D Benton Smith
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As Jim Kunstler just observed, there are a lot of serious people seriously asking themselves serious questions about what, if anything, we can (and therefore must) do to fix the uni-mess before it kills most of us and seriously damages the rest.
I think most people know the answer to that one. It’s a simple (but truly awful) perpetual choice between only two options, and most people know what they are.
So what’s it going to be?
Will it be our voluntary acquiescence to the first slow, then fast, but always agonizing, crimes and degradations which are leading us at breathtaking speed into literally lawless chaos . . . . . by passively leaving authority in the hands of those who occupy every meaningful position of authority across our land, and who are openly using that authority to cause that chaotic collapse as quickly as they can?
Or will it be the proactive . . . . meaning: real, actual, and physically immediate . . . . eviction of miscreants from their positions of authority from top to bottom in virtually all of our heretofore vital institutions before it really is too late, in a last ditch effort to pull the chestnut of our civilization out of the roaring conflagration of vices of every description that is consuming it?
It’s a war alright (has been for quite a while) and it is not asking for our permission to further escalate into the increased violence that IS coming to everyone who is not exquisitely adroit at avoiding the entrapping situation of having to say “No” to someone with a gun.
Helping ourselves, each other (and anyone else who cares to listen) learn how to navigate these mortally dangerous waters is what our job is. It is not going to be easy, but that’s what you’re good at.
Oh I agree with you on that point from the git go. Russia is not merely a “proactive threat” to the Empire of Death & Lies . . . it is the administrator of the coups de grace, for which the world should be grateful and appreciative.
The difficult-to-articulate point I was trying to make with written words (always a challenge) is that it was the paranoia inherent to Power that degraded the intellect and emotional maturity of the West into fearing and hating and attacking Russia for no other reason than the fact the Russia had the capacity to defend itself.
The only thing worse than the “Balance of Power” . . . . is perhaps simply Power itself.
As you know, Power is the imposition of will, over the will of another, against that other person’s will.
Does that sound like a good thing?
Depends a lot on which end of the “imposition” you’re on, doesn’t it?
Further, power tends to accrue to those who want it and work to get it.
That’s why smart people usually prefer a BALANCE of power, rather than allowing too much of it accumulate in the hands of an exceedingly small but disproportionately nasty pack of greedy psychos obsessively fixated on acquiring and retaining as much power as they possibly can, in total disregard of whether others like it or not.
When that happens (that is, when the power hungry consume their own bullshit) those delusional idiots also lose sight of the rest of reality as well. For example: they don’t comprehend of how ridiculously outnumbered they are. For second example: they are blithely unconscious of how dreadfully little they are able to do for themselves. And to cap it all off they adore themselves as being the most brilliant, the most righteous, and the most deserving . . . when the exact opposite is so demonstrably true
Before long, and as a consequence of the psychological tailspin they’re in, they believe that everything actually does belong to them because they are just so damn much BETTER than everyone else by some murkily presumed standard, and therefore it is their right to own it all and simply take whatever they want. Frequently (and especially in extreme cases) they are just stupid, blind, greedy and crazy enough to TRY, in earnest, to do just that. Right afterwards is when the Natural Universe sends them the wake-up call.
In other words, the corrupt seek power and power corrupts, and then they go mad and then they lose, in one of the nastiest feedback loops the Universe has to offer. Destruction preceded by madness as the old quote goes.
So what can be done about that? Well, one thing that seems to work fairly well (although messy as hell when the situation has already got too lopsided) is to garner and develop the POTENTIAL of power, but assiduously not use it overtly except as the absolute last resort in the most dire circimstance.
Sometimes the sheer massive visibility of that potential is sufficient to persuade power freaks to ease up or back off . . . . but that stratagem only works if they are still sane enough to recognize the fact of the overwhelming oppositional power, and see it as mere reality which is not in itself literally threatening anyone. Suggest to them that it is wise to let sleeping lions go on snoozing. But if too far gone in its psychosis, unfortunately, totalitarian power can only see the power potential of others as a proactive threat to their own. Once the Powerful are past that threshold, and so self-centered that they’re not even capable of seeing or appreciating the welfare of anyone but themselves, they will view such potential as an active threat by its mere existence.
