VietnamVet
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Politicians must believe the propaganda to sell themselves and receive the money afterwards on the dresser. The last vestiges serving the people is gone. There are two factions of oligarchs (nationalists/globalists) fighting over the loot. The people are like Jimmy Carter. Western ideology has become so centered on greed and tribalism that you must leave the church (institutions) that you belonged to all your life to stay true to your innate moral values. All we can do is duck for cover and pray we are not stomped flat in the maelstrom. The one thing I know is if I have a chance to vote in the 2020 election I cannot vote for Joe Biden due his complicity in restarting the Cold War that I served in and which killed and maimed people I knew.
Unfortunately, the Empire and ruling elite have become detached from reality. Boeing was going full throttle transferring corporate wealth to its executives and shareholders by cost cutting until the two crashes. This will likely stop production of the 737 Max next week. The subscript of the debacle is that outsourcing expertise makes fixing the defective flight control system and getting global regulatory approval too much to accomplish in the short term. Boeing will need to be bailed out if the global economy hasn’t crashed first from the Trade Wars or a War with Iran. Likewise, Democrats and the corporate media scapegoat Russia and push for the removal of Donald Trump but are so incompetent that they didn’t know that their white knight was senile. Boris Johnson will get his Brexit for Halloween. The Atlantic Alliance will cease to exist as the United Kingdom splits into its component states; City of London, England, and Scotland. Ireland becomes one nation in the EU unless the Troubles restart. Piracy off of Gibraltar can only be explained by intelligence operators out of control – government ceasing to work. Greed rules supreme.
This is quite the weekend. The Iranian Ambassador to the UK blames the Deep State for escalating tensions. The Steele Dossier that tried to derail Donald Trump’s Campaign and then led to the intelligence community coup attempt against the President was authored by the British. British Spooks reportedly were in country in the failed attempt to bring down Bashar al-Assad. The Salisbury England poisonings were used heat up the Cold War but the two accused Russians did not have time to travel across town to drop the wrapped poisoned perfume into the dumpster that killed the one woman fatality. Off of Gibraltar UK forces seized an Iranian tanker. A hard Brexit on Halloween appears certain unless there is another act of war by the UK or USA, which Iran will respond in kind. This will spiral into a world war. With the Generals gone from the White House, acting ideologues in charge, peace and prosperity has never been so far away.
What is frightening is that the opposition political parties in the UK and USA have lost touch with reality.
Mark Shields, Democrat pundit, on Friday’s NewsHour: “Donald Trump is presiding over the greatest economy, in employment terms, in the history of any American under the age of 68. You could say, 50 years ago, it was, you know, almost as good. We were at war then. This is a peacetime economy. It’s a remarkable thing.”
The depth of the despair in Mid-America is invisible. The Washington Post documents that the US government enabled the Opioid Crisis to make money for manufacturers and distributors. The endless wars disappeared. They are now corporate profit centers. Multinational Corporations control Washington DC, London and the Media. Democracy died.
The last time propaganda was so separated from reality like this was when the Soviet Union fell.
The West is teetering on the edge of a cliff. Cost cutting, the forever wars and the transfer of the world’s wealth to a few thousand oligarchs must come to an end. The Chinese, Russian and Iranian Axis is a global alternative to the Atlantic Alliance. Climate Change is real. Stored solar energy in fossil fuels is finite. The GOP remained in power by hijacking populism, electing Donald Trump, and withstanding an incompetent “five-eyes” counter coup. He defines “Ugly American”. Hate, propaganda and fear works with America’s European ethnic tribe which is under stress: dying early, losing the rat race. For Democrats the only alternative to chaos is the restoration of law and order, equality, and rebuilding the middle class; the very last thing their corporate donors want. Facing reality is hard. The good times are over. It is time for a new generation. Last month the globe was 10 minutes away from economic collapse if not a world war too.
Memory is a strange thing. The new Jeff Epstein indictment brings us right back to the plea deal in 2008. This was at the end of Bush II Administration. The last one to jail a corporate CEO, Jeff Skilling. Jeff Epstein was also jailed but with the sweetest deal possible. The 2008 economic crisis was bad enough that a 47 year old black globalist defeated a Vietnam War veteran, John McCain. My recollection back then was that the news media wasn’t all propaganda, GWOT was ongoing but the Cold War was a thing of the past, no tariff wars, and Washington DC didn’t flood. Yet, Donald Trump could still be re-elected next year if he avoids a world war and plays his tribe’s anthem.
