or trial forever on his say-so alone. The day is finally here. Obama’s lawyers said in my presence in Judge Forrest’s courtroom that they would use the law to lock up reporters like Chris Hedges and activists protesting war”.
To summarse, endless and expanding war overseas and a dictatorship at home (wth those protesting those wars being locked up) plus total freedom for corporations. All while endlessly lecturing the rest of the world on ‘freedom, democracy and human rights’…..
Brilliant, what could possibly go wrong here? Keep expanding wars right to the point of a shooting one with Russia all while locking up those who have the brains to see that “this is totally f&*king stupid, what are you thinking”. What a great recipe for social cohesion and informed policy making….not.
These idiots ‘in the halls of power’ don’t realise that they are actually hastening the US’s end as a functioning cohesive society.
Showing that he is no Montgomery*:
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/feb/20/russia-existential-threat-british-nato-general
“Russian expansionist ambitions could quickly become “an obvious existential threat to our whole being”, the most senior British military officer in Nato has said in a strongly worded speech.
General Sir Adrian Bradshaw, appointed last year as Nato’s deputy commander of forces in Europe, said the alliance needed to develop both fast-reacting conventional forces and capacities to counter Russian efforts at coercion and propaganda, as seen in Ukraine.”
And this chilling quote:
“His strongest words came during a section of the speech introducing other threats faced by Nato, including that from Islamic State. He said: “While the threat from Russia, together with the risk it brings of a miscalculation resulting in a slide into strategic conflict, however unlikely we see that as being right now, represents an obvious existential threat to our whole being, we of course face threats from Isis and other instabilities to our way of life and the security of our loved ones.””
They are so desperate to go to war with Russia. Unreal.
* I’d argue the greatest general of any side in WW2 and said “One of the great laws of war is Never Invade Russia.”