Dr. D
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Yeah, he’s whistling down the wind. U.S. romance Russia away from China? In this environment? Are the odds 0% or 0.0%? So nice going neocon media, that may have been your only chance for even a small rearguard action. China and Russia won’t break now for 50 years.
Odd part is, these guys TOTALLY 100% to the death believe in the MacKinder theory, even after air flight and space strikes, but then these are the same dinosaurs who believe Russia is communist. Russia hasn’t been the USSR in 30 years. There are Colonels, maybe even Generals who weren’t even born when the Soviet Union fell. For the love of God read a newspaper or something, times have changed. They’re doing the same with a race war in a country that doesn’t have race anymore. Everyone is intermixed, intermarried, with peoples from all over in every corner. Tibetan minority in rural Vermont? Serbians in Chicago, Ethiopians in Ohio? You got it. Intermarrying freely? Yup. Yet these tone-deaf nonagenarians and their media handmaidens think there are only two races…at least whenever it’s convenient. There aren’t even only two races or “purity” whatever the heck that means even in the “white” hinterlands like West Virginia, to say nothing of Georgia (hello Atlanta). This isn’t 1962 back when you were 40. It’s different. It’s just media nonsense and villainous stereotyping. /r
Back to MacKinder’s possibly false but certainly outdated theory, there is a corollary: if pan-Asia can confront and defeat the Anglo sea power of Oceana, then what about the Americas? Aren’t they big? Where do they fit in? Well, looking from the failed war of 1812 to recapture the colonies, the Crimean war, the attempt of division and dissent in the US Civil War, back to the sale of Alaska and the re-attempt on Russia in 1917, you can see a ping-pong action of similar interests and attacks. Russia backed the Union in the Civil War and floated their ships into NYC to keep off any British ideas of blockade in favor of the South. The U.S. invaded Siberia in 1900 against Japan. These US-Russian alliances, maybe dalliances, are footnotes of history, never mentioned in the main text.
My theory is that if there’s a MacKinder heartland theory, there’s another theory of equal or greater force: Keep the U.S. and Russia from ever uniting, by any means necessary. Revolution, Cold War, sabotage, engineered fabrications, fake missile launches, stark-raving nonsense, doesn’t matter. Because by any outside view, the U.S. and Russia have the most in common and are natural allies with similar outlooks — a thing often mentioned in the late Cold War.
So again I ask at Helsinki, what would happen if the U.S. and Russia stopped being enemies? What would happen? Something? Nothing? Who would be their enemy? Maybe the nation that used their secret service to inject false stories to rig the 2016 election? The secret service can’t seem to get any stories straight about Salisbury, nor find their head with both hands except for baseless, illogical allegations that are used against only one nation? Perhaps Mackinder said this himself somewhere; I haven’t read his full works. It would be only logical, though: if you’re at mortal risk of one continental railroad power, wouldn’t you be at twice the risk for two? And if they combined….
Now wouldn’t you be really mad if there were someone who could destroy all that hard work and bad feelings with a 10 minute senate testimony? Have a nice weekend. It’s not slowing down any.
Outside news:
To make their point about how they’re pro human rights, Saudi Arabia decided to crucify someone. I only wish I was kidding. And then attacked that well-known villain Canada. But they’re our closest ally, so it’s all good.
Congress says to save Democracy, they need to eliminate free speech. Again, I wish I was kidding. Because that’s what America stands for, n’est-ce pas? P.S. the U.S. is not a democracy, it’s a Republic. A Republic assures the rights of the minority and the minority opinion. This is why.
So and so hates Free trade and approves of tariffs to save people….except when Trump does it. Predictable.
And the sanctions are the best possible way to help Russia and assure SCO and the Silk Road. Russia is forced to unite with China and become independent and strong in all things, unable to be attacked or embargoed, and they get to offload the short-term domestic pain by saying it’s America’s fault. Imagine if Putin had just done this out of the blue as a pre-emptive measure, anticipating the eventuality. He’d be attacked and weakened as life in Russia is hard enough. When Obama/Trump do it though, he’s a hero to create (and pretty rapidly) his domestic work, industry, and food. So thanks!
P.S., it wouldn’t shock me if the diplomats and oligarchs they’ve specifically sanctioned are troublemakers Putin wanted out anyway, but needed an excuse. Why not?
The other party affected is Europe who finds out the U.S. is no help, helping themselves while crushing the Euro economy, while losing all the developing Russian market, so they can find out what Russia was doing for them. Presently, they have to choose between Iran, a country the size of Maryland, or trading with the whole United States, with a $15T GDP. They chose Iran.
“If Europeans stop trading with Iran and don’t put pressure on US then we will reveal which western politicians and how much money they had received during nuclear negotiations to make #IranDeal happen.” –Raman Ghavami, Iranian senior advisor.
Yes, this is the deal that was never a deal, since no one’s read it (according to John Kerry) and was never signed. By anyone. But hey, stick with Iran on that. Good on ya.
Agree and so do most on my side of politics. Private companies.
BUT! Not so clear.
1. They have user agreements they are using to ban people. Okay, cool. However, their weasel-worded legal agreements still say they are a neutral platform. They are presently being sued for breach of contract, which is oddly appropriate. They could of course just say, “It’s my house and I ban everyone who disagrees with me” but that wouldn’t have created the appropriate illusion. Also,
2. If you have only 40% of the population, because you’ve banned/shadow banned/antagonized the rest of your potential audience, then perhaps your stock is 40% overpriced? Or worse, since you’re past saturation and have no growth premium? In fact, a bunch of your accounts are false, since they exist but are abandoned by your actions. Maybe you can ask only 40% lower price for ads?
3. Sherman anti-trust laws are well into effect here. Not that they’ve been enforced for 100 years except against the little guy in favor of the big conglomerates (See interlocking Board of Directors in every top company), but they should be enforced as a contract with have with permission of being a monopoly. Facebook, Twitter, Google, de facto utilities, totally regulated…unless you break them into 100 pieces, which is a pleasant option. Then their stock prices again will reflect their non-monopoly, utility pricing.
4. They’re not actually private. Nothing of importance is. With Amazon taking $250m from the CIA — coincidentally the exact price of buying the WaPo and thereafter publishing nothing but CIA talking points — it’s pretty clear there is universal entanglement of Government and Social Media interests. Since a school that takes even $1 can no longer pray before an off-site football game, why are companies held to a different standard? If Amazon, Facebook, Google, take $1 in government money, they too must obey Queensbury Rules and enforce non-partisan free speech, etc, as a government agent. Goose. Gander.
So much for being “privately owned.” They’re not. What is it Smith says, the RoI of government is 10-100x actual business investment? No one in America makes money without buying a Senator. They can’t, because their competition will, and drive them out of business. Looking at you, Musk and Bezos, Zuck who took over for the U.S. Army’s “LifeLog” project.
What was that quote by Benny somebody-or-other? “Fascism should more properly be called corporatism because it is the merger of state and corporate power.” Not independent. Wish that they were.
That said, What are they thinking??? You’re trying to use your enemy’s platform to defeat them? You think they’re just going to sit around and let you do that? OF COURSE they’re going to shut you down, legally, illegally, they don’t care. They’re going to use it to track every rebel and dissident, and you’re going to help your people get on their lists. Why on EARTH would you make your major presence on their platform? Anyone? I’m talking to the readers and viewers too. Crikey.
UK food cuts both ways. So yes, UK may have trouble sourcing, but the U.S. has food for example. I don’t think we’ll embargo them, even if MI6 did try to rig the ’16 election using Steele dossier researched by Skripal. That’s just not cricket and our beef isn’t with the British people. But though it may be disruptive, do you think Denmark is going to sit on 60% of their ham, and/or close 60% of their farms just to piss off England? Not a chance. How about France? French farmers are such quiet and retiring folks that they’ll just stay home and eat brie? So the EU is going to collapse the Irish cheese industry and the Irish will just sit and smile at Brussels? Nope. That border will be opened post haste before Denmark and Ireland leave the EU and their villainy themselves. Come on, think a step ahead!
Not to say it won’t be disruptive and awful, but these nations won’t bankrupt themselves to make a point. How would they pay the EU to have 200 paid vacation days in parliament? The point is to blame the UK for their own collapse, and to do that, they need a staged crisis they can carefully control and meter.
Speaking of being broke, again, Germany is “rich” by dint of being owed money from bankrupt countries? Who don’t like them and like Greece and Italy don’t seem in the mood to pay them? Okay then. If that’s your plan…! But I think they won’t get paid, those nations will default and Germany won’t be anywhere near as rich as they pretend, and what’s more, no longer in control, having lost southern Europe and possibly even France in their 4th (5th?) Reich attempt. Knock it off. But they’ve arranged to blame England for the trouble, and what’s better, opened a front on England’s northern border with the Scottish Independence movement. Such goes the Great Game, which ain’t so great for me.
It’s important that the stock buybacks are the opposite of business sense. They are buying their stock at all-time highs instead of investing in products and sales. They are largely getting this money by increasing DEBT, which later must be serviced. So the equation is, “borrow hugely to buy an overpriced asset that has no economic benefit.” Sell sell sell.
