Stone Lodge
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“…doing so could contribute to his forthcoming begging campaign, but it could also backfire if taxpayers start asking whether it’s worth ponying up even more money…”
Taxpayers? When were any of the “taxpayers” ever asked whether we wanted to send the cocaine comedian even one dollar? When were we consulted on the manifestly predictable self-destructive sanctions? When has there been public debate and informed consent for the provocation of this war, or of any of the other illegal wars over the last 70 years? Or for funding the military-industrial complex to the tune of at least a trillion $/year?
Russia has done what she had to do. The SMO was a rational culmination to decades of salacious, flat-out evil actions by the likes of Kissinger, Cheney, Bolton & Pompeo, traitors and demons all. The Russian SMO is rational and has been waged as justly as any war can be. The next just and rational war the U.S. will fight will be within its own borders, among its own people. This is our trajectory, and the collapse of the U.S.G. is imminent. The mass formation psychosis gripping our nation and our government must and will be undone, and as our economy collapses, our energy grid winds down, and as we return – following much suffering – to a simpler way of life, the challenge for any remaining historians will be to attempt to explain the absurdities in which we are presently immersed.
Mr. Korybko, with much respect, this “taxpayer” has already rejected not simply our “support” for this banal evil, but ALL that our government does and is. (Not that they asked me.) I am not alone, and our numbers are growing rapidly. Watch for sparks, my friends.
I also heartily — and often — recommend not a song, but Mark Twain’s “War Prayer.” I won’t post the full text here, but if you haven’t read it, it is a powerful and cogent commentary on war, written in Twain’s (Clement’s) anguish against the Spanish-American War, but published only posthumously.
Love everyone’s contributions. This one’s more basic than most of the beautiful messages from Dylan, Country Joe, etal, but it got me questioning in the post-Vietnam early ’80s:
Black Sabbath
\\\
Generals gathered in their masses
Just like witches at black masses
Evil minds that plot destruction
Sorcerers of death’s construction
In the fields the bodies burning
As the war machine keeps turning
Death and hatred to mankind
Poisoning their brainwashed minds
Oh lord yeah!Politicians hide themselves away
They only started the war
Why should they go out to fight?
They leave that role to the poorTime will tell on their power minds
Making war just for fun
Treating people just like pawns in chess
Wait ’til their judgement day comes
Yeah!Now in darkness world stops turning
Ashes where the bodies burning
No more war pigs have the power
Hand of God has struck the hour
Day of judgement, God is calling
On their knees the war pig’s crawling
Begging mercy for their sins
Satan laughing spreads his wings
Oh lord yeah!Funny…I read both CJ’s piece and Pence’s remarks in seriatim yesterday, and was floored by the dichotomy. Had to tell my partner about it as soon as our unexpected (and mindlessly patriotic) house-guest turned in. I LOVE you posting this Raul! Thank you.
I, too, have stayed away from commenting on Brexit, mainly because I don’t live there (don’t want to live there) and I knew from the start it was going to be an enormously complex mess, and I have too many other things to claim my attention. I did, however, get into a bit of a verbal row with a UK anarchist who was aghast that the Leave position had prevailed, way back just after the vote occurred. I challenged her self-proclaimed anarchism if it did not celebrate de-centralization, devolution of the EU political structures. To her credit, that took her aback and she started turning over the matter from a different perspective.
But here is what puzzles me about the whole Brexit thing: What the hell have the government been DOING besides arguing back and forth about whether and when the UK should leave? Although I read about it far more than I would really want to, I don’t hear anyone asking HOW? What are the legal requirements that need to change or be modified? What customs provisions have to change? What structures do they need to set up to maintain international communication and cooperation? In other words, as far as I can tell, no one there is actually discussing HOW to exit the EU, merely prancing about and scoring cheap political shots at their counterparts whenever they can. Certainly the media have given me no conception of any sort of actual plan to effect the exit.
This whole sordid can of worms doesn’t have anything to do with democracy — at least not “democracy” as most people conceive of the term. If one understands that “democracy,” as in the rule of the “People,” only refers to the “People” defined by the ruling elites (as in revolutionary America, where the “People” did not include Natives, blacks, women and non-landholding white males for voting or representation purposes), then one can get closer to understanding what Brexit is all about. When you have both Merkel and Macron warning (last November) of “blinkered nationalism” (thus comparing nationalist citizens to livestock), trumpeting the inevitability of multi-lateralism and globalism, and you can see that Greek citizens are not “People” for the EU, then one can begin to grasp the motivations underlying Brexit.