Putin is seen by them as a terrorist (for example) and Russia a behemoth which must be destroyed (for example) and not because either poses a threat to the Empire of Death & Lies, but merely because the other HAS THE CAPABILITY. Same could be said of how the Deep State perceives conservatives, Constitutionalists, and Donald Trump.
Oh the irony! Too much power results in fear.
You seem to be having quite a good and productive day. Not a “nice” day, mind you, but certainly a good one.
@FigmundSreud
That passage from Herman Hesse was so perfectly pertinent, and beautiful into the bargain. Thank you.
I think the most prudent way forward regarding possible safety issues on the eating of chitinous insects is to borrow a page from our ancient ancestors’ handbook on “How To Tell If Something Is Poisonous Or Not”. They would feed the substance in question to enemies they had captured in battle and then watch to see what happened. If the enemy turned blue, choked, got real sick or dropped dead on the spot then the substance was most probably not good to eat.
So let’s feed bugs to the rich for a while and see how it goes. If they’re still fat and sassy after a few years then sign me up for the beetle burger.
Warning, warning . . . . . if somebody doesn’t post something within the NEXT thirty minutes I’m going to start up again.
I find that the “trust” thing is extremely interesting, since so much of today’s trouble is based on betrayals of trust, and misplacement of trust in things that . . . really . . . would not have been trusted in the first place if folks had been taking a little bit more responsibility for their own awareness of what is or isn’t true.
Can’t farm out something like awareness. It is profoundly true that there are some jobs that if you want them done right you’re going to have to do them yourself.
So the media (which no one trusts anymore) is telling their untrusting readership that the reason no one trusts the media anymore is because people who don’t trust the media are saying that the media is untrustworthy, which the untrusting readership is expected to trust as being true and trustable. Trust them on that.
How droll.
The Constitution of the United States does not protect anybody from anything unless the Constitution itself is protected.
That’s pretty hard to do when the folks officially entrusted to protect it . . . . (State Dept, Defense Dept, Justic Dept, etc.) . . . .are the ones who it needs to be protected from. We’re in a sort of “Mad King” situation in which not only is the King as mad as a hatter, but so is his entire Court.
It’s looking more and more like the people themselves are going to have to take care of this one, once again. Time to drag out those dusty old documents like Magna Carta , American Declaration of Independence, Treaty of Versailles , Nuremburg Code, etc. for fresh republication.
Either that or somehow persuade our “Leadership” to do a careful restudy of the legend of Humpty Dumpty, with a Final Exam at the end of class.
@JohnDay
I understand the reference and its merits, but Temujin ( a Shamanist) was certainly no slouch, and neither were his kids, nor his predecessors for that matter.
No need for the drivers to slow down or watch for pedestrians when the pedestrians are being so careful to stay out of the drivers’ way.
The only thing more dangerous than an adversary telling you the truth is you telling yourself a lie.
I believe as a deduced fact that the elites are not even hearing the farmers, much less listening attentively. I know this because all farmers everywhere live and breathe the foremost rule of farming. They adhere to the rule because they must, and that breaking the rule loses the farm. They say it or demonstrate it in everything they say and every deed they do.
The rule is : Don’t starve the mule.
Well, the elites are deliberately starving the mule.
This proves either that they are not listening AT ALL, or that they are with full knowledge and explicit intent deliberately putting an end to themselves. . . . and offing oneself on purpose ain’t how psychopathic narcissists are configured. They’re built to put “ME first , and also last and always”. (being unaware that such a strategy is suicidal.)
The reason that the elite’s think it’s a good idea to dispose of all of us useless eaters is right there in the statement : the elites think the eaters in question are useless.
So, are they right? ARE all of those eaters in question actually useless? Of course not, of course. At the very least each of them is useful to themself, individually, and it doesn’t take much brains to see that they are not just “useful” to themselves and loved ones but are also rather vitally friggin’ essential to everyone else as well.