However, I’m sure they know no one intends to repay. But their rules of closure are far different from governments’, and I doubt the world will be so accommodating as to instantly go into hyperinflation without knocking them in deflation first. –If they had any sense, they’d just take themselves private, that would generally solve both problems.
I see Brexit positioning, not only to carpet-bomb the people for daring to vote wrong, but in the extreme (and generally unnecessary) disruption, they’re certain to do a massive central-power grab akin to martial law. There won’t be any choice then, as people say “FIX IT!” but it will allow greater ‘fascism’ (in the general sense of oppression and central control, unification of state and corporations) than even possible under the EU/UK tag team. Good job, Brownie! Never let a crisis go to waste!
Trump is just putting uber-liars EU in a double bind: IF Russia is so dangerous, THEN you must not buy billions in their gas, but buy wildly overpriced and totally unavailable U.S. gas instead. However, IF Russia is not a real threat, as your gas pipeline and economic tying of Europe to Russia suggests, THEN you have to shut down NATO and stop attacking/antagonizing Russia by placing first-strike nukes on their border. It’s either-or, people. Choose.
..And I did it for you, V. Read away.
That’s one of the tricks, Z, the Saudis are NOT trading oil for dollars. A little, yes, the way you and I might keep some cash in our checking or trading accounts. However, they keep their real wealth in gold, slowly removed from the COMEX/LME at the pace it was mined. That’s the secret. They don’t trust us either. But!…like the Chinese silver before the opium wars the Anglos found a way to give them the gold, let them hold it like patsies, then steal it back from Switzerland or Libya or wherever it may find itself under the WoT. Not nice, but this is the big boys game, and shows WHY they don’t trust each other.
Japan got not $ but industrialization and respect until the U.S. sucked them into a bubble and told them to fall on their sword, or else. Those assets are not removable, unlike Libyan and Ukrainian gold, best they could do is raid 100% of their pension fund, now lost. China learned this same lesson, not only investing in reality, not money, but outsizing and outlasting U.S. financial attacks. So far, anyway. So what’s worthless about getting crappy U.S. paper then immediately pledging it off for ownership of a African/Peruvian copper mine? Who’s holding the bag in that scenario? Doesn’t sound like China, they have raw materials, factories, quantum satellites, stolen U.S. tech, and a navy that can sink the Pacific all the way back to Hawaii. Although they don’t own that many T-bills in relative sense, I’d bet much of the ones they do own are just pre-banked mortgage payments on the purchase of worldwide assets. So they have a lot less to lose than you’d think.
The U.S. has been trying to punk China — remember last administration’s demands they fall in the trap and devalue? (Psst: it’s not a trap if you tell them to stand there!) But that’s not going to happen. Time’s up, the system has expired, so the window for positioning is narrowing daily…already they’re behind schedule. Remember attacking 7 nations and owning the Iranian oil by now? Trump isn’t trying to PREVENT the collapse, both sides have always intended to default. He’s just trying to set the TERMS of default and negotiate the new reality. He and Powell have set off the avalanche and we’re reaching a event horizon, but again, they always intended to “fail” and fail now, 2018. …Cheney and the boyz just intended to kill Russia and sit on the entire world’s oil from a throne in Tehran when they sat down with China. Too late, but it’s too late, although a faction of those maniacs won’t admit it. That IS our black, or rather snow white and well-expected swan, and it’s landing.
That’s WHY it’s going to be a trade note, not run by anyone, sort of, and the U.S. can’t avoid a brick in the teeth during a transition to honesty and fairness (in relative terms) they never prepared for. “Fair” trade with honest competition is what they put Trump in for, generals and people alike, and although they claim Americans don’t know what they’re asking for, I think they’re wrong. We know full well about attacking and cheating the world, we don’t like it, never have, and think we can do just fine in a fair game. Also we’re iron-willed to know we’ll just take the punishment and be better for it. We’ve been saying the same since Kennedy; they just haven’t been listening, but cheating and killing.
They weren’t getting US$ for nothing — that’s why they reopened the gold markets and allowed delivery exactly when the Petro$ started, and why Ron Paul got Eagles into American hands. It was just for the players, not for you. Your getting it was an inconvenience they tolerated and shut down with price rigging and propaganda, punishing the little guys who bucked the system for decades as nuts, bugs, and losers. Worked a charm, everyone bought Tesla as ordered instead, and here we are.
Best economy evah! with more Americans than ever living in their cars and another city popping up with undrinkable water.
Meanwhile Bezos can’t find *any* charitable needs anywhere on planet earth. Nope. Has to give charity to the Martians, everything’s perfect here! Clearly the problem we have is mental illness, more than anything else. Mental illness of the wealthy, who are clearly a danger to themselves and others.
So…does Germany really need all that Greek money, plus the money they lied about giving them so they could give it to DeutscheBank? Like any good psychopath, it must be your fault. Are they planning on rolling in the tanks and shooting people in lines to make this official, or what? By all means stick tight to the mock Europe that does this, and not shut them out as Orban and Conte have. Europe isn’t the EU. Europe isn’t going anywhere. The EU, however, will cease to exist and be replaced by a real system that is fair and accountable. Since that will happen, do it today and not suffer their violent and rapacious behavior for another 20 years. If they’re willing and joyful to do that to Greece, they will do it to you.
In “good” news, Tommy is out! And free only to stand the fair trial he didn’t get the first time. Oops. I bet no one gets reprimanded for open miscarriage of justice, whaddya think?
Logic here: Trump’s favorite daughter is Jewish. His grandchildren are Jewish, and he takes a lot of heat for overly protecting and helping his son-in-law who is Jewish. Therefore he’s an anti-Semite! QED. Yup. Having a Jewish family and helping Jews — and not just accidental, lukewarm Jews by birth, but actual love-my-rabbi, let’s-convert-and-go-to-temple Jews– is now racist anti-Semitic. I read it in the Times!
Which proves my point here that everybody has lost their g-d-d—n minds, believe everything and its opposite at the same time, and have defined words such as “global” or “anti-Semite” or “racist” to mean everything that ever happened in all time and space, and therefore you will be innocent or guilty of it however we please from moment to moment. Stark. Raving. Madness.
I’m not a fan, but why don’t you just pick on the idiot things he DOES do that ARE offensive? Sadly, I’ve come to believe it’s because their minds are not working and the gears are not engaging. To spin your wheels telling obvious self-contradicting lies does not win converts or remove your enemies. It’s literally the definition of insane. So anyway, Trump, working with Jewish people all his life in one of the cities with the strongest Jewish presence, whose family is Jewish, whose lawyers and executives and cabinet are Jewish, who moved the Israeli embassy to Jerusalem on request…help me out here…may NOT have a problem with anti-Semitism? And by the way, the same with women, who are on his team by the dozen without comment, DeVos, Sanders, Haley, Chao, Neilson, Carranza (also Mexican-American), and Dina Powell, among others. He was one of the first guys to place a woman as VP credited with building a skyscraper, Barb Res. Whatever you may think of those particular women, he may…help me here…?NOT? hate women and have a problem with empowering them? Who can say? But I would think the burden would be on PROVING it, not alleging it. And what’s more sad, he appears to be so inured to slanderous treatment he doesn’t even correct the record anymore.
But look at where they WERE on his side: bombing Syria — twice! — for no reason whatsoever he “became OUR President”. (Their President. I approved no such thing). Here he’s lying like no one ever has with a +4% GDP and *negative* (I kid you not) unemployment rate, with the real rate at -4% GDP and +20% unemployment. The same media that will contradict what he had for lunch reported that bold lie enthusiastically, happily giving him all the credit for what has never happened. They likewise report in the fastest economy with the most employment that middle America is suffering and he never opened a plant or created a job. Do I smell a rat? Whichever way the truth may lie, open, internal self-contradiction must be #fakenews.
And to reinforce the above, yesterday he came out AGAINST 3-D guns, contrary to the 1st, 2nd, and 4th Amendments. Also against existing precedent set by the open use of encryption like PGP and SSL. Also against the Federal court ruling, which is not his branch. Also incidentally, against the NRA. The result? “What kind of incompetence and dangerous governing is this?” Chuck Schumer said. Arret! Achtung! Charles, it may not have occurred to you, but you may actually be on the same side of this one. Nope. Apparently Schumer is ?for? unlimited access to downloadable guns now? ?Because? Trump is against? And you wonder why we had to coin a word for derangement syndrome? These guys are out of control. There is no conversation that can be had in these conditions, and I feel for Corbyn who is being smeared with the same insensible, Jacobite madness. He should rise to it and appeal to the British people against the media. This seems to be broadly working worldwide, although who the media thinks they’re talking with such transparent nonsense is a mystery. It’s hard even to read, and each day I wake up, gobsmacked by the shifting illogic of it all.
