Joe Clarkson
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Sad to see that the Automatic Earth has followed Orlov deep into tinfoil-hat territory. How desperate for page-views can you be? On the other hand, you’ll probably be pleased to know that this will be my last.
Of course Woolsey chuckled. But the commentary on his laughter misses the point. Of course the CIA meddles in other countries and of course the FSB meddles in other counties. In either case, the intelligence agencies are participating in “the great game”. It’s to be expected.
But the concern for Americans should be whether their fellow citizens are assisting the Russians, just as the concern for Russia would be if any of their citizens are working with the CIA. In either case the name for such assistance is treason, which is not a laughing matter.
I hope that if indeed there are traitors to be found, Mueller will find them. That’s his job and I hope he does it well.
but you just wait till Spanish tanks appear on Barcelona’s Ramblas
But the whole idea of a European Union is to prevent such a thing; even more to prevent German tanks from appearing on the Champs Elysees. So far so good.
And all of your arguments against a pan-European state were used by the South prior to the US civil war. Do you think that any US State should be allowed to secede at will? Or perhaps even a county from a State? Or any individual from a county?
In the end, individual sovereignty can only be assured by a global state. Until one appears, it’s nation against nation, with the powerful nations running roughshod over the less powerful, which seems fine if one is a citizen of a powerful nation, but what about those left in the less powerful. Are they not equally human?
A strong case can be made for the elimination of all national states and the borders they defend. Let everyone in the world go wherever they will, treat them all equally and with respect, and see how that works out. I think it would be far easier than you make it sound. A first stepping stone would be a United States of Europe, progressing to a United States of Gaia and then to a Democratic Republic of our Earth. Just think of the resources saved by not having any national defense budgets anywhere.
The mystery was so profound that The New York Times also explored it days later: “German Election Mystery: Why No Russian Meddling?”
Since we all know that The New York Times is fake news, and since the Times reported no Russian meddling in the German election, it therefore follows that the Russians did a lot of meddling in the election. Either that, or the Times is trustworthy only when it publishes stories that The Nation agrees with.
The liberal/progressive/left are … the people who sat on their hands for 16 years while Washington destroyed in whole or part seven countries.
How fascinating that Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove are now part of the “liberal/progressive/left”. In the last 16 years the Democrats controlled the congress and the white house for only two years, so even if one equates the Democratic party with the “liberal/progressive/left”, they hardly constitute a juggernaut of political power. Perhaps Roberts thinks any established political party member, Republican or Democrat, is part of the “liberal/progressive/left”. If so, he using words well outside their common meaning.
I wonder how any business can get around the fact that on every Federal Reserve Note (cash) it says that “this note is legal tender for all debts public and private”. Refusing to accept legal tender should negate the debt.
From The Telegraph:
Dr John Knapton, emeritus professor of structural engineering at Newcastle University, said although there was ‘no guarantee’ that the building would not fall down, it was ‘unlikely.’
“The Twin Towers collapsed because the aircraft fuel ignited the contents of the building and it was the burning of the contents of the building which caused the steel columns to lose stiffness. UK buildings are much more robust, or tolerant of losing structural capacity than the Twin Towers.”
Great job of organizing posts by subject! I notice that most of Nicole’s posts are from earlier years. Will she be returning to posting on a regular basis anytime soon?
It makes no sense, there is no logic.
Of course there is. Trump had repeatedly said that the US had no interest in regime change in Syria. That policy, together with Assad’s recent military victories (Russian and Iranian victories) gave Assad the impression he could do anything he wanted with no consequences.
On the other hand, if one believes that everything that happens is due to machinations by the CIA and NSA, then everything is a false flag event. Perhaps Trump had the CIA release the chemical weapons so that Trump could pretend to be upset and make a dramatic response (after warning his buddies in the Kremlin) and thereby deflect attention from his Russia problems.
Or perhaps the deep state was feeling put out by their friction with the US president and faked all the photos of the so-called attack so that Trump would be upset and make a response that would ruin his covert relationship with Russia and put the deep state back in his good graces.
Or perhaps Trump was pissed that when he met with Tulsi Gabbard she wouldn’t let him “grab her pussy” so he launched the cruise missiles into Assad’s bailiwick just to get back at Tulsi and her buddy Bashir.
Or perhaps, since everything in the main stream media is fake news, neither the chemical attack nor the cruise missile response actually happened and all the media made it up just to make Trump look like a foolish flip-flopper.