But nevertheless, to the elites the useless eaters are simply useless . . . end of thought. Therefore the elites will continue to act in self interest based on that obscenely stupid and false model of reality. Of course the elites don’t HAVE to think that way. They could just as easily pay some attention to their surroundings and see that the eaters in question have immeasurably enormous usefulness (both to themselves and the rest of the world as well, even to those blind stupid elites !)
Could the elites actually do that? Could they look outward and see that the presumably “useless” people are not actually useless? Could the elites observe that simple truth that is so obvious to everybody other than the elites? Why sure they could, if they bothered to try. But that would involve thinking about someone other than themself . . . and that’s not what selfish people do. It’s why we call them “self-ish”. It’s no accident then that “selfish” people wind up wanting and taking everything for themselves, with nary a flitting thought about the fact that the only way they were able to get those goods and services was by stealing them from those “useless” people.
How ironic, absurd and fitting at the same time, that the “elite” call OTHER people useless, when it is the elite who are factually the most useless critters who ever slithered the Earth. They cannot do much of anything on their own and thus do not contribute to the survival of hardly ANYONE other than their own sweet selves. That’s how they got to be “elite” in first place. They got rich the old fashioned way. They stole it. Jeez, talk about psychological projection.
Anyway, getting back to the main point, the so-called “elite” can be counted on to remove themselves from the playing field without any help from the outside, by declaring that no one else is even worth paying attention to . . . at which point they won’t pay any attention to anyone else. They will find themselves in the same “Narcissist’s Hell” as Narcissus himself. Loving a reflection which is the only thing they are willing to be aware of, but which is merely a reflection and thus incapable of loving them back. What narcissist’s crave the most is validation of their wonderfulness from others. But since the narcissist will not pay attention to others they are incapable of perceiving such approval even if it were genuinely there (which it isn’t, of course.)
If all of the above seems a bit of a feed-back loop, or “cyclically circular” in it’s nature my only comment would be that all or most of the Universe is a bit of a feed-back loop and looks rather “cyclically circular” in nature. Except the loop is not a circle . . . . it is a spiral. It does not go round and round to an exact same original position. Rather it spirals up or spirals down. [I coined a word, “spiralicity”, to perhaps better describe its operational nature.]
So, that’s where the too-selfish are headed. It’s easy as pie to not be one of them. All ya gotta do is go on being useful and acknowledge that others are too.
I think it’s funny that when a farmer loudly proclaims, “No Farmers No Food” , that the Elites take it as a political statement instead of as a simply factual statement.
I suggest, “MoneyDocs”
The world may be going to Hell in a handbasket, or maybe it’s just going to Heaven via the Scenic Route.
On violence, etc. .
I’ve read and re-read what each of you commented (mostly yesterday, but some more today, too) on the subject of violence and what it ‘does/should’ or ‘doesn’t/shouldn’t’ have to do with current events ( “events” . . . . now there’s an understatement if I ever heard one!). By the way, it was a really enjoyable read. Pleasant and reassuring to see and know that there remain so many good and earnest thinkers still up and running despite the chaos (or to some degree partly because of it.)
Each of you are drawing from deep waters with a broad net of both experiential knowledge and book learning, not to mention miles on the odometer both literally and figuratively, and it shows.
What you think and write, therefore, reflects a lot more than if it were based on just one person’s idiosyncratic take on things. It’s more like a compendium of anthologies. Good stuff.
So, moving right along to the main subject . . . there’s good news and bad news.
The good news is that there is a clearly developed and generally agreed theme about the role of violence in what’s coming at us civilization-wise.
The bad news is that I think so, too . . . . and I had been hoping that there was someone out there, among the vast numbers of people wiser than me, with essentially different (better) thoughts on the matter, because my idea is that we are all in for a very rough ride for a while, with violence always in the offering.
On the other hand, part of the good news is that there is more good news.
The bonus good news is that even though I may be crazy there is good company.