#Antilogos
The reason they are on Assange is that he is one of the only people with adequate leverage to completely destroy the Russian hacking/collusion narrative, and thus HRC and the preposterous lies the DNC has chained themselves to, for no sensible, practical, or legitimate reason I can see. If you hadn’t noticed, the entire United States, and in fact world peace has been held hostage to this fabrication for almost two years, despite that recent polls show less than 1% of Americans think it’s real or relevant. …That’s like 1/40th of even DEMOCRATS. Yet they won’t stop, and for why I don’t know because it’s clearly not working. It will probably antagonize Democratic voters so grieveously they will again refuse to show for the midterms, just as they stayed home for ’16.
Anyway, Assange has the hard data — out in public (that is, not locked in “national security” NSA servers, who also have always had a copy of every. single. thing.) — and all he has to do to destroy the narrative and the DNC who inexplicably and voluntarily chained themselves to it, is to show up in a court of law. That’s my estimation of why they’re after him, why the Administration was trying to cut a deal with him, and why Comey & co. made but sure to shut down that amnesty deal but quick (illegally and with extreme political bias at the highest levels of the FBI).
But he has other problems. Related to this in a way I can’t quite track is the Vault 7 release which the spooks are super mad about and cannot let pass. My guess is, they were going to cut a deal, he said the leverage of his amnesty deal was to withhold or even return Vault 7 highest-level, national security methods and secrets, and Comey reneged on that deal, keeping him in solitary. As one must to remain credible, he then released it as promised. In that way Comey and the FBI knowingly and purposefully caused the highest national security secrets to be published for use by bad actors worldwide, when they had the opportunity and military duty to prevent the loss of those high-level computer weapons, and ushered and insured those weapons would get into the hands of the enemy. Solely to preserve a false narrative less than 1% of the nation believes or cares about anyway. Chilling. And what’s worse, terrible, losing tactics, right out in the open.
Nevertheless, it complicates his situation because the intelligence agencies cannot let that go. However, he no doubt has a file cabinet filled with Vault 7’s he can release should he ever go on line again. Something of a Mexican standoff.
But not to be a killjoy, I have a solution: publishers are allowed to publish — but not steal — state secrets, so long as no one comes to harm by it. (the Apache helicopter attack but not Vault 7) This could be established as a method of holding governments accountable, as part of a “whistleblower” act, perhaps protected by an amendment on human rights and the limits of governments, or even remunerated for the public good. …That is to say, we can just have what we’ve always had in the U.S.: a free press meant to investigate and publish government scandals and overreach which is protected by 220 years of law. Dream the [im]possible dream, eh? You know, one where people do their jobs?
Like I’ve said, they have no intent of paying the debt. It’s a “run to failure” model. Ironically, as history happens, it’s likely the Fed, soon to be owned by Trump appointments, will drop liquidity in QT and drive the dollar UP, despite $1.5T deficits. Maybe Cheney was right — apparently deficits don’t matter…until they do.
What is this fuss with markets anyway? The Dow is in the range it started in December 2017. That’s nearly a year of buppkas. Now it’s dropping? To 25,000? When valuations would say what? 10,000? 6,600? I wouldn’t get worked up. The Naz is 12% over last year. Horrors. And they say there’s no fake news. Not to say it can’t fall — it should — but they’ve got all markets pretty provably rigged right now.
They’re smashing on more tax cuts in this environment. Both because of the deficit, which they’re not going to pay, and for the “rich”, as a socialist thing. Newsflash: no one but the rich CAN get a tax cut because the bottom 50% are already too broke to pay any taxes. And they still haven’t reformed the system enough to keep Apple and GE from buying 10 senators and paying no taxes, ergo, all taxes are paid by the middle class, per usual.
Speaking of reform, yes all those cuts and market gains go to the rich because the entire economy has been financialized since at least 1970, 50 years ago. Until you restructure the ENTIRE economy, which might take decades, the gains will go the place the 50-year reward structure tells them to go: the rich. You tell me how to stop it without throwing a spoke in the wheels and throwing the car in a ditch and I’m all ears. Other than that, the solution is to cause a labor shortage, create man-jobs like manufacturing, and cut off conduits to financialization and monopoly, all of which seem to be being established here, however slowly and however violently resisted. But as more fake news, they opened a steel mill in Indiana this weekend, as root stock to the manufacturers, who seem to be getting the message and hiring — no thanks to insiders like GM and Harley (who got massive, undeserved ’08 bailouts). It stinks, but we can always collapse later if fixing it doesn’t work.
Or maybe just admit we already collapsed as today there was another U.S. city without drinkable water this morning. The others won’t dare test or admit the results, so bottoms up! But Soviet style socialism always creates these economic and ecological disasters, and we’re no exception.
The Left *could* win, if only they coordinated a sensible platform and policy. It’s not even all that hard, and in fact doesn’t need to work. It never worked before, but they had one, because they could follow all parties’ political tradition of blaming the other side when it fails. I’ve been astonished that the Left here — two years later! — is still running the catastrophically losing ’16 election with no platform whatsoever but “Russia”, to the apoplexy of Progressives like Jimmy Dore, who actually have goals, platforms, and support. They even have ways to pay for it.
Since I don’t think any political party has ever tried to win the voters by promising nothing and having no platform, one has to wonder if this is simply some kind of 1,000-year oversight. What are they getting by completely abdicating all politics of all sorts to essentially no one? Giving all to the other side, while decrying the enemy?
“Mr. Left: What do you want?” Not them. “Okay, great, so how do you solve our problems instead?” Hitlerbigotdeplorablerussia. Wow, lot to vote for there. And I don’t follow a lot of Europe, but certainly Corbyn has been bogged down in formulating anything comprehensive, which isn’t that hard. “..to secure [our] rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed . . .” Therefore, whatever banks and corporations want to do, Governments are the advocates for the People. But that would require confronting banks, corporations, military contractors, and the other oversized creatures at the feed trough, and no one is willing to do that. Cue Assange.
Or are they? While the Left is in an unexpected sling, collapsing and failing to do the simplest work — forming a worldview and persuading others — the Right also has failed, mostly here, but to some extent everywhere. The difference is the OLD right collapsed and has been taken up by a NEW right that is substantially different. Who would have expected the Right would become the anti-war party? Who would have thought they would be the anti DoJ, police, and police-state party? How about the anti war-contractor-bribing-government party? Then anti war-on-drugs party? The anti incumbent party? How about the anti billionaire party? Because they’re now all these things, and in so doing are no longer the RINO Party, although the name lives on. History shows that in these turns, one of the parties disappears, the Federalists or the Whig party, or so on. However, when the national coin transforms, the other face must also transform – after Lincoln, the Democrats were never the same either.
That’s not untrue of the European parties either. You can’t attract voters to the AdF or UKIP or something by being immediately corrupt and having no ideas…that comes later on. You can’t attract them by saying “we’re Hitler. Killkillkill.” Even Hitler never did that. So at the moment they are saying the obvious and asking the obvious, and as we well see, the obvious is being universally rejected. …Like stalling for 2 years of not-enough-time until there are 2 weeks, then running your people into the wall and laughing hysterically as debt and crime spirals and the National Health fails.
But the point here was that while the Left suspiciously has no platform — a thing never seen before in history, the Right is transforming as well. Into something new and unexpected, and certainly not fairly reported. Time will tell, we’re watching.
That’s chilling. Who’s pulling their strings? Is it really foot-dragging, kicking and screaming to stop the aristocratic gravy-train at the expense of the 99.9%? Can it be that simple in such a complicated place?
The Gray Lady Thinks Twice About Assange’s Prosecution (McGovern)
Unfortunately it’s based on the erroneous assumption that the NYT is still a newspaper. They lost that mantle 20 years ago in the Iraq war. Note it’s still not in the published pages, and won’t be until the CIA approves the message.China may, and may have to, devalue their Yuan. This would fit will with the longstanding belief that the US$, being the core currency, must RISE in a crisis/deflation/crunch. And lets us get away with $1 Trillion + deficits for a few more years, somewhat lambasted in the media. …But we weren’t going to pay anyway, what’s the difference? However, a too-high US$ will ALSO crush the United States, and require nations to decouple as they did from the (non) gold standard during the Depression. So as advertised, it goes up and up and up…and disappears. Replaced by…? Gold-backed crypto most likely. And no one will credit the Fed, so it won’t be the Bancor, the Fedcoin, or the SDR, but a totally new scam from a new direction. But these things take time. Not yet, but all the several foundations have been placed.
No intent of honesty in reporting. Just because you disagree doesn’t mean the other guy doesn’t have a point or a plan.
Example: “Trump Plans 25% Tariff On Up To $200BN In Foreign Cars As Advisors Helpless To Stop Him”
This line is wildly common. It’s a soup of click-bait assumptions.
A) that a 25% tariff automatically isn’t a good thing. We reporters have been wrong about everything for 20 years, but not this time. WE know best.
B) if it’s a bad thing it’s not just that he’s whacking them to get them to table.