The possibilities are endless. How are we ever to find out the truth of the matter?
Aloha Birdshak,
Since the calories per pound of chicken are just about equal to calories per pound of bread, a fair exchange might be for equal weights of either. But a pound of bread has a lot more labor in it than a pound of undressed chicken. On the other hand, it takes a lot of work to propagate chickens too. I think your trade is just about right, since a dressed fat hen should weigh about three or four pounds. If I were the chicken farmer, I might ask for five loaves, easily settle for four and grudgingly accept three.
Now if you can only get governments at all levels to take their taxes in either bread or chickens you will have accomplished something wonderful.
Wait a minute! Do you mean to say that Trump won’t “make America great again” after all?
Well of course not, and neither can anyone else. As minimal growth turns to permanent recession, the big issue is how well we will handle the collapse of the global market economy and the dire repercussions that will entail.
Will declining resources be distributed fairly? Will we try to grab the resources of other countries to try and stave off the decline of our country? What will we do with an ever-increasing number of unemployed people? How will we return as many people as possible to the task of producing their own food after food riots become commonplace? How are we going to keep almost everyone on earth from starving to death?
I would like to think that Trump is grappling with these important questions right now, but I doubt that even their possibility has once entered his thoughts. If they ever do, he’ll probably think that, like climate change, the very concept of limits to growth must be a Chinese hoax.
The conventional wisdom is that Trump is a reflection of economic malaise. For those, like me, who fully expect the global market economy to collapse sooner rather than later, Trump might just be a harbinger of the collapse to come.
But then again, he might just be a symptom of the racism and sexism of a vast swath of white America. For some reason, I would prefer that he be a sign of economic stress rather than just a symptom of the moral failings at the heart of American society.
Either way, Trump’s ascension is an ominous omen. My strategy, even though I am a US citizen, is to stay as far away from his influence as possible and prepare for collapse. It’s a strategy that can’t hurt no matter what happens.
From Davidson’s article…
<i>Instead of blaming Trump’s rise on racism or xenophobia, blame it on those who never saw this coming and still don’t understand why so many Americans would rather have Donald Trump in the White House than suffer the rule of their elites.</i>
Yep, Americans just can’t stand the “rule of their elites”. Smart and articulate men and women have no business thinking they are good enough to manage the governance of the US. Let’s blow the whole thing up and let the chips fall where they may. Things can’t get any worse for middle class white folk, so let Trump do his damnedest to upset the apple cart. So there!
Davidson is right about one thing. I never saw it coming. I always had confidence that the American voter could be counted on to sort the wheat from the chaff and somehow keep the county on an even keel. My bad!
I was in Aleppo in the 1970s and concur that it was a beautiful city. It’s a tragedy that it has been destroyed.
But not a single US bomb has fallen on Aleppo, as compared with thousands of Syrian and Russian bombs, yet somehow the destruction of the city is Hillary Clinton’s fault? Blame the US for invading Iraq in 2003 or even Afghanistan in 2001 (all very pre-Obama), or even Libya, but don’t blame the US for the destruction of Aleppo.
And put the blame for the millions of Syrian refugees where it truly belongs, on the regime of Assad and his allies. Many of them fled his violence well before the US became involved in Syria at all. The Civil War started in 2011 and the first US military involvement in supplying rebels with weapons wasn’t until 2013, by which time there were already 1.5 million Syrian refugees, some of whom had already made their way to Europe. First US airstrikes in the country weren’t until late 2014, were approved by Congress (including the Republican dominated House), and those strikes were against ISIL.
Remember the grief Obama got when he failed to take dramatic action after Assad used chemical weapons on his own countrymen in 2013? No one gives Obama any credit for arranging, with the help of Russia, for getting 1,300 tons of chemical weapons out of Syria without military intervention, even though many were calling for a US invasion. How easy it is for you to blame the US for all the deaths in Syria, when in reality the US has helped save thousands of lives there.
Tulsi Gabbard is a Democrat. Can we now please finally have a serious conversation about what the US has done to the Middle East/Northern Africa region?
Tulsi Gabbard in my elected representative. I voted for Tulsi in November. I will do my utmost to see that this term is her last. If I thought she really had any idea what was happening in Syria, I would call her a traitor.
Tulsi doesn’t have a clue about what is going on in Syria, not only because her tour of the country was organized, supervised and funded by the Assad regime, but because she is assuming that Syria is in the same situation as Iraq (where she actually has some experience).