For the first time ever I find myself disagreeing, (and in public no less), with our own @DrD, who has up until now been insightfully right about pretty near everything he writes about. In this instance, however, he wrote , “They WANT you to be violent because they know how to deal with violence. What they can’t understand is non-violence.”
Sorry, Doc, but not so. Quite the opposite, in fact. Very very much the opposite.
[By the way, I trust that everybody is okay with my using the ubiquitous “They” as the pronoun of choice in reference to the Cabal/bad guys/NWO/WEF Elites, etc. It saves a lot of time, effort and ink.]
The truth of the matter is that “They” understand non-violence exquisitely well. One might even say it’s their specialty. Getting other people to opt for non-violence is “what they do,” and they are the world’s experts at it. What they do not understand in the least (and thus fear more than anything else . . . which is why they work so hard to avoid it!) is violence itself. It’s because they have no ability to do violence or anything else for themselves. That inability requires them to farm out the dirty work (ALL work, actually) to the goons, slaves, minions and chumps who still know how.
“They” insist that everybody else (i.e. us!) must be nonviolent, because every time we get violent we kick their wimpy asses in a short heartbeat (which often turns out to be their LAST heartbeat.)
So, the tactic that “They” became expert at, and obsessed with, consists of numerous ploys for persuading the majority of decent folk to avoid that oh-so-awful-and-abhorrent bad bad bad “violence” thing . . . . which peaceful goal “They” promise will be achieved by us eating just one more tiny piece of their UNACCEPTABLY indecent shit instead of fighting back against their suicidally crazy directives. That persuasion gets hard and harder and harder to accomplish (eventually impossible) as the shit they pull becomes more and more unacceptable. Eventually it becomes so unacceptable that we literally have no other choice. Eventually (when dying is the only alternative) we simply have to say “No.” That can easily develop into kinetic forcefulness, because “They” delusionally believe that we don’t really mean it when we say “No. That thing you command is unacceptable, and it shall NOT happen.”
The most effective way to persuade folks not to fight back is by convincing them that they simply cannot win against such stupendous power, and the second most effective tactic is by making people think that use of violent force makes them a bad person. Well first of all it doesn’t. Effective use of force in a legitimate act of self defense does not make you a “bad” person. It can, however, make you an ALIVE person when the only alternative is becoming a DEAD one. Of course from “Their” perspective anyone who opposes “Their” genocidal rapacious criminality is by definition automatically a bad person.
Examples? Ask :
Why did NATO stop encroaching farther and farther into Russia’s sovereign space?
Why did The U.S. armed forces stop encroaching upon the Vietnamese in Vietnam, Koreans in Korea, or Afghanis in Afghanistan?
Why did England withdraw British troops from its North American Colonies?
Why did Lee surrender at Appomattox ?Or, for examples closer to the present insanity, why did Kyle Rittenhouse’s armed assailants stop assailing him? Why didn’t Donald Trump’s Mar a Lago security team pick the FBI agents up by the scruffs of their scrawny necks and throw the bastards out on their butts?
Or, and here’s a fresh one so hot off the press that it’s still steaming like a moose turd pie, why did Ron DeSantis stop pretending to be a sincere pro MAGA anti Cabal populist and bend the knee to the rabble hating anti-MAGA powers that be of the Democrat Party (et al) and its totally captured utra-corrupt DoJ?
I will answer all of the above questions with a single word : FORCE. It was due to the the existing or imminent application of effective FORCE. Force and violence are the same thing, actually. Using the word “violence” is merely to use the pejorative word-form of the identical concept. Force is violence and violence is force. It’s just that we take it sort of personally when the “concept” is applied physically to our organic person in contrast to being applied objectively to a sticky door that needs a harder push or a rusty bolt that requires an extension bar on the wrench handle to jar it loose.
There is no critter on the planet completely lacking the capacity for application of force. The ability is known as the capacity for self defense. A life form incapable of the “violence” known as self defense becomes food for all, and thus quickly ceases to be at all, and exits the equation.