“Unemployment has fallen about three full points since 2014 but inflation is no higher today than it was five years ago”. In other words; the number of workers and their income are both too low to cause wage inflation. This is the best of years only if you are a global billionaire. The number of which has doubled from 1,124 to 2,208 in the past decade.
July 4th is a good day to declare independence from global oligarchs and the “five-eyes” intelligence community. Add, nationalist oligarchs, Donald Trump, and politicians, Boris Johnson, and we have a three-ring circus. None give a damn for the little people. Just getting richer from raking in flight capital from spreading chaos. Once upon a time, Democracy, the Fourth Estate and the Rule of Law provided common sense rules to rein in aristocracy’s excesses, no more. There is no finer example today than the United Kingdom. It is about to lose Northern Ireland and Scotland. Its armed forces seized a Panamanian flagged oil tanker which is either an act of war or piracy. Disappearing Sergei and Yulia Skripal. Arming Jihadists. Using dead children in false flag poison gas attacks. Bombing Syria, Iraq and Libya. Flooding Europe with millions of refugees.
Before it is too late, now, is the time to restore government by and for the people.
The separation of global corporations from reality has become crazy funny. Nike pulls their July 4th shoes because they have a Betsy Ross flag on the heel that celebrates the 18th century founding of a slave nation according to social media. The Dollar Bill is next.
Julian Castro says his family never spoke Spanish while growing up because of oppression. Second generation of immigrants like my Mom who had to learn English in First Grade were maltreated. Meanwhile, the Elite ignore the homeless, the sick, and debt slaves who are abused today. All to avoid the truth that life expectancy is decreasing, get votes and get richer.
Boeing retired its engineers and outsourced design, coding and manufacturing to increase profits. Only after the second crash did overseas aviation regulators recognize that the 737 Max’s computer trim control system was flight critical. Boeing didn’t acknowledge it had problem after killing 346 people; let alone, know how the fix it. The identification of a second software flaw by FAA pilots will delay recertification at least into next year. Military Contractors like Boeing are at the top of the pyramid. They have bought the politicians below to keep the endless wars going and the money rolling in. Similarly, the fossil fuel industry’s profits come from supplying energy that harms humans and degrades the environment from its extraction, shipping and use. Only Tulsi Gabbard is an anti-war candidate. Not Kamala Harris for whom open borders and racial politics are a means to gain more wealth for her family. Donald Trump is neutering the EPA to increase corporate exploitation.
Facing facts: No one leaves home unless forced. The best birth control program is the education of women. Men need jobs and a purpose in life. The only fix is the restoration of democracy and the redistribution of wealth.
Boeing pretty much encapsulates what went wrong with the financialization and globalization of the West that has been spurred on by exploding inequality. Workers and the environment are eliminated from economic decisions. With global corporations and trade pacts superior to nation states; a multitude of anomalies are now baked into human society.
When people don’t matter there is no incentive to design and build safe airplanes. That costs money. Workplaces become toxic. The life expectancy in the UK and USA declines. The US dollar becomes a military weapon. Monopolies buy up innovation. Breaking the law is punished by fines which are added to the cost of doing business, not jail time. The environment (that has no concern about the fate of the human beings) bites back. Families migrate to survive. Nationalist and globalist oligarchs go to war over the spoils. Last week the global economy was 10 minutes away from collapse by an American air attack on Iran.
Dr. D and tabarnick;
The American Civil War never ended. The Great Compromise put a lid on it. Remnants were visible in LZ English 50 years ago; officers, poor blacks, rednecks, and urban middle class kids; armed, self-segregated, and trying not to piss each other off. Globalists, Neo-Cons and the Haute Bourgeoisie don’t get it. Rising inequality and the destruction of the middle class makes another revolution inevitable unless wealth is redistributed. Triggers will be food shortages and migration caused by climate change and the endless wars or energy shortages/economic collapse from a Hot War with Iran/Russia/China (that is if a nuclear war is somehow avoided).