But most importantly,
C) that the Presidency is a job where you do whatever your advisors tell you. The Cabinet, the Intel agencies, the Chamber of Commerce, Congressmen, Angela Merkel, Obama — doesn’t matter who. Doesn’t matter that in reality, they all disagree with each other, so no matter who you pick one group will always be “helpless” to “stop” the Trumpnado. Because whatever he does, push, pull, or go sideways, is always and forever wrong simply because he does it. There’s no article, “Half of Trump’s Cabinet Pleased He Chose Their Side While the Other Half Sulks in Rejection This Time”, a much more plausible headline.But there’s more. There’s the assumption that the President MUST obey the always-wrong, hopelessly-discredited, war-crime Intel agencies; he’s REQUIRED to obey CNN pundits. You see, it’s not that the head of the executive branch, the President, as the CEO and executor of Congress’s will, is the boss of the Department of Justice, with complete hiring and firing power over the CIA, the FBI, etc….no. You see, REALLY the President works FOR the CIA and FBI and their leaking handmaiden CNN and he does whatever THEY say. Trump is their employee, the waterboy, just as Eisenhower and Kennedy warned.
But what does THAT say? It implies that — Russia notwithstanding — we don’t really have elections. The American people have no voice. There’s no sense in electing Trump since he’s only allowed to obey the unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats of the CIA and FBI anyway and NOT the people of the United States.
…And they say, with two years of headlines like this, about how the American people should be overrun, overruled, ignored, defied, stymied, attacked in form and body, that there’s no bias, there’s no deep state. How can there be a deep state? Donald Trump just needs to obey everything N.Y. Think Tanks and D.C. advisors say and do everything CNN and Raytheon tells him to do, and it’ll be fine.
…Newsflash: if we wanted his ADVISORS’ policies enacted, we would have elected THEM. The electorate wants HIS policies, and to spank every D.C. advisor red and send them home with feathers. If you hadn’t noticed — yet! — that’s why they elected him: to crush every D.C. pundit to powder and destroy everything they ever made. Things like a 4:1 tariff ratio acting AGAINST every American from Pasadena to Philly. The one that makes Flint too poor to afford water while they yuk it up at $100,000 fundraisers. As with President Kennedy and CIA Director Dulles, we’re just having a little argument about who works for whom.
We will never shut up. That’s the 1st Amendment. But people misconstrue what that means.
Freedom of Speech is not a right granted by the government. Freedom of Speech is a natural human right. Why? Because being human means by nature you will and must have ideas and opinions and you will and must express them. To do otherwise is to no longer be human. That’s why it’s “inalienable” — unable to be separated. That’s why rights pre-exist governments and are neither allowed nor denied by them. You’re human: that means you are going to speak out. You, me, them, everyone. And although in the U.S. our highest law recognizes this in theory, it is no less true for Australians, Swedes, Britons, or Russians. To do otherwise is to tyrannically oppress humankind, and draw the opposition of ALL men, quite possibly with arms, which is why we have that OTHER Amendment.
So what will we do? Ignore governments’ illegal actions like the hateful, obsolete trolls they are and live as men. If every man supports Assange, it will be cripplingly hard for ANY government to oppose him and all of us, without losing the very legitimacy that grants them existence. So the problem is theirs, not ours. The power is ours, not theirs. We know who we are and what we stand for. We will exist tomorrow. They’re the ones in danger, not us and it’s high time they remembered.
What will we do? See you tomorrow, and the day after, standing for the rights of men until I, you, and we, pass the same fight to our children, when they too will stand. It’s natural law, like gravity. Good luck stopping it.
“[Tesla] profitability in the third quarter.”
Did they see this chart?
“The nationwide housing shortage continues…”
Hey, NBC did you look into the 20M empty houses in the U.S.? What? And I would bet 60 cities with collapsing populations? Lots of empty houses there. Flint, Detroit, Cleveland… Oh, and golly, WHY are those cities so bad? And, apropos to nothing, HOW did all the money end up in the 12 blesséd megacities? Seems so weird how all the money disappeared from every square inch of flyoverland at the exact same time it all reappeared in the 12 ordained zones. Probably my imagination. But…if you’re living in your car in San Francisco and crapping on the street and you want those cheap houses, they’re waiting for you back in Indianapolis where they’ve always been. (Australia, you may want to look into this.)
“our country in hock to Donald Trump,”
I’m wondering how this could ever happen. Is it because Corbyn and crew plan on buying non-working missiles for their non-working ships? They can just not do that, you know. May can too; It IS possible if you try. Peace is cheaper than war. P.S. Donald Trump is a nobody: Presidents come and go, especially here. You’re troubled by being in hock to Trump, but were perfectly pleased to be in hock to Bush and his illegal invasion, to Obama, and presumably to Hillary’s intent to attack and drive out Russia from Syria? Funny ol’ world. Advice from an American: Don’t be in hock to any of them. Fight them every day like we do.
Look out for Colin Jenkins, writing from a thinktank named after the Black Panthers – the article is pure Marxist theory and reasoning…and the only thing that’s killed more people than Capitalism is Communism. That I don’t mind, he’s upfront about it but he’s missing the point: in the world where the Jacobin Mob is driving people off social media and out of their jobs on blank allegations without the process of courts, accusers, evidence, discovery, rebuttal, or limits on punishments, it seems an ideal time to review WHY the Founding Fathers didn’t want a Democracy, and in fact vigorously opposed it. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Federalist_Papers It’s because a Constitutional Republic defends the rights of the MINORITY against the will of the majority. The mob cannot one day decide they don’t like you, your property, your freedom from harm, your ability to earn a living and just change the rules to get them, then divvy up your business and your daughters amongst themselves for their pleasure. That’s BECAUSE the rights are written in stone, and they only can be if you’re NOT a Democracy. A true Democracy a new mob can just vote new rules whenever they’re hungry for a new victim and new property as we see thankfully so virtual and faraway in social media land, but is the lynch mob for professors, media personalities, and many others, and boy are they hungry for new victims today. It’s ONLY their recourse to the Law, which remains non-mob, non-democratic, that preserves the lives of these few who have run afoul of a mercurial, ever-changing popular opinion.
It’s true that the wealthy are one of the minorities that are protected by the limits of Constitutional law and due process, but as history has shown, so are the communists, the Jews, the gays, the Catholics, the atheists, the Indians, the Amish, and so many others. I’m sorry that the rich were protected and not killed by the mob as Jenkins would hope, but as the Jacobin mob showed, first they start with the unjust King, and before a year passes they’re killing the rich cobbler and small town newspaperman for being too “rich”. Then they kill the field worker, the fellow revolutionary, and then, as Niemöller says, they come for you. Ask any nation that’s tried this how their wealth and prosperity of égalité and fraternité followed…lookin’ at you South Africa, Zimbabwe. While imperfect as the men who run it, the impure Democracy Jenkins so dislikes is what saves the life of the communists, the trade unionists, and the Jews, and is saving my, our, and his Black Panther life every day from the mob even now. It’s the very reason he is free to speak, to publish, and to agitate against the very law that preserves him. …That, and the 2nd Amendment. How does it work to NOT have a hard-coded, non-democratic contract that requires free speech and due process? Ask Tony Robinson.
First they came for the Communists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
Because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for me—and there was no one left to speak for me. “ — NiemöllerAnd make no mistake, they ARE coming for you if they can. They’ve attacked and killed many accounts and several careers in this week alone. Say no to the mob.
It’s very hard to tell how much traction RussiaRussiaRussia(tm) has got. 100% of the media is lockstep, however, I suspect 50% of the country is completely rejecting it, while maybe 30% of the remainder believes it but doesn’t care. As everything is lies, however, and the self-censoring is universal (you won’t meet anyone who voted for DJT, for example), it’s hard to tell. I’d find today’s Gallup poll accurate that the number of people who think “Situation with Russia is the most important issue” is “too small to measure.” Since we’re dying and being shot in the streets, often by policemen who were
robbingcivil forfeiture of any cash left over from taxes, that seems logical.What is a Liberal? No one knows: it’s a catch-phrase that means different things to different people. Roughly, it’s the group that exists Left of the Democratic center. They’re indicated by more activism, more social issues driven, and tend toward Democratic Socialism of government doing everything and providing everything as the overall solution. But mostly the social issues.
Dejadad that may be true, but Marx has been wrong on timing for 151 years, and killed 100 million of your fellow men.
What do I say of capitalism? That just means people can make, own, and trade their own property without it being stolen from them. It just means that when people fail, they go bankrupt and start over. Capitalism? Maybe we should try it sometime, because I don’t see any here.
The debt is fake. It only exists in human minds, as a fantasy. Freeze the planet in time and fly around looking at it. Do you see debt anywhere? There are fields making things, and people eating them. Factories are creating so many goods the price is approaching worthless, and people using them. Energy is flowing up and out like a tree. There are people, animals, plants, ecosystems. They are functioning as they are right this instant. So if they can exist now, why shouldn’t they persist as well? Evolve as they have for 10,000 years? Just a thought experiment to get out of our usual way of looking at things, filled as they are with the noise and false urgency of monkey-mind.