But no one seems to even bother doing any work to make it happen. From my perspective across the Pond, that looks exactly like modern democracy, with a pretty little bow on the package.
Hi Raul. This morning I log on and see this piece by you, and it bemused me.
I once had a brother and an uncle argue, between themselves, as to whether I was conservative or liberal. As you can imagine, one of them was liberal and the other conservative (at least they thought so), and each thought I was the opposite of them – the liberal thought I was conservative, and vice-versa. They even placed a bet upon what they thought my answer would be when they put the question to me, which they did, and then “all bets were off.” Because I told them they were both wrong.
Although I was not anarchist at the time, I was heading in that direction. Requiring evidence over opinion, acceptance over judgment, fact over ideology, justice over oppression, community over profit – these disjunctive concepts cannot be reconciled by those conditioned by the MSM and its corporate overlords. Calling me (or you) conservative/liberal falls on the wrong side of that ledger because understanding cannot occur when you believe that you already know.
Although I do not comment often, I read your blog pretty much every day, and have for years. (I met Nicole several years ago, and all here applies to her too.) In fact, you are one of my first check-ins. I have never perceived you to be conservative or liberal, which is one reason why I continue to read your work. Your heart seems, to me, to be in the right place. Hence you cover the financial repression of neoliberalism, the destruction of our biosphere, and reject the patently false and ridiculous narratives regarding, for example, Russia-gate. That doesn’t make you a Trump supporter. It makes you considered and honest. There is so little of that these days.
On the evening of July 21, 2016, I lay in my sweltering unconditioned van, trying to rest before our cross-country, non-stop, 2800-mile drive home from Cleveland. NPR (National Propaganda Radio) carried Trump’s acceptance speech live, and I recall thinking, “Well, this should be interesting.” I was not there to support Trump (or anyone but the homeless we fed at the communitarian church that gave us a place to flop), but because we thought the convention might turn out to be as exciting as the 1968 Democratic convention in Chicago. We arrived to find, instead, 20,000 cops from the Secret Service down to city beat cops, and I took hundreds of photos of cops and more cops surrounded by people taking pictures of cops and more cops. By that time, the DNC’s corruption had been exposed, and I had enough information to make it apparent to me then that the U.S. political system would only continue to become more absurd. I was correct that hot night in Cleveland.
It has been a balm, since then, that other people – yourself and TAE included – have been steadily available to confirm that I am not the only one to perceive this farce for what it is. The criticisms are not about you; the criticisms are about the people making them. Stay true to what you do, keep doing your good work, and the false narratives will die the deaths they deserve, as it finally appears is happening with the Russian collusion narrative.
Peace. Out.
I found this article some hours after I posted my earlier comment:
“The lack of institutional framework is one of the things that sets the yellow vests apart from previous political movements and give them independence from any particular party, politician, or political leaning. That is one of their strengths… But it is also a major weakness, since the movement suffers from a lack of coherent message and leadership. …
… the yellow vest movement … demands have since grown to encompass all sorts of grievances against the government of president Emmanuel Macron… These factors have made it difficult for the government to engage in dialogue with the yellow vests.”
This is nonsense. What, have we completely lost all memory of the Occupy movement, not only in the U.S., but globally? As a participant in that movement, and as legal counsel for a (successful) federal lawsuit against state authorities seeking to silence the movement, I can tell you that the same criticisms were asserted ad nauseam against Occupy. “Your message isn’t coherent,” detractors whined. “Your leaders say different things,” they moaned. As many times as I encountered someone referring to me as a “leader,” I explained that they misunderstood “leadership” in a consensus-based association. I was no leader, but rather, one participant doing what I could to advance what the entire group had decided to do. We once went into a mediation conducted by a federal magistrate with our local quorum of 35 people. Those 35 souls, in concert, made far quicker and far more rational decisions than the two state “leaders” and their legal counsel, and while the mediation was ultimately unsuccessful due to the intransigence of the state, the federal declaratory judgment and permanent injunction achieved against the state vindicated the efficacy of the model and the importance of the method and message.
Occupy was heavily influenced, significantly constituted, and lent coherence by anarchist thought, participation and methodologies. That said, the majority of the membership I knew were not themselves anarchist. We met in general assembly with a Tea Party delegation, a conservative and dissident biker group, and many, many individuals of dichromatic (blue-red) vision, and reached substantial points of agreement regarding financial repression, governmental corruption and unaccountability, and corporate oligarchic criminality.