The hinge of that tipping point is when the life form in question (bug, mushroom or human being) says, “No”, and applies FORCE accordingly. . . . (one way or another) . . . . in self defense against an assailant.
Those who “oppress” us only do so when they are secure in the knowledge we will LET them oppress us. But they also knowing at the same time (or at least they should know) that we will continue to let them encroach upon our personally sovereign turf only up to the point where we say “No” , and not one bit further. “No” means no, and every living creature has a line-in-the-sand or tipping-point at which they just say “No” to further encroachment . . . . . for whatever reason that makes sense to them . . . and then proceeds (if still necessary) to physically/forcefully/“violently” demonstrate that they really did meant it when they said it.
So long as we can be persuaded to NOT say “No!”, then the cowardly weasels who “oppress” us can just go on doing what they do best : lying cheating and stealing (with the occasional homicide thrown in for kicks).
Such cowardly weasels are quite adept at bribing, lying, and threatening us so as to move that tipping point further and further towards their advantage . . . . . but even as they do so and brag about their superiority, power and prowess they are agonizingly aware that those despicable crimes are pretty much the only useful things that they are good at. Those craven vermin know that when it comes down to the ACTUAL application of REAL forces in a PHYSICAL universe . . . . . that the oldest frailest seamstress in some blue collar slum has more ability to actually DO something with true utility as its end result, to literally apply force to material in such a manner that the desired consequence is a product or service with tangible value in the REAL world.
It doesn’t even matter all that much in the long run who wins or loses the clown show or freak show in the side show that has become the USA and it’s pathetic imperial sycophants. The REALISTS of the world, elsewhere on the planet, finally had enough of the deadly perverted criminally insane bullshit, and said “No” to it. All that remains now is the presently ongoing demonstration that they mean it.
And yes, it’s going to be violent.
The real lesson to be learned from the boiled frog experiment is that the common (but mythical) version of the story easily distracts otherwise smart people from valuable lessons to be learned from the ACTUAL boiled frog experiment . . . which are strikingly different from those of the silly trope.
And people are not frogs. In other words, the current multi-crisis humankind is experiencing has got absolutely nothing to do with our alleged failure to notice gradual encroachments against our welfare. The supposedly illustrative boiled frog analogy is just false and misleading bullshit. The degradation was gradual, alright, but our reasons for accepting it were totally totally totally other than inattention, insensitivity or complacence.So it seems at present that back in the day (circa 1770 -1790), those damned anti-federalists were right all along. Pity their names are nearly lost to history. Not so with the federalists though, whose names today are household words virtually synonymous with “Our Democracy !” (the short list of heroic figures collectively known as America’s “Founding Fathers”.) Must be a coincidence that the names of the “Strong Central Government” club got promoted while the names and accolades of their opponents somehow got misplaced. Must also be just a random oddity that none of the headliners (Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Madison, etc.) were the representatives of any particular colonial State. They weren’t there to represent the formally politically structured population in their civilly organized colony. They were there to represent “the club.” The guys who were actually in the Constitutional Convention as representatives of the actual population of a particular and actual colonial State were all . . . as you might logically well imagine . . . were all quite ANTI-federalist in their opinions.
These anti-federalists were not very popular with the Strong Central Government club that became the strong central government that we have known ever since that fateful day. They have consequently been swept (by federalists!) into the closet of history. Sort of “canceled”, if you will, and the vast majority of Americans could not name even one of the anti-federalists if you threatened them with a musket.
It’s true, you know, that the federalist’s Strong Central Government” club were ferociously defensive of their democracy. It’s just that the folks who weren’t in the club did not fully appreciate what the club meant by the word “our” when it said “Our” Democracy. And the anti-club people also didn’t understand what the club meant by the word “democracy” as it might apply to anyone who the club did not consider to be a loyal member of their club. Apparently they meant that anyone who was not in the club was thereby (legally speaking) not a voting member of the club’s democracy at all.