Casa, while well met, that does not seem to be a logical argument but an emotional one. Emotions don’t make bread, only work does. You can take up arms against the President if you wish regardless of the good or bad of his actions, but it would seem more productive to use his actions and nature to achieve positive ends. If he’s ending wars in Korea, Syria, Afghanistan, and NATO, why shouldn’t we help him with that while he’s around? The next guy may again be a Bush or McCain and it would be a shame not to set back the war machine by 100 years if we can. You’re raging against apples because you wanted potatoes. Use what you’ve got.
Speaking of spam, did you see the new strawless Starbuck’s cup uses more plastic than the old one? Jevon’s paradox. Human nature at work. That’s probably why they were using the straw: all things being equal, less plastic is cheaper.
No doubt they have paper/degradable plastics that will break down in days underwater, but that leads to the next problem: price. And price is a factor of production and the supply chain, so generally there needs to be a critical mass to drop the price. Solving things, instead of complaining, is a lot harder and a lot less satisfiying. We don’t go forward unless the new thing we like better.
Remember Paris, and Hemingway stacking up espresso cups on the cafe patio, the waiter in a white apron accounting them at night’s end? Not all prices are things. Not all experiences. Use less and often your life is more. When you have one tin cup you love it more than a castle’s Wedgewood china set.
Did you see Comey saying the President is a traitor and anyone voting Republican is un-American? And these same guys are in Congress under oath saying they have no bias against Trump and the Republicans or against Flyoverland that voted him in. History will have a hard time recording this. So for the record, bias that says everything one party does is evil, illegal, their very existence must be stopped, is not bias and they have no particular prejudicial belief that one party or person is evil, illegal and must be stopped as recorded 50,000 times in emails. Got it? This from the upstanding gentlemen who backed the legality of Guantanamo, waterboarding, citizen drone strikes, the Iraqi WMD, the payoff of Iran, and a dozen other top 10 hits. Sounds legit.
Or as Comey would say: “I used to be Snow White but I drifted.”
What fresh hell is this?
“A war of aggression, sometimes also war of conquest, is a military conflict waged without the justification of self-defense, usually for territorial gain and subjugation. … Since the Korean War of the early 1950s, waging such a war of aggression is a crime under the customary international law.” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/War_of_aggression
Is there anyone on earth that does NOT know this? Oh yeah, The Guardian, keeping those standards low.
The classic quote is here, from British judge Norman Birkett in Nuremberg in 1945:
The charges in the Indictment that the defendants planned and waged aggressive wars are charges of the utmost gravity. War is essentially an evil thing. Its consequences are not confined to the belligerent states alone, but affect the whole world.
To initiate a war of aggression, therefore, is not only an international crime; it is the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.[2]
I have another historical quote for you, fresh from America: “Hang ‘em High”
P.S. nice construction of that article, making it seem Trump is the root cause of Theresa May’s problems, but you know, it is The Guardian. They’ve got standards to keep.
“Tis ne’er but a sparrow falls to this green earth but is the fault of the Donald.”
“Our society is run by insane people for insane objectives. … I think we’re being run by maniacs for maniacal ends and I think I’m liable to be put away as insane for expressing that. That’s what’s insane about it.” –John Lennon
He also said: “If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
Not to beat a dead horse but the William Binney, the NSA’s top codebreaker, a retired veteran and decorated hero at the top of the pile (now referred to by CNN as an unemployed “conspiracy theorist”) already showed from Veterans for Peace that the DNC emails were copied locally from within and was therefore a leak. They could prove this from their parlor, without subpoena power and was widely publicized. Amazingly, this confirms Assange, Kim.Com, and Craig Murray, with all evidence pointing in the same direction, but hey, we can always solve this question: the DNC can hand the server to the FBI as evidence and we can settle it in a few hours! Wouldn’t that be just standard, podunk-town, average, boring detective work from the worst investigator in any other case that’s ever been?
So possibly there’s a reason that server has never yet been provided, there’s been no investigation, and so far there has been no supporting evidence provided from Rosenstein and Mueller?
I’m sick of wasting words on it. Talk is cheap. Wake me up when something happens.
I did use the word “democracy” in the broad, common sense. A true “democracy” is just another word for “mob rule.” The United States was founded on NOT being a big “D” democracy, the founders were terrified of it and most of the Federalist papers a tiresome review how they would prevent it. A few years later France justified all their fears and cautions, and the bulwarks they put in to prevent it, as everyone in France was killed, remedied only by the installment of an antiChrist style dictator and a first (European) world war.
We were spared, for that time. The United States is of course a Constitutional Republic, which means — in wild contradiction to how America is depicted each day — the minority is specifically protected from the majority by every means possible: freedom to speak, to protest, to redress, to defend themselves, to hold minority religion, customs, views, however small or offensive to the majority. That’s the very principle of the American system, the freedom to be left alone in life and property, therefore the freedom to do what you don’t like, but doesn’t harm you personally. That is not a “Democracy” where the majority gets its way, enforces social norms, votes itself your property, etc, and in fact this is the single battle we’re fighting today. Oddly, where the forces of “tolerance” and “democracy” wish to use the oppression of government to make the minority conform socially, and the forces of purported “intolerance” and “hate” wish to leave others alone and be themselves left alone. …But history is rife with ironies and reversals like that.
In the modern, common, sense, we’re a “democracy” in the sense that we have a wide and common vote, but that’s pretty low bar as Stalin and Saddam and the Ayatollah all vote widely and are not considered democracies. Meanwhile, Britain and the U.S. are considered democracies while policy never changes for 100 years and ex-Presidents quote university studies proving the people have no voice or power. But, you know, the mote in the eye and all that.
Just didn’t want this to get far without pointing out –as my betters before me — that pure democracy is as toxic as it is short-lived, as the people vote themselves each other’s property and legally kill everyone who resists, as we begin to see today in Europe. The more we have of that here, the less moral and stable we are. Let’s not return to the glory that was France, or the grandeur that was Rome. That way there be monsters.
Wasn’t a certain Prime Minister at the head of the departments overseeing Windrush? And also Grenfell?
And for the great freedom of speech, I recall a certain gentleman who merely reported on a public court hearing and found himself suddenly in prison.
Yes, there’s quite a lot all nations could and should do long before they start looking to others. There was a certain gentleman in the Middle East who said a mote about this, but it seems to be forgotten.
” the Eurogroup decision shows how difficult it will be for the southern country to regain … sovereignty.”
Indeed. It’s almost like their plan is to intentionally remove national sovereignty and replace it with an unaccountable, undemocratic pan-European bureaucracy that would extract the wealth of the poor states and people and give it to the powerful states and people. Who knew? Except the people who voted against it in every referendum, including the Greeks.
Democracy: we should try it sometime.
Psy·cho·sis (sīˈkōsəs) a severe mental disorder in which thought and emotions are so impaired that contact is lost with external reality.
Being here, I fear you are correct. However, note that lack of contact with reality is easily engineered by enforcing an all-encompassing bubble of lies. So who’s the real victim here?
“We’ll Know Our Disinformation Program Is Complete When Everything the American Public Believes Is False.” –CIA Director William Casey, 1981
Problem being, and why such people always lose is, lies like manure stick everywhere, invade all thinking, then all decisions, then the liars themselves, but especially their minions behave irrationally, wasting critical resources, fighting pointless battles, wasting time, interfering with themselves until they seem so irrational they lose allies and are themselves attacked. …But if you’re engineering it, controlling the timing, and have the resources to change locations or alliance, you can make a lot of money capturing a warship, pirating on the high seas, then using that ship to capture another before stripping and scuttling it. You could keep it up for 1,000 years and be happy while the world dies around you.
So the problem of “their” country getting hollowed out, going down, descending into civil war, it’s really a problem at all, it’s just a necessary chrysalis to the new butterfly. …Or deadly spider, as the case may be.
So more brilliance from Britain, question: have price controls worked anywhere they’ve been tried? So why this time? The article points out that reckless speculation from easy money seems to be the driver, have you tried not printing money and handing it out to your billionaire backers? What would happen to an economy resting entirely on speculation if you tried this? Speaking of getting stuck in the jar like an idiot. Good thing you have a lot of company.
I can be quite sure that it wasn’t the same Novi this time because I could probably prove in a court of law, without subpoena, that it wasn’t novi used the first time. What they’re up to defies description, but perhaps they thought if they could double down on the preposterous bungling of the assassination/warning of the original writer of the Trump dossier, this employee of Mr. Steele, it would seem more plausible? You know, a day before Helsinki? But it doesn’t, you idiots, because a) novichok is deadly, duh, and will kill you in seconds b) it’s been out in the rain for a month and c) you seriously claim it was in a needle, in a park, waiting around as evidence AND someone took it home, AND used it, AND didn’t die? AYFKM. Please stop. My will is broken. I can’t take any more dumb.