It is no coincidence Donald Trump is President and Boris Johnson will be PM. They are like James Buchanan, the 15th President; unable to see or address the issues tearing their country apart that got them elected in the first place.
At the end of the 20th century Francis Fukuyama declared the end of history with the fall of the Soviet Union. He was right but for the wrong reasons. Democracy, government by and for the people, died. Plutocrats won. They’ve privatized education and purchased western governments. The teaching of history ended. Consolidated media dispenses propaganda 24/7. Elections are manipulated to win the vote.
“Concentration Camp” is another example of identity politics and the divergence of meanings until groups no longer converse with each other. Barbed wire and machine guns made internment camps possible. The British first used them in 1899 to imprison Boer families in their victory over the Afrikaner Republics. The Nazis used “Konzentrationslagers” from 1933 to house political (asocial) prisoners, forced laborers, and the Final Solution once it was given the go ahead. It is an apt term for the Detention Centers in the USA. If Mike Pompeo and John Bolton are ever successful in starting the Iranian War (they tried last week) and if a nuclear war is avoided; I have no doubt immigrant Muslims in America will be detained in the centers in addition to Central American families fleeing oppression and climate change. American Dominionists aren’t the least bit concerned about the families’ fate. They are splitting families apart right now in order to discourage migration.
The MH-17 (Boeing 777) shoot down and investigation are integral to Joe Biden’s legacy. He flew to Kiev and green-lighted Ukraine’s invasion of the rebel Donbass region in Russia’s borderland which reignited the Cold War 2.0. The investigation was compromised from the start. Its intent was to support war spending and destabilize Russia not the truth. Similarly, a recent Atlantic article stated that the corrupt Malaysian government was incapable of investigating the fate of MH-370 (Boeing 777) that disappeared into southern Indian Ocean. The two 737 MAX crashes and Boeing’s cover up of the causes along with the FAA’s incompetence indicates a pattern. A Multi-national corporation bought corrupt governments in order to increase defense spending, avoid inconvenient truths, and keep their CEOs out of jail.
The restart of the Cold War 2.0 was the reason why China broke the ring of corruption and grounded the 737 Max after the second crash. With Iran’s shot down today of the Navy RQ-4N Spy Drone in the Straits of Hormuz, unless Donald Trump backs down, the Iranian War is about to start which will likely turn the Cold War into World War III.
Brexit and the 737 Max; there is a correlation. It is not a coincidence that the United Kingdom is about to split apart. Boeing is incapable of designing a safe aircraft. Shareholder profit and CEO bonuses drive its corporate decisions. De-regulation assured that there was no government oversight to catch the flight critical part failure and save 346 human lives.
Western oligarchs cut taxes and privatized government functions. As a result there has been an astonishing transfer of wealth to the rich and corresponding decline in life expectancy of Americans and Englanders. Plutocrats don’t give a damn for anyone else. They are sick addicts to their greed.
“The top 1% of U.S. households are holding a record $303.9 billion of cash, a quantum leap from the under $15 billion they held just before the financial crisis.” The earth is dying. What is destroyed is not repaired. With conscientious comes the need to have a purpose in life. Corporate propaganda like that of the Soviet Union’s is a constant repetition of lies. A glimpse of hope, the truth and a song of a movement seeped through the fakery to me yesterday;
Hurray For The Riff Raff – Pa’lante
“And do my time, and be something
Well I just wanna prove my worth —
On the planet Earth, and be, something”“To all who had to hide, I say, iPa’lante!
To all who lost their pride, I say, iPa’lante!
To all who had to survive, I say, ¡Pa’lante!”To my brothers, and my sisters, I say, ¡Pa’lante!”
Bring it On
Democrats have a basic problem. They cannot admit to themselves that they are handmaidens to the rich who are facilitating the transfer of wealth from America’s lower classes to a very few very rich families. They did it by outsourcing jobs to China and shutting down factories, tax cuts, looking the other way as illegal immigrants and refugees replaced working Americans in slaughter houses, not jailing connected criminals, and giving military contractors what they wanted; a restart of the Cold War with Russia. This was all in concert with corporate media propaganda and the failure of western democracies.