I’ll just put it in a nutshell. The entire Central Government (i.e. the government itself, as a nested and networked hierarchical structure ) represents and protects the interests ONLY of itself because it sees everyone who opposes that idea to be NOT a legitimate member of the government approved democracy, and is thereby a very very bad rebellious insurgent who should be proactively suppressed, by force . . . . or even deadly force . . . . if necessary.
Beware the “co-coordinating committee” or other entity placed above the already functioning organizations below it. Such a committee contributes nothing to the actual productivity or function of the organizations it now commands. Command is the only thing it provides. That’s fine when the commands serve common good, but it’s very much NOT so fine when the commands instead serve the coordinating committee. Soon the commands will primarily serve ONLY the committee.
The danger of ganging up against an opponent or other obstacle is that the gang itself can easily become too strong, and the gang leaders disproportionately stronger still, until none can oppose them. It is nearly impossible prevent it from eventually going unopposably bad which leads to unimaginable suffering by incalculable numbers of people. It sometimes gets so huge and out of hand that it is “saved” only by the loss of capability that comes with the chaos of collapse.
We certainly don’t want that, but given the choice between collapse versus unchecked continuation of the Western Empire of Lies run amok . . . . I’ll take the collapse and be grateful I got it.
@MyParentsSaidKnow
Yup. The average backyard rabbit warren (and I’m talking average here, mind you, not worse-cases) has got more ways in and out than a Swiss cheese, and more integrated circuits than Taiwan.
The world is just a single great clockwork in that respect I think, and like the man said, “Everything is connected!”
Yesterday one of TAE’s good commentators, @AFewKnowTheTruth, posted this wonderfully wry humorous quotation from senior oil geologist Colin Campbell (co-founder of ASPO) said around 15 years ago: “You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.”
Ahh, but our governing elites never give up trying to anyhow, don’t they?
What makes Campbell’s one-liner so funny is that it is written in “Catch 22” format. If the first statement in the sentence is true ( i.e. you can ignore reality) then the second statement ( you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality) is not true, but since the second statement is so patently true then the first statement (i.e you can ignore reality) must therefore . . . and just as patently . . . NOT be true. It can only ever be not true. Ipso facto, Campbell is literally and truthfully saying (in Catch 22 style) a true and simple statement of an obvious fact : You can not ignore reality.
Corollary to Campbells Law : “You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality, and trying to anyhow is called, “Power”.
Addendum to Corollary Of Campbell’s Law : “You can ignore reality, but you cannot ignore the consequences of ignoring reality, but NOT trying to ignore the consequences of ignoring reality is called “Absence”.
@AFewKnowTheTruth ref: comment #113222 , ” Never assume . . . etc.”
Nailed it. And it don’t stop there. Just keep thinking along those lines and you’ll get to a very interesting place. Not a “nicey nice” place necessarily, but definitely interesting.
Say, now that we (me, at least) are on the topic of “Conspiracy Theorists” , how about that Alex Jones trial, hey ? That’s a real hum dinger, donctha think? I mean, have you ever seen anything quite like it ? Was there ANY keystone of Law that the court failed to violate? It’s as if the judge had a checklist of fundamental principles of legal philosophy , written statute and Constitution and just went down the list checking each one off as she violated the hell out of it in broad daylight. Just, WOW!
It takes a lot to corrupt a legal system, because the system itself is designed to remove from the itself (from the top down) any violations of the principles upon which the system is based. The legal system is the last Fail-Safe for self correction, but it is EXTREMELY effective in eliminating anything which opposes the primary directive of the power at the top.
The only way a judge can get away with violating law is if the judge’s boss allows (or orders!) them to get away with it, because the boss can simply order the enforcement of the law and it shall be enforced and the junior judge will be either gone or in prison. Snap.
So how corrupt is the court that went after Jones? Corrupt enough that the judge was confident that she would get away with what she did. And brother, she did a LOT!
That badly corrupted then, all the way to the top? Sure looks that way,. I don’t see anybody from within the Justice System officially trying to stop them although the struggle upward continues. Jones still shows up to court on time every time, and I assume that the guns carried by many of the law enforcement officials involved are real guns, and that their prison cells have real bars on them to dissuade premature departure.