Syria is not Iraq. The US did not invade Syria, depose Assad and occupy the country. The US did not organize the massive demonstrations in Daraa and other Syrian cities in 2011 that Assad chose to counter with devastating force and then to blame Israel for all casualties. The US didn’t drive millions of Syrians across the borders of Turkey, Lebanon and Jordon. All that happened before the US became involved in Syria at all.
I know these facts will not matter to many of your readers, but there is far too much broad-brush blaming of the US for every conflict in the middle east. Our conduct in Iraq was stupid and shameful. Our failure to hold back the Saudis in Yemen is more of the same. Any US participation in deposing Qaddafi was certainly counterproductive at the very least.
But the US did not become involved in Syria until it became clear that Assad was determined to use unlimited force on civilians to maintain his rule of the country. Assad had called for Iran’s proxy in the area (Hezbollah) to assist his Alawite minority in maintaining control. Without them and the Russians, Assad would have been gone years ago. I’m not saying that if the Sunni majority had won the civil war, Syria would be a peaceful paradise, but Gabbard’s belief that the US was behind all the violence in Syria is ridiculous.
The situation in Syria is a mess, but if Gabbard thinks that talking to Syrians that had been hand-picked by the Assad regime is ‘proof’ that the US is arming ISIS and that terrorists only exist in Syria because of the US, she is too gullible to be in Congress.
Last two paragraphs got cut off….
The Trump-led stampede to repeal the Affordable Care Act is such a mindless attack on the provision of health care, that it is hard to determine who he is fronting for. It’s still a real mystery to me. Perhaps others can tell me what program there is that is far better than single-payer or the ACA. Perhaps when Le Pen takes office she will find out what it is from Trump and immediately start dismantling La Sécurité Sociale.
All-in-all, I am still confused as to why people like you, Martenson and Greer, people who see the big picture and know how powerless any American president is to avert what’s coming, can work up such enthusiasm for a “wake-up call”. Wake up and do what?
Mr Meijer, you said,
The role of Trump, I think, in America, must be that of a wake-up call.
OK, I think Americans are paying attention, with more than half thinking they are still having an unending, waking nightmare and the other almost-half waiting expectantly for something good to happen. So, what’s going to happen sir, and why will it be any more likely to stave off the limits to growth than what has been happening for the last 50 years?
Since there is no good answer to that question, another few are pertinent. Will the Trump “populist” movement and those similar forces gathering steam in Europe ensure that, as our global market economy continues its sputtering, all people will get a more equitable share of its declining output?
Will Trump, for example, institute massive tax increases on the rich and invest that revenue in projects that benefit poor and middle class Americans?
Will he divert large amounts of money away from defense and spend the revenue on education and job training for those that have lost their old job? Or, heaven forbid, government as the employer of last resort?
Will Trump institute an “America Last” policy and ensure that our gluttony is mitigated by sending yuge amounts of aid to the poor in developing countries around the world?
Since Trump himself has promised that he will not do any such egalitarian things, rather the reverse, why should anyone think that he is anything more than a front for the same old oligarchy-elite that wants tax cuts for themselves and evisceration of safety nets for the poor (in partial compensation for lost government revenue).
Trump says he will provide ever better health care for everyone, but rather than asking Congress to provide Medicare for all, which would actually accomplish that goal, he immediately starts dismantling our existing health care system and offers nothing to replace it with. Is that the kind to activity that has the interests of “the masses” at heart?
danielm said,
The wealthy and powerful whether globalist or nationalist are preparing.
If only! The wealthy could prepare more properly than more ordinary folk because they have the money to buy land. But true preparation means far more than a lavish bunker, it requires creating a complete, virtually stand alone system of food production and allocation.
Dr Diablo mentioned the market gardens around Paris, but they were found around all cities all over the world. They were the last vestige of pre-industrial agriculture, which supported people in various forms for millennia.
If rich folk wanted to get serious about prepping, they could purchase large tracts of agricultural land, populate it with peasant farmers and craft-center villages and then live off the income of dues from their tenants, paid entirely in the form of food, firewood and labor.
Rich people could reestablish pre-industrial agriculture in conjuction with one of the social structures that system requires. They could, for example, once again become feudal lords. That is certainly one logical option for surviving the end of fossil fuels, far better than most people could manage without support from government (as if that would ever happen).