Newsflash: ALL the manufacturers cheat, they always have since the later EPA standards aren’t realistic, which bureaucrats and ministers never care about consequences, costs, or what’s possible. That’s not government. And that’s BECAUSE when the automakers cheat, as you’ve just made them do, they become a big cookie jar you can open up and steal from whenever you want, by suddenly “discovering” OMG! Did you know they were doing this, just when the U.S. wanted to steal tens of billions in retaliation for the EU stealing tens of billions from the Google case? Who knew? Who knew GM was doing the same thing, but we DON’T prosecute them? Problem is: business can’t function under these conditions and “capital” (that is to say, sensible, productive, working guys) will continue to withdraw from the market until there isn’t one and we’re all as prosperous as the Soviets, so nice going there. 25% youth unemployment throughout the West, anyone? I’m sure the Central Committee will pass another law to fix it but good.
The detention cases are just the illegal immigration states demanding “catch-and-release.” It’s simple: if you can’t detain kids, and you can’t detain their parents, you can’t detain anyone: there is no border. Ta-Dah! Problem solved, so long as you send your children with rapey human traffickers who will leave you in the desert for dead. Isn’t that just so child-friendly? As an alternative to just filing paperwork for a visa and/or refugee status while safe at home. But as we saw with Time’s front page Guatemalan child, the mother stole the kids, spend the family’s fortune paying human traffickers to move them across the continent, got caught, and was at least honest in admitting she had no case, she just wanted a better job…that she would take from an American. Some parent! Here in the states you’d permanently lose custody trying that, but if you’re illegal, you GET custody, AND ‘permanent’ residence AND social support according to the same San Diego judge who would REMOVE custody from any American who tried it. I know we have a problem, but does that make any sense?
…Same in Europe where, to play the devil’s advocate for a second, what responsibility is it of Europe to get involved and stop all the conflicts in Africa, where the present migrants are coming from? Isn’t that what Africa was arguing AGAINST? So if they can’t go into Africa and tell them about the “white man’s burden” in violation of all international laws and norms, I think the only alternative…and this is in AGREEMENT with 500 years of laws and norms…is to stop them at the border and deport them home. Which isn’t cruel, it’s just setting the cheat-clock back to zero so no one profits, and in fact THAT’S generous since it costs the defending country an awful lot of time and money. …But of course let’s add that Europe and the West IS in Africa and everywhere else, screwing it up with neocolonialism that profits only the elite, so that’s primary, but it doesn’t change centuries of laws and customs.
So imagine Egypt’s position: they start a center in good faith, 750,000 Africans show up, destabilizing the place, they can’t fully control them, then Europe, as ever, suddenly changes something and bottles the flow. They then use this wedge to topple the Egyptian government and install a puppet…but this is of course fiction, when has the West ever tried that? coughArabSpringcough. coughTwicecough. Part deux: if they’re applying for European residency in from 50°c tent in Egypt the NGOs will call inhumane, why the heck didn’t they apply for Euro registry back in their home country the way they’re supposed to??? What does Egypt have to do with Ivory Coast and Nigeria? Seriously, no one’s thinking clearly: of COURSE they said no. This is why the rules developed and were stable this way and why it’s hard to change them. Let’s just stop war, stop wasting money and help leave each other alone, and our economies and ecologies will bounce back in no time. I’m pretty sure the home nations will be happy to have us stop election tampering everywhere the way we shriek about at home, but happily do in France, Brexit, Israel, Russia, Macedonia, Ukraine, South America…
Classic bureaucracy: they offered a completely symbolic Brexit vote to shut up the UKIP, which was so accidentally mishandled in the lead up that they actually lost…just like they lost the EU referendums 3 times, lost HRC, etc… The people knew back when they refused the EU that this was an abusive, anti-democratic trap to put Europe into a single state under an unaccountable central bureaucracy, soviet-style, and indeed many of the key players are eastern bloc. This has been fully played out and revealed in Greece, Italy, France, Germany, and everywhere else that Brussels attacks, extracts, and vindictively, unproductively, punishes non-compliance while giving themselves 6-digit paychecks for not showing up. (Not that it would matter, since the EU votes are non-binding anyway.)
So the people have been clearly opposed all along, and again each time there’s a vote, regardless (or because of) what they do. What’s a self-respecting fascist (or Soviet) to do? Well, exactly what Raul outlines, all of which lead to the Brexit and the referendum being “accidentally” cancelled, and the 13 Billion keeps floating the Euro-fascist project. There’s your money for NHS, school food programs, etc., plus your new non-compliance to the 30,000 new laws the EU passed.
Would a hard Brexit hurt, cause a recession or depression as the whole economy is suddenly re-calibrated? Of course. But why don’t you ask Greece about the wonders of staying in the loving “family” of “Europe”. That Depression started the minute they signed up for the EU, they would only choose to experience it now instead of later, as the whole EU collapses…an eventuality which seems inevitable, and soon, now.
But the Lords don’t want the people, they don’t want their fascist central-state project to go down in flames as all central-state plans do, but most importantly, they don’t want to be embarrassed. Much, MUCH better to kill a hundred thousand Englishmen and a million Europeans instead in the developing conflict. Profits are higher and more secure.
So yes, there’s no democracy even in the off-decades when you have a referendum, the “democratic” institutions make certain of that, and Theresa May is just playing her part. She’s no real leader and has no business being there, they placed her specifically to be sacrificed when it all goes down as they arrange and order it to. Then they can attack the people some more, call it “Brexit” and get them to vote Remain (still unlikely), or lose it in procedural wrangling. …Doesn’t matter, so long as Brexit doesn’t happen and the people aren’t heard. Ever again.
I say, surely, obviously that was what they were going to do. Of course they were. You knew that as far back as the European Common Market they’d always extract Britons (not their billionaire leaders) just as they have Spaniards and Greeks. Why act shocked now? But the question is what they wish to DO about it, and this I can’t say for them. Personally, I wouldn’t let it pass, and force a Brexit by any means necessary from sheer stubborn cussedness, to bring them to heel and regain my life and sovereignty, but how to do that within their institutions, I can’t say. At the moment, they could just run out the clock and let Europe collapse economically and socially, then step back, because it seems most likely that will happen anyway, as Tusk and Merkel and all force it along.
Meanwhile Europe is hoping to cause a “right wing” backlash they can fight and blame for their thefts and failures while grabbing more power, but that’s not going as well as they planned. They needed violent, racist Nazis and they’re not getting them, even down in the Golden Dawn. Europe is complex and not my specialty, but when the winds blow hard enough it’s not hard to tell the direction. Get out while you can, however you must. From the day they joined and ceded their sovereignty, there were only bad decisions. Make one, take your lumps, and regain your soul, the heart of the Englishman. They will rise if you ask them. They always have. Godspeed.
Hiroshige say “A hard rain’s a-gonna fall”
It’s certainly hard to comment when everything’s both manipulated and a state secret, we can only speculate according to our confirmation bias. The previous Helsinki agreement looks as hilariously breached by every single thing the West ever did since 1990. So we’re concerned about that now? And to set up something new, since we weren’t even using the old one (although they were for the most part)?
We’re in violation of every treaty we ever signed. This week we just added the Space Weapons treaty, after illegally posting short-range nuclear missiles surrounding Russia, after being in violation of all International law and norms by invading Syria (and a few other nations) without UN mandate, without the slightest plausible defense, and without a declaration of war. Britain just broke the Chemical Weapons treaty by refusing procedures and evidence in the Skripal case. So is Helsinki really relevant here? Russia has openly used a Russian phrase that the U.S. is “not agreement capable”. That seems at a minimum.
What’s worse is MacKinder’s ‘geopolitics’ had an obsessive, addict’s focus on preventing Asia uniting against Oceana (Britain). Thanks to their bone-headed, murderous, and completely illegal policies, the Anglos have themselves FORCED the unification of Russia and China, and probably South Asia, Iran and India, perhaps permanently. They did that, on top of starting a dozen wars and killing a few million people.
It doesn’t take Trump to be a threat to that empire. They already lost, and China just said war with the U.S. was inevitable and strongly increased their military budget, so we got that going for us. But you knew if you did what we have done there would be something to pay, decades before now. And so now we pay the punishing bill we never enjoyed, at least since 1970.
Their scientific model has problems in that few of these real-life computer models work at all. Certainly no climate model has been accurate, ever, so that’s humbling, but you can learn things from models, which is what they’re trying to do. Unfortunately, their model has a critical flaw in like most science, they have both a linear and a static bias. Environmental factors, like populations, will be tipped on rough schedules of weather, climate, resources –like Ice Ages — that are cyclical and extraneous to the model. It’s not all internal any more than the economy is, and we know how bare-faced wrong economists are. They also assume that nothing truly strange can happen, an asteroid, planetary travel, zero-point energy, but those are so rare, such true black swans, that you cannot hypothesize them. Yet they DO happen and we do not end up in the rocket future of the 30’s or the 60’s. So I wouldn’t put any stake in a model as bad as this, it’s probably no better than Sid Meier’s Civilization (R) we all play. Now if we could only get THEM to feel humble before their utter failures. Or us. Are we sorry for losing ourselves, Asia and the world yet?
May’s plan to scuttle Brexit is going swimmingly. No one seems to be blaming her for the obvious, and far better, the EU’s villainy and stonewalling is completely eclipsed by her stellar sabotage. Well played!