So what did Jones do that was so bad that the Justice System of the world’s (heretofore) most powerful empire had to be sacrificed in order to stop him?
Seems that he is a rather successful conspiracy theorist.
So the United States government sees Jones, personally, just this ONE guy(!) as an actual existential threat? Sure looks like it.
Say! I just came up with a conspiracy theory! My theory is that there is a REASON that the legal system of the US Government wants to stop Jones from theorizing about conspiracies.
So when somebody calls you a conspiracy theorist, here is what you should tell them back:
“Well I sure am a theorist alright, and right now my theory is that you might have undisclosed reasons, which you have good reason to keep hidden, for calling me a conspiracy theorist.”
I’m pretty much a full time conspiracy theorist, but only about one such in particular. My theory is that there is a vast conspiracy to suppress theorists by calling them conspiracy theorists.
@MyParentsSaidKnow
Oddly enough , given my history , I was never very personally interested in the MK program specifically, and so I don’t have much detailed information about it beyond my intense (but brief) experiences in 1973-74 when inadvertently attacking one of its minor tentacles ( the illegal psychotropic drug trials at the Missouri Institute of Psychiatry, St. Louis. ) I was more interested in the conventional intelligence shenanigans during and following WW2 , from which MK emerged and which it served.
So, the short answer to your good question is that I am not aware of any of the MK programs (of which MK Ultra was just one) that used anything like the approach that you asked about. Conventional human intelligence operations, however, use something very much like that routinely, and the “art” of using it effectively has been a core skill of Spy Masters since humans started telling lies and using secret agents in pursuit of hidden agendas.
It certainly isn’t outside the parameters of what intelligence services want to do and incessantly attempt to do, and sometimes succeed in doing. That field is chock full of truly insane individuals, so if you have inklings about such goings-on then you would likely find it fruitful to dig some more and start gluing clues together into a more complete picture along the lines of what you suspect.
@MyParentsSaidKnow
” . . . . is happening before your eyes, that’s why you didn’t notice.”
That’s a perfect 10. Well done, Maestro.
Why did Hillary have that email thingy message on her hat?
Was that simple hubris, or revenge, or was it actually something more purposefully sinister?
Every year just before Tax Season there is a surge of stories in the news media about taxpayers being mauled by the IRS in all sorts of unfair, unjust, unprovoked and outrageous ways. The tax guys are the bad guys and make no mistake. Makes ya wanna abolish the whole damn agency, bulldoze the buildings and sow salt on the earth where they once stood.
Do you know the source of these horror stories?
That’s right. It’s the IRS themselves. In-house flacks write and place the scary stories for the purpose of instilling fear in the hearts of any and all who might be thinking about cheating on their taxes. Straight up Machiavelli . . . it is better for a Prince to be feared than loved.
It’s the same reason that the Mafia invests so much capital in Hollywood’s gangster porn, and the list of similar strategies by other much-feared “bad guys” goes on and on.
It’s also the reason that Hillary Clinton had the FBI raid Trump’s home for no reason at all other than him being the competition, and then bragged about herself getting away with spying, treason and worse (i.e. her e-mails) without even a slap on the wrist. She’s advertising. It is an audaciously bold declaration that she has the power to be as vicious, unfair, crooked and treasonous as she wants to be . . . and no one can stop her.
The public display of willful abuse of power serves dual purposes, really. It’s not just intended to intimidate victims into fearful compliance with orders to hurt themselves. It also promotes the sorts of services that can be rendered upon request to other criminals who the boss wants to do business with. The boss is telling their psychopathic potential “customers” that if the price is right the boss can help them, too, to do anything that they want to and get away with it.
Like a Mafia kingpin.
Like many other flawed strategies the system works great, right up to the point of catastrophic failure. Eventually and always a certain ( but unquantified) “critical mass” of potential customers realize that they are the next intended victims, and respond accordingly.