I seriously hope to see reports in the press of billionaires purchasing whole counties, removing all modern infrastructure except roads and a few village structures and then populating the land with large numbers of agrarian peasants on small-holdings of a few hectares each. That kind of realistic response would be wonderful and keep many alive who would otherwise perish, but I’m not holding my breath.
The overarching paradigm in Crooke’s analysis of our predicament is correct, but I am dubious about the Hills group computation of the energy loss side of their EROI computation. It is certainly true that the EROI of the marginal barrel produced has been dropping, but much of the oil used by the global economy comes from legacy fields for which the EROI is virtually unchanged since decades ago when they were first tapped.
However, like rust, depletion never sleeps. Non-renewable fossil fuels underpin the global market economy, particularly in the transportation sector, where oil powers virtually all freight transport. As the EROI of oil declines, so will the ability to extract resources and transport finished products. Energy from oil will eventually decline faster than we can extract it. If we are not at that point now, we will be soon.
So, growth is stalling and will soon turn to de-growth. If politics is in turmoil now, just think what it will be like when economic recession/depression becomes a continuous fact of economic life. Eventually people will realize that growth will never come back, the last vestiges of confidence in the economy will vaporize and we will experience the mother of all financial crises, followed shortly thereafter by economic collapse.
Crooke is aware of this impending disaster, but then segues into a bizarre conclusion that populism offers the “hope” of “regime change”. The status quo may be clueless and hidebound, but its real problem is that it is suffocating under the implacable force of thermodynamic limits. No amount of populism or regime change can alter that constraint. Populism, whether from Sanders, Trump, or anyone else, is therefore a false hope, if only for the simple reason that when it comes to avoiding the limits to growth, there is no hope.
However, when a new attempt to start WWIII with Russia occurs every day and twice on Sunday — which will inevitably make all Europe the nuclear battlefield
That statement’s well into tinfoil hat territory, Dr. Diablo. There are problems with the functioning of the EU and certainly with the Euro, but to assert that anyone is attempting to start WW3 is way over the top.
WW3 will probably start by accident. Someone will make a serious mistake about another party’s intentions. Reaction and counter reaction will escalate until missiles fly.
The specific event that will start it will be something like the annexation of Crimea or the Donbass, war spreading from the Balkans or a series of assassinations. But the underlying cause will be egregious misjudgment about what constitutes a real existential threat or what level of provocation can be gotten away with.
I think Putin has pretty good judgement. He’s gotten away with some serious provocations without coming close to starting WW3, but I worry that he will misjudge what Russia is free to do with Trump in office (especially if there really is any kompromat). Say what you want about Obama, but WW3 didn’t start on his watch.
I also worry what kind of lashing out Trump might do if he has a real falling out with Putin. Trump’s not a forgive-and-forget kind of guy.
The last people to worry about are the oligarchs at Davos. They may wallow in their rentier riches, but the very last thing they want is WW3 destroying their outrageous comforts.
<i>Meanwhile, watching the spectacle unfold from a distance, we find it impossible not to be highly amused</i>
WW1, WW2, the Iron Curtain and the Cold War are all evidence of how dramatic and destructive widespread war (and its aftermath) has been on the European continent. There are many reasons why no further major conflicts have happened since WW2, including the Marshall Plan, the EEZ, the EU and NATO. Another good reason has been North Atlantic economic integration and trade. But by far the most important reason has been the rock-solid commitment of the US to European security. Pissing all over US and European mutual security commitments is hardly “amusing”, nor can European leaders simply “fade away” without real danger to everyone’s security.
Even if another European war is avoided, as the world economy falls apart, Trump’s relationships with other European leaders must play an important part in mitigating the worst aspects of economic decline. I see all this squabbling contributing to a sense of great uncertainty and unease, not only for ordinary people like myself, but for the national leaders we depend on to keep conflict at bay. In war and peace, transatlantic cooperation is absolutely essential. Does Trump actually believe that? That the question can even be legitimately asked is definitely not “amusing”.
So I find it hard to believe that anyone, except perhaps Putin, could find the deliberate ridicule of the underpinnings of European security as “amusing”. And the fawning over Putin, and Russia, who have little interest in cooperating with anyone in Europe outside of natural resource sales, are nothing to smile about either.
Dr. Diablo might want to inquire with older eastern Europeans about the source of most of the, as he describes it, “cruel oppression” in their lives. No wonder European leaders worry that Trump will follow Putin’s lead. They remember what the Russians did not so very long ago.