The U.S. has anything but a labor shortage. We have 100 million people out of work and the whole place is collapsing for lack of maintenance. Worse, we have an intractable social problem in that it’s no longer possible to get people to show up, or to work in even a marginal fashion when they do. And that’s beyond opioids. Clearly poverty is not a motivator, as they are in fact desperately poor, and our social services are dismal. So that side truly passeth all understanding.
However, I can say that what they have is a labor shortage at the wages they wish to pay. You want to do say, health care service with biohazards, people biting you, no legal support and the likelihood of being sued and/or injured while wiping butts every day for $11/hr? Have we got the job for you! But only on a gig basis with no vacations and we mixed up your paycheck. How about standing on a roof with no safety equipment in 140f (60c) for $12? Sound like something worth getting up for? What? You’d need $17/hr to afford rent and a working car? I guess you’re just lazy.
You see, Americans can’t go back to their citizenship in a low-cost nation and live like a king. It’s not inspiring. And wages haven’t risen in 50 years(!!), so they don’t motivate. Why bother? But that’s just the long way of saying “if you import illegal immigrants who don’t follow labor rules, you’ll destroy the wages of the vulnerable lower and middle class, while helping the rich.” Which is what we’ve been saying since That Giant Sucking Sound started. Now that labor habits themselves have metastasized though, there really is no solution: another generation will have to come up who get rewarded or punished according to their merits and not randomly, as presently under our mixed-up (non)socialism.
Shortage? Sort of. Wages have needed to rise for 50 years but it’s not allowed and being stopped by the combined forces of Congress, the Fed, Wall St., and Industry. …And yet it will happen, because math wins.
“What is a ‘Red’?” “A Red is any son-of-a-bitch that wants thirty cents-an-hour when we’re paying twenty-five!” –Steinbeck
Interesting points. It’s all myth, or at least history is: you couldn’t fit what really happened, what every person really thought, believed, and tried into a book. But leaving it out in any coherent way is a lie by omission. It can’t be helped. What is the quote? “You can’t get wet from the word ‘water.'” – Alan Watts A book on history is not history. We can’t know that. If you follow “Hamilton” there are two significant sections where Miranda (Chernow) has to add ‘we don’t know. No one wrote it. They weren’t in “the Room Where It Happened.” Most of history is like that.
Long way round as usual to say, all revolutions are ‘coups’. Or in our case, not exactly a coup because we had no interest in toppling the King or taking India and Gibraltar. Did forces such as France help us? Obviously. Did more hidden powers agitate and interefere? You can see some of them in the sympathies of Parlaiment. How about super-secret, unknown forces? Well all of D.C. was laid out on Masonic architectural references, no joke, so you be the judge if they had underlying debts to pay.
But that would be the same as every other war or revolution ever. What we can’t know is what they INTENDED. Who intended? The Silversmith? The Tailor? The Brewer? What Jefferson intended or what Adams intended? Samuel or John? See the problem? Suppose Washington was a straight-up agent of the Masons or some secret, evil order we don’t know, AND he promised to deliver the whole Continent into the hands of Cthulhu. Could he do it? No. He could pull and influence it — which is significant — but he couldn’t do it alone. He needs some form of quorum, some majority of the power nexus points as the Deep State has today, and like today, even that is not enough.
But it’s disingenuous to say the Revolution was a scam, or that we’re totally free or totally not free — it’s childish thinking. No one is free, whether under governments or under anarchy, because there are always limits and consequences, there are only levels. And because 40 years is not long enough even reading the Cliff Notes that are books, no one can communicate the “truth” of history, only some aspect of it that can’t be tested or proven, and those are the limits of knowledge. In that the map is not the territory, and we have no way to send surveyors into the past, doesn’t mean the map is useless or imaginary. It’s just less than perfect like every other map ever made.
My unproven, unfounded feeling is that the Revolution was a set up from behind to overthrow Kings and set up an empire of man. However to get adequate buy-in they had to offer a great deal of good, and less bad than they would have liked. The Founders took them up on the offer, not in one smoky room, but over time, incompletely, each in their own struggle. Once liberated though, they generally rebelled against the intent of their backers and stopped them out of power, but not completely, just as today there is a 50-year hidden struggle of the Neocon police state and the American democratic state. Since then, at various times, one or another has managed to get their foot forward and take ground, (like Hamilton’s centralization and Quincy’s oligarch track) only to lose it again under a Jackson or a Teddy. Those have their own effect, like Lincoln preventing the recapture of America by breaking it into Euro-attackable pieces, yet Lincoln’s federal primacy itself got the whole ship captured later on. History is complex that way, no one’s on top. There is no pure good or bad, but only men, trying things.
So are we free or not free? Yes. Same as 5,000 years. Is it a lie or not a lie? Yes. Same as 5,000 years. But the thing we did here was to try something, to aspire to have things be better, and as you see today, to keep fighting for it, fighting and fighting and fighting and not giving up on our values and our intent even when we are today captured, abused and vilified by all. A lot of nations give up. France in 1870 didn’t care anymore, Venezuela today. And Greece to some extent tolerates what Americans wouldn’t, and didn’t burn the place down when Varofakis’ plausible new ideas were booted out and German occupation began killing thousands. That’s up to them, I have no opinion with Turkey looming over them on the leash and the Serbian example showing what NATO can do, but we Americans TRIED, and we still try today. Try to see the good in man, or what the other guy is up against before you tell the bloodied boxer how he falls short.
“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.” –Theodore Roosevelt
All day: The “Tea Party” or “T.axed E.nough A.lready Party”, was the ones telling reporters like YOU what the American Revolution was in 2008, and why the same thing could happen today, being so similar. Maybe the Tri-cornered hats and YouTube videos of people dressing up as founding fathers reading those documents word for word to you wasn’t a clue. …So weird. The need to co-opt, then disparage, then hate and disagree on general principles, when *I think* your side and theirs are the same…just like they were during the Tea/Occupy competition, which was the exact same thing: both protesting Wall St, bailouts, and absence of law. Nice to know in 7 years STILL no one has cottoned on and united, far happier to fight and be robbed than make peace and prosper.
Next, a call for mass murder and living in caves on the premise that it’s impossible to be both technological and ecological. Apparently he’s never heard of Sci-fi. It is eminently, easily possible, authors, thinkers, inventors, futurists propose it all the time, just not like this. But never skip an opportunity to attack the poor for the resources they’re barely using under rules they don’t control. In fact, he’s got more than Sci-fi trouble since clearly if the planet moved to the levels of Japan, India, or Africa, we’d have far, far too many resources. But like I said, never skip a call for mass murder and genocide, it’s just good policy, the people’s own murder approved by the reading public without a blink, while the “important” people who caused it all, scientists, politicians, professors, are way too important for the ovens and must be saved. Can we skip this line now? Multiple fields of study have a hundred thousand solutions no one’s even attempting, even though we would have more of BOTH. Permaculture comes to mind, marine protected areas, but many others as well.
I suspect that’s part of the “Fuel poverty”, where in England for instance, there are many tiny, legacy homes with .5m thick stone that are nigh-impossible to insulate. Here’s the thing for you dummies: that home is 700 years old and it may use more energy today, but it doesn’t require the ruin of a new forest to knock down and rebuild it every 20 years like your “ecological”, modern homes. I can’t believe I need to say this. So which is more efficient, a new Tesla with $50,000 worth of new smelting, lithium, and an Afghanistan war to source it, or a 1979 Volvo that can do another 200,000 miles? We CAN make cars like that. Audi made one a while back. American tractors are going on 100 years old and are on their first rebuild. So which is better for the environment? A new cardboard pop-up house that’s worthless in 30 years, or a Scottish Abbey that’s still in use 1,000 years later? Which do we like better? Makes us feel better? Makes us think long term and not for this week’s GDP? So not to say Britain can’t do more, but over here they’re demolishing every arable field and historic structure to put up WalMart, because that’s more “efficient.” Thanks.
Theresa May managed to sabotage the people’s will quite nicely, as planned. That’s what we do when the people get uppity and vote wrong, just like the EU referendums back when. 100% expected to attack the people where they live in vengeance for daring disagree with their betters. That’ll show them. They’ll really get on board once we make life twice as hard; they won’t revolt at all.
I can’t fault Monbiot specifically, but he seems to feel that government somehow STOPS corporations, when they’ve been the greatest enabler of corporate power we’ve ever seen. Not to say at this point shrinking government will then de-power corporations since they’ve made it legal to have a license and be larger than nations with no social responsibility. But if central government that could be bought out was the problem, it can’t be the solution too.
Which leads into Mr. Khan and his ilk, who used the full power of government to aggravate the asset bubble and thereby destroy all the common people, yet 2 or 3 times repeats the answer is to give them more power. Much, much more power. Because the 10-fold, 100-fold power we’ve given them since 1800 has clearly gone in the right direction, and they haven’t sold permits off to their pals, actively inhibited common housing and let Grenfell happen, having done nothing yet to stop it since then. That’s why they need you plebes to give them MORE power, and hand away the natural power and responsibility of the people. Except that they’re protected by people like Khan, or their peers in Auckland and Vancouver, you could sue the pants off Grenfell, you could compete in bids, and projects. But not when they assure free money bubbles, priority exceptions to all rules and norms, and backing that they were “following the law” (that they just wrote) with “approval” of whatever body they pay to stamp their pals into power and no-bid profit.