Alas, our grueling and rewarding occupation of public space, one of the world’s longest (11/5/11 – 6/8/12), gained us merely the sanction of the federal court that we had a right to say what we were in the way we sought to say it (encampment and public engagement), and said nothing of the message(s) we sought to convey. When French officials whine that it is “difficult for the government to engage in dialogue with the yellow vests,” their motives are transparently not for dialogue, but for submission. As with Occupy, they care not what the yellow vests have to say, for business will continue as usual for so long as it is permitted to survive. Sure, they may throw out a bone here or there (i.e., repeal of diesel taxes) to mitigate the backlash, but the machine will do everything in its power to crush substantive dissent of its central modus operandi: theft and destruction of the commons writ large.
The yellow vests are a reverberation, not a unique movement. The oligarchs are still in power, the people remain crushed and ignored, and this too will ultimately end. They will never listen, but I think we need to render it impossible for them to listen. The Bastille indeed.
Wow, Raul! A lot of stuff here this morning:
1. “U.S. officials said they have already made concessions, with the suspension of U.S.-South Korean joint military exercises. They also worry that an end-of-war declaration could weaken North Korea’s incentive for denuclearization, while raising questions about some 18,500 U.S. troops stationed in South Korea, a legacy of the Korean War.”
Since when does the U.S. need a declared war to invade/occupy/destabilize any country? The answer is, well, not since the Korean war. Trump’s efforts vis-a-vis NK have been consistently compromised and undermined by Pompeo and Bolton and Haley, as they have railroaded the administration into dangerous and disingenuous bellicosity toward Russia, Iran, Syria, et al. Which brings me to my next point…2. While the oddsmakers seem to like Pence as the “anonymous” author of the NYT op-ed, not too many people have settled on John Bolton, national security adviser, as the source. That neocon scumbag would be my guess as the most likely source. First, “he” was “appointed.” Second, he is a rabid, egomaniacal, megalomaniacal, neo-conservative and war-monger extraordinaire. He loved McCain, and he is certain that he is right in all facets of foreign policy. He hates Russia, he hates Iran, he hates arabs and muslims in general, and he loves a good killing field. He has access to Trump, and tight interworkings with the IC in Washington. It is just his type of self-congratulating sociopath that would post an anonymous op-ed claiming to be involved in the undermining of an elected leader while believing that the American public will welcome the news that, bad as the present government is, it is not the nominally elected government in charge, but rather a corporo-fascist cabal of unaccountable war criminals. IMHO, no matter how this ultimately plays out, it is a critical event at this moment in time.
Funny. Not that I would mind more Nicole Foss, but those accusing Raul of a pro-Trump tone are sounding far more like they have their own CTCSS code running on the sideband. The offset seems to be knee-jerk liberal, meaning, far too programmed by the MSM and the memes of FB and other echo chambers to see that Raul is addressing the principal facts and issues with — in this case — a predictive guess as to what may transpire, based on his astute observations over time.
It is ridiculous, as Caitlin Johnston recently observed re: Alex Jones, that in so much discourse we need to preface our discussions with “I don’t like/follow/believe so-and-so.” This is happening because of the severely deteriorated level of discourse focused, and based, upon facts and logic and truth. The compromised nature of our discourse is prevalent and self-evident in the vast slew of corporate media machines and the social media interface that ensures each supposition, each baseless accusation, each smear or libel or projection or lie is injected directly into the heads and psyches of those whose lives are plugged in and invested. It is Huxley’s soma and Orwell’s two minutes of hate, and it feels good!
Raul, keep up the great work.
One aspect of Trump that I have been interested to watch is his disestablishmentarianism. (First time I’ve used that in a sentence…) As a long-time anarchist, I have to admit my intrigue with disestablishing NATO, disestablishing numerous global structures, disestablishing the deep state structures. With those come other more deplorable disestablishments, such as environmental regulations, species protection, restrictions on heavy extractive industry, etc. But the de-centralization is necessary and inevitable, and I for one would like to see the ball get rolling.
“Zuckerberg wants to outsource many of the most sensitive political decisions, leaving fact-checking to media groups and geopolitics to think tanks. The more he succeeds, the fewer complications for Facebook’s expansion, the smaller its payroll, and the more plausible its positioning as a neutral platform.”
Handing the reins to the corporate media and governments doesn’t make FB a “neutral platform,” it makes it a TOOL for the self-same corporate media and governments. I seriously doubt Rand Paul or Tulsi Gabbard will be the members of the USG affecting FB’s content-removal decisions. Hiding behind bromides that “this is not First Amendment, but private company rights” is, as Caitlin Johnstone put it (whose piece you published yesterday Raul), simply a failure to recognize, or refusal to admit, the fusion between corporate and governmental power.