Dr. Diablo may be too young to know how anxiety inducing it can be to have massively armed nuclear powers jockeying for control of Europe, but those of us who remember “duck and cover” will always prefer that cooler heads prevail. That Trump has so far demonstrated little interest in keeping his cool should be terrifying rather than “amusing”. Like Queen Victoria might say, “I am not amused”. Nor should anyone be.
@John Day
Here’s an article that has a main source who is someone very familiar with Trump’s personality. You may find it interesting.
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2016/07/25/donald-trumps-ghostwriter-tells-all
Excellent rant, Diablo.
Makes one wonder why so many think that Trump matters at all. Too many (who should know better) see him as a potent protector of the oppressed working classes striking back at economic elites and the deep state. Even if he actually had working class interests at heart, he won’t be able to delay economic collapse for even a second. Or be able to mitigate the horrific after-effects at all. His whole impotent presidency is likely to be a not-so-soothing distraction from reality, until reality bites back hard.
Trump is a narcissist though. If collapse does happen on his watch, he’ll know for sure it couldn’t possibly be his fault. It’s delightfully ironic that, in such an event, he’ll be right, perhaps for the first time.
Trump and Brexit are necessary, perhaps even long overdue, in order to break the illusion that things could go on as they were.
Somehow I don’t see promising folks that we can “Make America Great Again” as “breaking the illusion”. Trump caters to the anger engendered by a stagnant economy, but all of his solutions are based on illusion. His entire life is a world of illusion, but it’s one he is determined to live in. How can pulling the wool over his own and other people’s eyes lead the “big wake-up” you seem to think he represents?
Our economic systems have failed, and they can’t be repaired.
Absolutely!!! But if so, why are Trump or Brexit good for anything? I fail to see either Trump or Brexit solving the economic stagnation we’re experiencing or the collapse we’ll see soon enough. Judging from your comments, I doubt you do either.
When bad times start getting worse rapidly, we will need leaders who can defuse tensions and create mechanisms for keeping as many people alive as possible. Trump will only want to blame others for economic collapse rather than squarely face our predicament. If he doesn’t understand reality, how will he deal with it? Because he’s “so smart”?
Rather than breaking through to face facts, Trump is likely to make things worse as he flounders around, railing against China, Mexico, Muslims or anyone else he can blame for all our unsolvable economic problems. We may have been sleep-walking into collapse under previous administrations, but rather than a healthy “wake-up”, Trump is likely to be America’s worst nightmare.
Dr. Diablo,
Here’s a good take on the whole issue of how we decide where veracity comes from. The topic is climate change, but the article is applicable to just about everything.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2016/12/28/14074214/climate-denialism-social
Dr. Diablo,
Agreed, there is a lot of disinformation out there, some of it even from official sources. How to sort the wheat from the chaff? I think the winnowing process is breaking down even more than usual and appearance of constant demands for “proof” is just evidence of the breakdown.
What seems to be happening is that confirmation bias has become the biggest factor in what most commentators call “truth” and how they assess information presented in media. Why do people believe the Russia Times over the NY Times, or Donald Trump over Barack Obama, or vice versa? Now it looks like the main reason is political preference.
If so, all attempts to discern reality through presentation of evidence and reasoned persuasion are doomed to fail. That’s too bad; one shouldn’t be gullible and believe everything, but total cynicism allows one to believe nothing but well established preconceptions, certainly nothing new. “Prove it” is just the cynic’s way of announcing that no evidence from the other side will be believed.
I think an adult observer has to read many opinions and assertions from many sources, make a best-case judgement about evidence, accuracy and authority and come to a tentative decision about what is happening. If you don’t believe some authority, don’t believe them. But don’t ask for a “proof”, which can never be provided to your satisfaction, and then tout lack of “proof” as evidence of falsity. “Prove it” is a schoolyard taunt that should be left in middle school.
You want proof regarding Russian hacking?
Absent Putin fessin’ up on TV, I wonder if there is any “proof” that would convince those who “ridicule” every announcement of the US government? Then again, even a Putin confession could be by a body double in a “false flag” event arranged and scripted by the CIA. You know, the way they faked the Apollo trips to the moon to enhance US prestige.
I guess that we have reached the point where there is no proof of anything said by anyone. Perhaps all government officials, scientists, journalists and commentators will now be required to add a “should be read as fiction” disclaimer to all their published work.