There is just one war party; but it is split into two factions; one crazy and the other in denial. Since facts are in short supply and working Americans are stressed out from lost jobs and losing power; whole sections of America, especially in the South, are regressing back into their tribes and imposing their religious beliefs on everyone else. Theocrat VP Mike Pence is one heartbeat away. The similar reverting back to their fundamental tribal religion did not turn out well for Sunnis in Iraq and Syria. The American Taliban should take heed. The American Constitution and the rule of law is all that protects us from chaos.
When the Elite’s only goal is to make as much money as possible, lower taxes and privatize government; Boris Johnson, Donald Trump, 737 Max and corporate media propaganda are the end results. To survive Russia, China and Iran must co-operate and challenge the American hegemon who is negotiation incapable. If there was a quick software solution, Boeing would have released it by now. The only way out is the truth, facts and costly fixes but instead the West is bombarded by corporate kumbaya propaganda. The truth is avoided at the cost of human lives.
You can’t talk about clash of civilizations or religion without identity politics being invoked and being called a racist. Yet, this is the essence of Mike Pence’s speech. The perpetual wars since Yugoslavia have been based on NATO stoking ethnic hatreds in order for military corporations to make a profit and to allow western oligarchs access to new resources. The USA is going to spend 75 million dollars with NGOs to “End the presence of Iranian forces and proxies in Syria.” These are the Shiite militias supported by fellow Shiites in Iran who are defending their families in Iraq and Syria against radicalized Sunnis who were thrown out of power by America’s invasion of Iraq. The VP is correct. The US Army will be fighting in the Western Hemisphere soon. But he can’t see the parallels with the Middle East. The same radicalization (the return to their tribal roots) is happening to the American working class who have been thrown out of work by the bi-coastal globalists. Unless the evangelical 1/3 start talking to the modernized 1/3 of the Americans, a Civil War is inevitable due the coming resource and food shortages plus the plagues due to mono-culture industrial agriculture. The Trump Administration denies the very reason that so many kids are crossing the Southern border; the drought in the highlands of Central America. Families can no longer survive there. Panama has cut the cargo weight of ships traversing the Canal due to the shortage of water that fills the locks and lakes. If these existential threats can’t be addressed and mitigated, there is no hope.
The war party duopoly is off their rockers. I am so old I remember in the Third Grade how deeply unpopular the Korean War was. WWII Vets called up to fight another war. Harry Truman like LBJ could not run for a second term because of war. Today is worse. The wars are endless. This is a multi-polar world now. The schoolyard bully has been challenged. He thinks he must come out from his corner fighting. Sooner or later, someone will say or do the wrong thing with no thought of the consequences. But he is too old, corrupt, fat, demented and rusty to win the war. America’s healthy population and industrial might are gone. A Third World War will take civilization with it. Even if avoided, the Mid-West flooding that is preventing corn planting and China’s African Swine Fever epidemic are symptoms of the coming storms, sea level rise and plagues that will engulf the earth. Cooperation is the only way humans can survive the future.
Boeing has got itself between a rock and a hard place; all to increase shareholder value and CEO bonuses. The fundamental problem is the Max is not the NG. MCAS is needed to prevent a stall at higher angle of attack on takeoff after retracting the flaps but there are only two sensors and if one goes bad on the operating flight control system, all hell breaks loose. Both cockpit pilots have to have on hands training together to instinctively decide what is wrong and work together to save the aircraft. But American Airlines won’t have Max Flight Simulators till the end of the year. If FAA recertifies the airplane to fly commercially before then, this indicates that the flow of money to the wealthy is more important than public safety.
Google has banned Huawei. This kills their smartphone market in the West. China plus Canadian and EU regulatory officials have every reason to delay certification and overflight privileges until 737 Max pilots are trained to safely fly the aircraft. Donald Trump’s economic wars have just become red hot.
Daniel Elwell, the Acting Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) at hearing yesterday together with Republican Congressmen blame foreign pilots for the two Boeing 737 Max crashes. American Exceptionalism is for real. “That America may in anyway be responsible for its own fate is of course unthinkable”. The “Ancien Régime” lives on. “Let them eat cake.” Completely ignoring the risks of being hung from a lamppost or the bright flash of light of a nuclear bomb.