But don’t worry, give them more power and they’ll solve it this time. I promise.
Facebook: most expected story ever. They’ve been doing this since the ’90s, so while you have to have the Constitution to pass your citizenship test, if you have one in your pocket, the FBI suspects you’re a terrorist. No schizophrenia here at all. “Several indicators can help identify these individuals: References to the Bible, The Constitution of the United States, U.S. Supreme Court decisions, or treaties with foreign governments.” — FBI guidelines, 2011. Enjoy your freedom, suckers, where words, not deeds, are a crime.
Agree humans move on expectations, that’s why it’s critical to hold expectations that they can only migrate according to rules and quotas, which is why those norms were set over 200 years. However, it all comes to nothing if you attack everyone, everywhere, and I pay both for the attack, for the refugees, and for the resulting oppression. If anything, that comes first.
“Share everything. Play fair. Clean up your own mess. Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody. Don’t take things that aren’t yours…” –All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten
I guess Kindergarten is too advanced for them.
What a strange series of facts! Washington was indeed a wealthy son, but he was also a failure. It seems quite unlikely one man on one estate his father built would be the richest man in North America. Franklin alone was a media mogul akin to Rupert Murdock, and surely they were not wealthy compared to others, bankers, shipowners, and other Tories’ sons now forgot.
Was it a coup? All revolutions are coups. The people must revolt for there to be a Revolution, yet their hardship is never adequate to form a successful revolution. It would be as saying the peasants of France got up and invaded the peasants of Italy one Sunday afternoon: it never happens. It is always the wealthy making real trouble, those who will never pay. So yes, I guess, same as every other war ever. The question is not if they were wealthy, but why the wealthy interests no longer aligned. That why a Colonel, who bought his commission as they all did, suddenly wanted to undergo 8 years of hunger, hunting, hardship, disease, and didn’t give up. The British did, they got bored, which is why they signed off for a bit and came back later — as reported recently — and burned the White House only to get bored and wander off again. Whyso? Why fight? Why wander? The war probably made him poorer than ever, not richer, and certainly older. If wealth was his driver, why retire, why attempt to leave Congress, why resign from office against all demands?
So England freed their slaves in 1706, and yet there were slaves to outlaw in 1772, 70 years and 3 kings later? So they were happy to have slaves everywhere in the world, but not in London, same as we do, with the people making our shoes and iPhones, so long as they’re “over there” in Africa or Asia. And so he outlawed slaves in England? The Colonies, most of North America was England. So America, which is England, was bad for having slaves that England, which is America, is forgiven for having, for transporting, for being neck deep in the profitable sale and transport of for 100 years ‘til then? And it wasn’t a time thing: England was still treating India as slaves in 1947, or in South Africa in 1961, Zimbabwe (Rhodesia) in 1970, and in Libya — complete with slaves — today.
I’m not sure what line I’m following. England (which was America) protected the people? Except the Proclamation of 1763 was widely ignored by English citizens who were happy to steal Indian lands with the same payoffs Sarkozy would recognize but even more happy to steal all the developed pioneer lands, which the “White” families (actually all sorts) then needed to buy a second time from the King and his agents. Was that fair to “protect” the natives over the dividing line, but NOT to protect actual English citizens? How did that seem at the time? How about in 1820? 1863? How about compared to the several trillion$ in fraudulent mortgage foreclosures which continue even today?
How about the voters? America had the same suffrage again that England had. More voters than Britain in fact, which is both why they were not getting full representation and why they rebelled. So we’re comparing England with few voters, to America with the same rules and traditions? And because they’re the same, America is the bad one, with poor representation? What representation did England have even with who could vote under the rules of King George? Could you vote out the Earl of Rochester? Yet here when you can vote, you must vote in a Clay or a Jackson? We know that well today, but they tried something. All complained, who else tried?
I guess you could ask, is what America did — even attempted to do — better or worse than England? Was it worth the trouble? Were the people happier, wealthier, better off? Could they live truer to their nature? It’s hard to say as each nation has priorities that may be alien to outsiders. Immigration certainly suggests the world wildly preferred America to England. Prosperity was very hard in England from 1800 which is still known as “Dickensian” even today. The late Victorian era was dodgy even when pulling wealth of millions from their worldwide slave colonies. Edwardian is well known for pointless luxury crossed with needless hardship and cruelty. England through Thatcher wasn’t considered great and is becoming Dickensian again today. Yet we know the troubles of America too, and France, Germany, China, all of us. No one escapes.
So I’m unsure of this list of facts, which are true, and yet implied Americans must account for, although each edict is English, who is superior to us by being the same. How does this work?
Many thoughts to honor and celebrate Independence Day.
It is difficult to figure how to do immigration in a positive manner, but as we’re finding with political discourse here, there is a long, complex discovery of what is “proper” and “right”, where and how we talk, (in political office and rallies) where we don’t (on their front porch trespassing, in Walmart) and why. Because if the whole thing breaks down, discourse, processes, traditions, as happens every 70 years or so, then no one’s safe anywhere, you and me both. If we keep the norms of civility, it can be fixed in whatever manner it can.
It’s similar with immigration. Countries have traditions based over 1,000 years or at least since Westphalia. They’ve evolved through innumerable challenges and have a lot of accrued intelligence. Nothing’s substantially changed in the last year or two to make us discard them completely, but simply adjust and progress as ever. At the moment there are borders worldwide, longstanding legal processes, and basically every nation on earth is open to migration by some means or another if you file the paperwork. The exact mix is something we all can advocate and affect following existing processes, which are surely pretty broken, mostly on purpose. That would be a positive manner to address the many issues in a productive way that does not topple governments and societies, creating even greater hardship than exists presently, because bad as things are, they can be made far, far worse, and not just inconvenience a few, but kill hundreds of thousands, children, you, your friends, me, everyone, if you move to civil war. Let’s agree that whatever our differences, that is counterproductive and profits only the rich and well-connected, and harms most the poor and vulnerable, who are the ones we claim to wish to save.
Nothing special, just a more pensive thought for a day here in an America that will spend tomorrow memorializing 8 years of grinding, pointless war brought on by 15 years of grinding, pointless oppression caused by spiraling taxation and an unjust surveillance state under the Writs of Assistance that culminated in an attempt to disarm the citizens at Lexington. Wouldn’t it have been cheaper and better to repair longstanding grievances and leave them alone? To not attempt the phony arrests and show trials of English writers, thinkers, and journalists? Did it work out for them? What was gained?
“…you have betrayed the express command of your king. Through your arrogance and stupidity, you’ve opened these peaceful realms and innocent lives to the horror and desolation of war! You are unworthy of these realms, you’re unworthy of your title, you’re unworthy… of the loved ones you have betrayed! I now take from you your power! I…cast you out!” –Odin, MCU
Is it a fake leak, a trial balloon? Denninger thinks so:
“It would be ridiculously funny if Trump deliberately “leaked” a fake draft of a bill, and got someone in the media to run with it. The latter part happened. I think the former might have.
Why?
The alleged draft is named “United States Fair And Reciprocal Tariff Act”.
Yeah, ok. Trump called a bill The FART Act.” http://market-ticker.org/akcs-www?post=233729
Sounds legit.
Roach decries, “Why won’t they listen to expert economists? When have we ever gotten anything wrong?”
Trump’s WTO is well-advertised if anybody bothers to listen. It has in fact been remarked that he is somewhat an expressive character. His argument is to have national trade relations, and therefore not global trade agreements. Why? Because if you’re in the WTO, like the PPT, you’re hog-tied because if you move, you hit both Vietnam and Malaysia, while your intent is only to adjust trade that’s gone astray in the Philippines. That’s it…or according to him anyway. And as an approach, that would be perfectly reasonable and how it’s been done for 1,000 years. But don’t count on anyone reporting it that way. Everything is required to be le plus ultra, TEOTWAWKI.
Will it work? Sure, but it’s a complicated mess that will take a long time. And certainly the WTO hasn’t been helping anyone, it’s what Bill signed in for China that was the starting gun for the complete collapse of American industry and 2/3 of America, including Walmart which under Sam Walton was responsibly trying to buy domestic. Personally, I have no preference, you could probably repair the WTO just as well — maybe leaking the credible threat of scrapping it helps get things done. I’m just commenting on the adolescent, apocalyptic reporting, where everything must be Jesus or Hitler.
Guess it’s been a while. It’s Dr. Jekyll is the good one. Mr. Hyde is the villain of no restraint.
That’s why we have wikipedia, to check these things now that all the copy editors have been fired. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strange_Case_of_Dr_Jekyll_and_Mr_Hyde
Or if you prefer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k7iaaCFgBHc
Thailand: good advertisement for lowering consumption and disposability.