I hear they have already put that disclaimer on the front page of the Federal Register. I can’t prove it, but if you do happen to see a copy without the disclaimer, it’s a counterfeit published by the Russians.
Regarding the UN resolution on Israeli settlements: It would be quite the allegation to be proud of, if the US actually originated it. We should all be proud of anyone of influence who makes a stand for basic justice and human rights. It’s a good thing that the US shows a little concern for the fate of millions of Palestinians. There’s no need to hide it.
The Israeli “solution” looks to be a gradual expulsion of Palestinians from their lands and homes to be concentrated in urban ghettos, preferably somewhere else in the world. This has been their MO from 1948, since a Jewish state must always keep non-Jews in the minority. A secular democracy must be avoided at all costs. The West bank and Gaza can become formally joined with Israel only after the Palestinians are somehow “removed”.
I doubt that the Israelis can be stopped, but someone should try. If Obama was involved in the UN resolution, more power to him. He should have been more assertive years ago.
One would have to begin living as indigenous peoples have lived, hunting, fishing and gathering with the support of a tribe of others, using no industrial products such as a rifle.
Very true, but even that is impossible, even if people wanted to do so. Not only is there virtually no wild commons left, nor legal structure that would allow living off the land, but even if there were, can you imagine 7.5 billion people out hunting and gathering all over the earth?
So we will just live in the world we were born into and carry on until our population is reduced greatly by resource depletion, forces of nature and war. The few remaining human survivors will then be ‘free’ to do what they must to continue their lives. Other species will experience the benefit of having fewer of us around. Life will go on.
<i>The incumbent economic and political systems, as well as their proponents and cheerleaders, are on the way out. They have all failed miserably.</i>
They may be on their way out, but they have not “failed miserably”.
When was the last time a big chunk of the population in Europe or the Americas died of famine. Even Greece, basket case though it is, has a death rate lower than Germany.
And when was the last world war. We have somehow avoided widespread nuclear incineration since the beginning of the Cold War. That ought to count for something.
The incumbent political and economic systems have done OK for the last 70 years. They will probably fail to keep things together in the future, but then nobody will be able to do any better, populist or otherwise. Certainly not Trump, Grillo, or Le Pen.
Anyone in power, including Trump, will be lucky to avoid making things worse as they watch civilization crumble around them. It won’t be too long before these years will be remembered as a golden age, when ordinary people lived like royalty, if not gods.
It’s an open question as to whether any other system would have been able to do any better for the last few decades. It’s now far to late to find out.
How much of the $5 million so far was furnished by Soros?
Why should anyone care who pays for a manual ballot count? If it was indeed Soros, we should thank him for his civic interest, even if it is unlikely to result in a changed result.
Perhaps more people should donate private money for public service regardless of their politics. Did you vet every contribution to your Greece fund for correct political attitude before accepting it?
<i>Does anyone want to argue such a clean up was not needed?</i>
You have always argued that a real “clean up” is not possible, that there is no way that the growth of the global market economy will continue forever, unconstrained by resource depletion and financial crises.
I agree with your argument. Since Trump won’t really be able to do anything productive (nor would have Clinton), why do we need to be “flexible”. Is it just to make him feel presidential? Is it to hold hands with his supporters and sing kumbayah in perfect harmony? Sorry, but catering to Trump is a waste of time and energy. I’ll save what little extra I have (after my horticultural exertions) for expressions of contempt, not only for Trump but the people who have made us listen to him try to put a complete sentence together for the next four years.
If Trump is such a great “persuader”, why didn’t he simply persuade everyone, including the angry, that America was never going to be great again, that the era of growth was over, and that everyone had better get used to having less stuff to buy at Walmart and less money to buy it with? He didn’t because you can’t be persuasive about something you don’t believe or understand.
I agree with you that resource depletion is gradually calling a halt to the end of the growth of the global market economy, but I have grave doubts that Trump understands any of that. I take him at his word, which in the light of the reality we are facing, is complete nonsense. He won’t build the wall. He won’t provide high paying manufacturing jobs as America once again becomes the export powerhouse it was in the ’50s and ’60s. He won’t cut taxes dramatically and watch a giant growth spurt balance the budget. Trump doesn’t have a clue.