It is quite interesting, in both Dr. D’s post and the comments, how everyone understands that core-periphery concept in terms of the internal power structures in the U.S. I have often referred folks to the same concept in terms of global hegemonic power structures.
So, for example, most people I run into simply do not perceive or recognize the collapse presently underway, globally speaking. Empires collapse from the periphery first. Here in the U.S., we are at the center of empire, and so none of the constituents (Core, Periphery, plutocrats, elites, rednecks or cowboys) see the collapse, its nature and its extent. For some, such as both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump alike, their role demands that they think, that they act, that they BELIEVE in irrational ways. They must – are compelled to – see no link between impoverished refugees marching into the U.S., and the sanctioning of those folks’ societies so as to impoverish them further. The murder of 500,000 Yemeni civilians offers no glimpse of civilizational collapse here in the U.S.
This myopia is not organic. It is induced. It is endemic, and it is terminal.
“we do not refer to GuyMcP here in any way, ever. even that’s already way too much”
Perhaps I haven’t been as diligent about reading you as I thought. May I ask why?
Have you read Derrick Jensen, Raul? Your essay very much echoes his recent book, The Myth of Human Supremacy, particularly your astute observations of the Elon Musk stupidity. But even you, in my opinion, do not go far enough in describing where we presently are. There are a number of observers, scientists and analysts who now accept that we cannot recover, regardless of what we do. There are too many feedback loops already in play, and there are lag times between when we have created a fatal problem, and when we first perceive its effects. What we are experiencing now, in terms of climate change (particularly the Arctic sea ice extent), in terms of biodiversity collapse, et al, was “caused” 10 to 20 years ago. In the intervening 10-20 years, we have continued our exponential devastation, and so our extinction is already baked into the cake. Guy McPherson thinks, and I am persuaded he is correct, is that we likely only have about three years left, and that there will not be a human on the planet within ten years. This is something the Greenies will disparage reflexively, because their very subsidized existence is threatened by these truths. There is better data out there than what the WWF presents.
Offended, Raul? Not a bit. I say, it’s about damned time!
You are exactly correct, and the primary reason I’ve been watching the CON21 is to ascertain any new tricks the sociopaths and their thugs will be using to shut down any effective or genuine debate. All one need do, to know what CON21 is about, is to look at the corporate logos spread throughout like wallpaper, and the armed thugs who work on those corporations’ behalf to make sure the bleeding hearts don’t get too close or too noisy.
I have been an activist for years, and most of my friends are similarly activists, and we have protested local, state and national/international criminal stupidity for a long time. But many of us are very well aware that the intent of such protests cannot be to achieve “reform” or to alter the behavior of the sociopaths. All you accomplish by appealing to the criminals to change their ways is to legitimize their positions of power and authority.
As of June 01, 2015, we have “438 nuclear power plant units with an installed electric net capacity of about 379 GW are in operation and 67 plants with an installed capacity of 65 GW are in 16 countries under construction.” https://www.euronuclear.org/info/encyclopedia/n/nuclear-power-plant-world-wide.htm If humans had any chance to continue on this planet, along with all our four-legged, winged and finned friends, we should have begun the process of decommissioning those plants twenty years ago. But we didn’t, and as this collapse rolls forward, we won’t, and we won’t be able to, as the debt implosion curtails transportation, mining and manufacturing, as petroleum disappears, as our scientists and engineers fly to the four winds with their families or die or are imprisoned, they will all go critical, and that will be that.
The ONLY thing individuals can do, for all of us, is to resist, fight, and break the machine everywhere we can. Protesting is (usually) not resisting, and it is (usually) not fighting. It is demonstrating who is on top, and who is not.
I understand your hesitation, your concern your readership might be offended. I run into that all the time among activists. Sometimes this allows me to educate them, and sometimes I just need to sympathize with them and let them believe they are making a difference.
Ultimately, it will all be in vain, but it is the moral thing to do: Break the machine.
As I read this essay, I wondered how you, Raul, can possibly maintain your optimism, knowing what you know. In this respect, I agree with Diablo and Ceteris that you are thinking with your heart. What I do NOT agree with them about is that this is “stupid” or in any way “unwise”; it is, rather, simply an impulse and plea for humane action. But I am pretty sure that you do not hold any entrenched expectations that this approach will manifest in Europe, or anywhere else, going forward.
Diablo’s reaction to what he sees as inimical to state cohesion and order is natural, statist, and doomed. Raul’s humane treatment won’t alter the ultimate course of events, and may even accelerate it (which I understand to be Diablo’s point), but it is sure a lot more moral and sustaining than the “violent force” arrayed at the gates, and such moral action carries its own grace.