Live by the sword, die by the sword.
So as part of it’s so called “pivot towards China” as the main terrorism threat CIA’s Counter Terrorism personnel are being taught how to speak Chinese.
Ah, well. At least the language lessons should come in handy. It should speed up adapting to their new boss.
@RIM
I once had an uncle take me into a fairly tough bar. Just before going in he told me. “If there’s a fight move to the edge and don’t worry too much about the loud mouths. It’s the quiet ones to keep an eye on.”
Farmers and family men have been the quiet ones, up ’til recent.
I love George Carlin.
He was a sincerely earnest man with some very important ideas, deeply held. I think he discovered, as well, that the only way people would allow him to actually express those ideas in public was if he made them laugh as part of the bargain.
NATO has long stood as the enforcement arm of the Great Western Empire. As such it has always been owned and operated by the oligarchic elites of that empire, but with the actual fighting, bleeding and dying profitably contracted out to the various peasant armies managed by the figurehead vassal states which comprise its fake “Alliance”. It’s not an actual alliance of nation states of course, but just an exceedingly well orchestrated and costumed theatrical presentation produced by a sort of “criminal cartel of collaborative conmen”.
The Ukraine War (which NATO had been prepping and stockpiling for decades) represented the strongest military effort that it could muster with 10 years of prep time. It has proven to be pathetically inadequate to the task.
Russia whipped its ass resoundingly in mere weeks without breaking a sweat.
Since the best the Empire could muster was so ludicrously insufficient given the best of times, how well will it fare in the far far worsened conditions of Round #2 ? The gap of relative strength between adversaries (by every metric known to Man) widens by the day. It has already gone from hubristically inadequate to maniacally suicidal. Will they take it all the way to dearly departed ? They’ll be lucky, in the very near future, if they’re still capable of even running away.
They are defeated. Their only non self destructive course of action now is to do everything within their power to obtain the least-unacceptable peace settlement that they can, because NATO is right about at least one thing: If the Russian side wins in Ukraine (which they have) then they are NOT going to stop if the Empire doesn’t stop. They will end the war when they have ended the threat. . . . up to and including conquest if that’s what it takes. The Western Empire Club should remind themselves that negotiated peace yields better results than surrendered sovereignty. Ask any slave.
It doesn’t end with Ukraine. The Ukraine War isn’t the end of anything except, of course, Western Imperial uni-polar hegemony.
Russia will simply not permit (as it has said many times) so-called “NATO” (or whatever preferred woke pronoun the criminal gang self-identifies as at the moment) to prosecute an existential threat to Russia on its own borders. Hasn’t happened in a thousand years and it ain’t gonna happen now.
The West’s position in the current crisis is equivalent to the position of Ukraine on the battlefields of Donbas. It made its play and it was defeated. Therefore it can dictate nothing, and should sue for peace immediately, while it still has the power to negotiate because continued disconnection from the realities of Reality will turn that simple defeat into total rout and then turn that total rout into a complete loss of sovereign nationhood under a whole new set of bosses.
The longer “Ukraine” (i.e. the NATO gang) avoids peace negotiations the worse will be the terms of settlement. At this point I would estimate that unconditional surrender is not even out of the question. Like Japan and Germany experienced after WW2.
Regardless of the hopes and dreams of yesterday’s psychopaths, just such an outcome is a lot more likely than it isn’t.
And the Taiwan thing is the same feast for crows, with Asian seasoning and packaged for Take-Out.
To take Taiwan the Western Empire of Lies requires (as in REQUIRES) the collaborative assistance of Japan. It won’t work if Japan maintains a balanced relationship with China. It requires Japan to work in lockstep WITH the Western Empire AGAINST China.
Shinzo Abe was the world class master statesman capable of maintaining peaceful relations for his country with both of the mad dogs that Japan had to live between. Thus, and as Japan’s senior statesman and politician, he stood smack in the way of the Empire’s planned use of Japan as 100% loyal blunt force enemy puppet of war against China.
So they killed him.