You seem to think (as I do too) that since the world economy must re-localize and shrink, bringing all production closer to the people who use it, that Trump’s anti-trade tirades will somehow make it happen. What will make it happen is dire necessity, the inevitable result of decreasing resources per capita and the resulting inability to keep a hyper-complex, world-wide economy functioning.
I agree that Trump tapped into a great deal of anger. Unfortunately, he will not be able to do anything to assuage that anger; it will only grow and grow as things fall apart. When he runs for re-election, he will have even more anger to pander to and he will be good at finding some group to blame for all of it.
Using anger as part of one’s “sales pitch” is extremely risky. It is almost impossible to turn off anger once it passes a certain threshold. It may be that that threshold has been passed. Rather than being a cause for hope that something good will come out of America’s angry reaction to the decline we face, Trump’s election is a harbinger of a dangerous and fear-inducing future to come.
Trump should kick out the Soros NGOs the same way Putin did.
And what laws have “Soros NGOs” broken that they can be “kicked out” of the United States? Putin may believe himself the sole arbiter of legal justice in Russia, but why should you believe that Trump need not follow US law?
Why all the sturm und drang from Zero Hedge about the Clinton Foundation? It’s just another charity from which no Clinton receives any money and which does good work all over the world. The wild eyed commentors at Zero Hedge should try reading the Foundation’s IRS 990 or the PWC Consolidated Financial Statements (all available on line). There is no smoking gun. What’s next from Zero Hedge; dissing the Red Cross, MSF,?
As far as I am concerned, the more Saudi money that goes to western charities the better. There are far worse things they could spend our oil payment money on than charity.
P.S. Mr Meijer, I can’t believe you endorsed this ZH post by giving it further exposure.
And what’s with your statement, “A Hillary presidency would damage the reputation of America’s political system too severely.”? Too severely for what? The reputation of America’s political system can hardly go lower than it is now and the next US president will have no effect on anything of importance except possible nuclear war. I’m no fan of Clinton, but I certainly trust her more in that regard than Trump.
There are more important things going on than the US presidential election (much less the Clinton Foundation). Please cover those.
Japan is leading the rest of the OECD into their demographic future, so it is important to keep in mind a few pertinent facts. Japan’s working age population has been declining steadily since 1990, absolute population levels declining since 2011, and yet real GDP per capita (even with far fewer workers) has been drifting up continuously. In short, the average Japanese has it good. I don’t know how long Japan can keep it going like this, but if the rest of the developed world follows in their footsteps they will be lucky.
In the Howard Hollem photo of George Lane, April 1942, shown at the beginning of this post, he is painting one of a number of identical machinery products of the De Land industrial pool. Despite much looking around, I can’t find out what he is painting. Does anyone know?
Mr Meijer,
Neither Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan nor Libya were being bombed in 2001, therefore everyone was as safe as possible that year, right?
Sarcasm aside, how about a more nuanced approach to terrorism other than “blame the victims”. There is no good and simple approach; certainly “send money, receive peace” is not one.
Sometimes, when terrorism is state-sponsored, bombing helps. Consider the Balkans for example, or perhaps the Gulf war when Iraq “terrorized” Kuwait. And do you seriously think that if we had quietly left Bin Laden and the Taliban alone in Afghanistan after 9/11, Al Qaeda would have attempted no more attacks, that the US and Europe would have been just as safe?
Other times military intervention can be counterproductive. Vietnam, Iraq and Libya are prime examples of such foolishness. US drone strikes are so information-opaque that it is hard to know about them. Someone is a terrorist, but is it the drone striker or the struck?
Sometimes terrorism arises out of purely political or religious motivation, absent any recent violence at all and even in the face of general economic prosperity. See the Battle of Algiers movie for a horrifying account of purely political terrorist activity. Or consider the motivation(s) for all the terrorist bombs set by the IRA. Who is to be blamed for all the terrorism in the Philippines and Indonesia? Could the Moro Liberation Front be “bought off” by development aid?
It’s not always easy to know the best response to terrorism, or even to know the difference between a “terrorist” and a “freedom fighter”. Which label would you give to the Irgun? Which label to George Washington?
I think your commentary today is an actual example of a “stupid non-discussion”. Please think more deeply about this issue.
With the collapse of the supply chains facilitated by the global market economy, far more important issues than basic monetary income will present themselves. Foremost among them, food production and distribution. The most optimistic “basic income” for the economy to come will be sacks of grain or potatoes handed out to the unemployed (virtually everyone) at famine relief centers.