Ultimately, homo sapiens has overshot the capacity of its environment, and the laws of thermodynamics will not be denied. The “refugee crisis” (as if the U.S. hasn’t been dealing with that for decades, for the same basic reasons) is simply a manifestation of the dislocations we must expect and will see everywhere. Resource wars, starvation, sectarian violence, pestilence, lack of clean water, degrading arable lands, devolving productive abilities — all of these factors have local effects, and global impacts. Fleeing any one or more of these merely brings the afflicted into conflict with others struggling with the same or other such factors. It won’t stop, and national boundaries won’t stop the dislocations, nor will our pockets of humanity and compassion.
But Raul is right. Acting with humanity and compassion is the right thing to do. It will probably not alter the final steady state, but it will be far more fulfilling to go down that way than to die with hatred and fear burning in our breasts.
I’m not sure what y’all are looking for, in terms of “leading indicators.” But if the BDI gives you a snapshot NOW of how many ships are sitting in dock without cargoes, how is that not helpful? What is it you want? A yellow brick road? A big red button that says “PUSH NOW!”?
Look, my suggestion, since you are concerned about this, is to look up the stats on letters of credit (LOCs). That should give you some forward guidance, though I’m not sure of that. I’m not sure where those play into the various volatility indices, but I’m pretty sure they do. If folks are edgy about accepting credit, then they’re buying insurance, right?
If I sound dismissive, I apologize for any bruised feelings. I really find all this market-watching shite abrasive. I mean, if you’re investing, then your invested. And you’re screwed. You will never unravel how the market can turn in your favor and make you fabulously rich. If you are intertwined with the markets when the markets collapse, then good speed to you; you’ll need it. Maybe you’ll get lucky. Probably not.
Get simple. I watch the markets just so I know whether it’s a good time to buy heating oil for my home. (It is, btw.) The markets cannot hurt me.
Can they hurt you?
Re: OPEC Assumes Oil Price Will Recover Gradually to $80 in 2020 & Defaults Mount in Beleaguered US Energy Industry — I wonder what OPEC would think of a prognostication that oil would be virtually priceless by 2020? The second of these two articles is the road sign pointing to such a prediction, IMO. As the zombie debt-fueled shale oil “miracle” unwinds, along with the almost-as-burdened oil majors industry, this current and ongoing deflation is killing their ability to produce in the future, and by the time 2020 rolls around (by which time the GFC will have transitioned into the Great Global Civilization Collapse (GGCC)), OPEC’s projections of $80 oil will be laughable. But like you said, Raul: What else are they going to say?
Re: Bitcoin Is Officially a Commodity — The CFTC is the carpet that oversight gets swept under, as with its “oversight” of precious metal “markets” manipulations. Bitcoin’s allure was its separation from regulatory control, and thus its immunity from manipulation by JPM, Citi, HSBC, and DB. That could hardly be countenanced, and so voila! It is now a “commodity”, and there ya go — the banking biggies now have their “regulator” in play. Now the Bitcoin exchanges will have to “follow[] the same rules applicable to all participants in the commodity derivatives markets.” We all know how well that has worked for the silver and gold paper market. (Fair notice: I have never owned or dealt in Bitcoin, and had avoided the crypto-currency for, among other things, the reason that I felt it would eventually be descended upon by the banking biggies and their lapdogs.)
Note to Raul: I’ve posted comments a couple times now, and they have not appeared on the site. I am wondering if that is because I am in unknowing violation of some TOU, or a technical glitch of some kind?
Edit: I see this one (obviously) posted just fine…
“And these refugees, asylum seekers and illegal immigrants are not going to stop coming to Europe. For they are being driven across the Med by wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen, by the horrific conditions in Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia and Sudan, by the Islamist terrorism of the Mideast and the abject poverty of the sub-Sahara.”
Pat Buchanan’s glaring neo-con myopia (or dishonesty/propaganda) is his failure to recognize (or admit) that those “wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Yemen” are ours. We caused them, we sustain them, and we are morally, completely responsible for them. We export death and destruction to those places, and they, in turn, export refugees and survivors back to those places where the bombs aren’t falling. You would think that someone who trumpets laissez faire would accept and celebrate this “free market price discovery.”
Buchanan is a tool. Thanks, Raul, for the Wednesday dark humor.
Re: • Your No. 1 End-Of-The-World Investing Strategy (Paul B. Farrell)
“Farrell misses out on the no. 1: people and communities.”
Farrell misses out on far more than that. It looks like his TEOTWAWKI strategy involves “investing” in the very murderous corporations (eg., Monsanto, GE) which have brought us to this point of collapse in the first place. A despicable article.