Every post today highlights that the continued transfer of wealth to the rich has reached the point of no return. The incompetence is so total that society is falling apart. In each instance there is a scapegoat; Russia, Islamic Republic of Iran, China, Blacks, the Obese, Poor, or Addicts. Blaming the victim covers up the real cause, corporate criminals stealing everyone else’s money because they can. What Boeing did was simple. The CEOs increased shareholder value by $235 billion and killed 346 people as a result. No different than the over 500,000 people killed in the Global War on Terror in order to make a profit on the $6 trillion spent.
This divorce from reality assures the next Crash will be civilization itself. Ask yourself how did true believers become the Vice President and Secretary of State or a psychopath the National Security Advisor. The majority of Americans are under stress just like the Sunnis in the Levant who were kicked out of power by the Iraq invasion. Both societies retreated back into their tribal beliefs. The consequences for both are horrific. Except, Civil Wars with air power destroying cities wholesale so far has been limited in Serbia and Ukraine in the West.
All nation states conduct espionage. It is in their best interest to know what other states are planning. I have no doubt that they also conduct influence campaigns to their benefit. The USA acknowledged meddling in Russia in the 1996 to get Boris Yeltsin elected President. Nowadays the US conducts hybrid regime change campaigns. After success in Ukraine and Libya, failures in Syria and Venezuela, so far. The only source of the Russian collusion claim is the discredited Steele dodgy Dossier. The only claim that the DNC was hacked is CrowdStrike an anti-Russian cyber-protection company. The basic premise for the appointment of a special prosecutor was never verified. The Muller Report is vaporware. This is total incompetence. The apparatchik have to believe their own propaganda. The divorce from reality never ends well. The Empire is stomping around blind, risking everything to remain a hegemon, when they have already lost. This is now a multi-polar world that is on the brink of a civilization ending catastrophe.
Yes. Sorry. I wish I could write clearly like you. Just like LBJ and Vietnam or Jimmy Carter and the Shah, if a war with Iran breaks out this summer; the gasoline lines from the shortage of oil, will assure that Donald Trump is not a second term President. But unlike LBJ, Donald Trump desperately needs a second term to avoid indictment. He will be the Republican candidate. On the other hand, Plutocrats will do everything in their power to prevent a Bernie Sanders/Tulsi Gabbard ticket. They will suffer the same fate as the late Eugene McCarthy. The Democrats will nominate a corporate sponsored candidate after a brokered convention. “Money talks.” Joe Biden and Kamala Harris top that list right now. The Democrats will win the election against a weakened ranting Donald Trump if Americans are still at war with Iranians who are supported by the Chinese and Russians, if the gasoline lines persist, and if the corruption remains undeniable.
The Democrats have an albatross around their neck. They restarted the Cold War solely to keep their donors in the money. Damn the risks of a nuclear war. Corporate politicians will scapegoat Russia continuously through their dementia, decline and death. The defense industry’s corruption has gotten so bad they can’t design and build airplanes that fly safely or do their designated missions. 346 airline passengers needlessly died because of government deregulation. Donald Trump has a clear path to re-election except for Bibi Netanyahu, Mike Pompeo and John Bolton. The summer war with Iran will close the Straits of Hormuz and crash the global economy. A year of endless gasoline lines will elect the Defense Community’s Biden/Harris ticket who will oversee the last gasps of the Empire and humans on earth unless there is a restoration of peace and community.
I was awakened today by the radio broadcasting that Russia meddling had elected Donald Trump President. This won’t go away. It is gospel with no supporting facts. Julian Assange will be collateral damage. He likely will disappear like Sergi and Yulia Skripal. The fact is that the Obama Administration was spectacularly incompetent. African drone strikes, and the Libya, Ukraine and Syria Wars continue today and will continue for no good reason other than war profits until forced to stop. The FBI and British Intelligence surveilled, and their informants tried to trap the Trump campaign and smeared it, but he was still elected President. The soft coup against the dimmest bulb to reside in the White House failed. The Oligarchs’ Handmaidens cannot face reality. 90% of Americans are being screwed by the Plutocrats who are hoovering up the world’s wealth with the assistance of the credentialed 10% and contaminating the earth doing it. The tipping point is now. War and climate change are forcing millions to migrate. They are at the Southern Borders. There are only two paths ahead; autocracy or restoration of democracy and the rule of law. If France is an example, this won’t be peaceful.
There was a soft coup to against Donald Trump from the moment it became possible that he could win the Presidency. It was based solely on the dodgy Steele Dossier and the CrowdStrike report that the DNC was hacked by the Russians. No factual support for these claims has ever been offered even by the Muller Report. It did state that Michael Cohen was never in Prague. The credentialled 10% can’t face the truth that there is an ongoing fight between global and nationalist oligarchs for control of the flow of money or that the underlying economic exploitation and the loss of trust by the 90% is what elected Donald Trump in the first place. The Democrats will huff and puff but the underlying truths won’t be addressed by the Biden/Buttigieg ticket. A Sanders/Gabbard ticket would address these issues but oligarchs of all strains will contest their election. The reelection of Donald Trump will likely ignite the nationalist/globalist conflicts into civil wars across the West. Today feels like the run up to the American Civil War and World War I for good reason.
This is the end stage of the America’s Empire. Today’s Apparatchik are as divorced from reality as the Soviet Union’s. I was told second hand that the 1991 fall was due to Russians realizing that State propaganda was lies. Julian Assange is persecuted because he is a truth teller exposing the West’s lies and corruption. The Democrats will never forgive him for unmasking them. The Oligarchs and their Handmaidens will hide him away in the Gulag. The Show Trials will be for Hollywood Stars bribing college admissions for their kids.
The tragedy is that under stress humans revert to ancient tribal beliefs. The neo-lib-cons have become so proficient at fanning ethnic hatreds in the forever wars that the embers of the coming conflagration are already smoldering in the West. The only way to avoid it is restoration of government by and for the people.
But the Plutocratic Hoarders will never change. They are clueless. What revolts of 1789 and 1917? This is the 21st century! The meritocracy disrupts markets. Billions are being spent on the development of AI controlled Autonomous Vehicles that will make the top 1% rich by not paying living wages to human drivers. They act as if there is no downside to making quick deregulated profits until 737 Max airliners start falling out of the sky or Twenty-somethings realize they have nothing left to lose.
Exactly. To fix the problem, Boeing must add a fly-by-wire flight control system with multiple sensors and at least triple redundancy. Test and train the pilots. Only the Seattle Times reported this. This takes time and money. If the 737 Max is re-certified without these minimum safety features, then corporate monied interests have won once again. The lowlife coach passengers be damn. The corruption is so deep that ethics is archaic. Governments incompetent;
“Crashing jets. Dangerous strollers. Scary pork”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/crashing-jets-dangerous-strollers-scary-pork-thats-a-world-without-regulators/2019/04/04/f479a528-56ff-11e9-8ef3-fbd41a2ce4d5_story.html?utm_term=.48e6ae6429c9It is about the Benjamins, baby. Donald Trump sells. But more importantly he, Teresa May and Emmanuel Macron are corporate toadies. They do what the plutocrats want: cut taxes, deregulate, and privatize. Their governments are incompetent. They don’t give a damn for the Little People. Forever wars are started that can’t be won. Ethnic conflicts are promoted to dismember nation states. The Deep State’s sole purpose is to make war profits. Donald Trump indicated that he would break their rice bowls. Also, he is a populist not a globalist. So, they went after him with the British dodgy dossier and failed spectacularly. The western Ship of State is control by the same people who market the 737 Max. Unless control is returned to the people, the system will keep repeatedly pointing the nose at the ground till we crash.
I was incredibly lucky to be born in 1943 in the USA. Life has been abundant and peaceful except for one year. I survived 37 years of a two-hour commute back and forth. I accepted it to get by. Now that this is over, life is rather unpleasant with old age infirmities and the Democrats restarting the Cold War all over again. Don’t apologize for surviving. The problem is human greed and our hatred of others – the original sins. The human tragedy is that to survive we must face the problems that come from living on a finite planet in the middle of nowhere and rationally plan for the future. Mitigate the evils in ourselves. Can we?
China’s grounding of the 737 Max and all the other nations following them plus Ethiopia giving the flight recorders to France’s BEA for analysis are nails on the coffin. Civilization runs on trust. The global economic hegemon is broken. No one believes the USA anymore. The UK is an incompetent laughing stock. Inequality, force and extortion only work until someone stands up to it. Russia did in Syria. Now China. It’s over.
The incompetence of the UK government is astonishing. Try to unravel this. How did a bin scavenger come upon a cellophane wrapped unopened boxed spray bottle of perfume laced with a highly toxic nerve agent? He gave it to his girlfriend who later sprayed it on her wrist and became the only fatality in the Salisbury Poisoning Incident? Likewise, the British prepared the Steele Dossier that trashed Donald Trump to no effect. And, commenced the exit of the EU unprepared. American and French politicians should take heed but won’t. Western democracies and corporate media in their headlong rush to enrich the wealthy at the expense of the working middle class have lost all common sense and their legitimacy.
Sea level rise of 6.6 to 8.9 ft this century is “physically plausible”. The train tunnels under the Hudson River damaged by Hurricane Sandy have not been repaired. Money to build new tunnels so the century old ones can be made safe is stalled. Likewise, the damage from Hurricanes Harvey, Maria and Michael remains unfixed. This is why there is total silence on the consequences of climate change. The costs of the inevitable damage are so enormous that it is cheaper to combat climate change. But the New Green Deal would take oversight and the world’s resources and labor used constructively. The opposite of the greed, conflict and chaos that rules the world today.
The one clear thing is that the world is in turmoil and run by political idiots. These posts are about as close to the truth as we are can get through the overwhelming media propaganda. The world has gone into to debt. China used debt to modernize. The West generated trillions of digital Dollars and Euros so the rich got richer. America’s poor die earlier with a $15,000 debt. The West is left with only war and exploitation. This will destroy the earth in the end. The only way out is cooperation, peace and a debt write off.
Times change but beliefs remain constant. The little people face a battery of howitzers if they contest the legal system not Oligarchs. Plutocrats have a free ride. The last corporate chief sent to jail was Jeff Skilling of Enron in 2006. No one went to jail for the Great Recession of 2008 although millions of Americans lost their homes due to corporate thievery. Total silence from the Media. Yellow Vests are proof that history rhymes at least in France. A third civil war in mid-America seems to be in the works. The ruling Western neo-liberal ideology is spreading chaos overseas in order to make a buck. But now it has come home with the government shutdown and Brexit. This is not caused by Russia or China who along with Iran and Venezuela are trying to survive the Western onslaught in a nuclear age.
There is a strong resemblance between Southern Hot Heads of 1850 and today’s global elite. The economies that they support, plantation slavery and neoliberalism (which is destroying the working middle class) are so similar that proponents must deny reality. The American Empire, to keep control, is pushing chaos through the Middle East, across Africa and into the Balkans. President Trump thinks that Congressional VIPs can announce they are flying commercial into Kabul without any consequences. Haw! This and Brexit document that the President Trump and Prime Minister May are delusional as are their predecessors who brought this about.
This is an excellent article. Part of the problem is that China wants to keep this quiet and is by nature autocratic. But, also, western financiers don’t want us to know how badly they sold out the West to personally get richer. China’s economy is now larger than the rest of Asia combined which includes Japan, South Korea and Taiwan. China has built 16,000 operational miles of high-speed rail. The USA nothing. China consumer economy is larger than America’s. China is doing something right. General Secretary Xi says China is the only sovereign nation left in the world. Western leaders are incompetent. Donald Trump, Theresa May and Emmanuel Macron are pushing chaos. Angel Merkel is fading away after crippling the EU. This is happening for the simple reason that the global economy and its institutions have overridden western nation states; cutting taxes, regulations and laws. Promoting profitable never-ending wars.
Yesterday, there was a discussion here of the MH-17 shoot down. This was the first case of the fake news breaking into my consciousness. National statements broadcast without any factual backing at all. We, the people, played as marks. The Elite’s forever wars spread into Ukraine. The Cold War that I served in restarted. Donald Trump became the “Other” who drives media ratings. I can’t say it any better than Bill Arkin; “NBC just began emulating the national security state itself – busy and profitable. No wars won but the ball is kept in play.”
The Elephant in the room is never discussed. There is a non-democratic global economic system on top of Nation States that has the goal of reducing government regulation and cutting taxes. Media Moguls are part and parcel of this global system. The sole purpose of an oligarch’s life is to get richer. They profit from chaos, war, exploitation and human addictions. Der Spiegel’s reporters and editors are cogs. When the Senior Senator from Oregon blames Russia for using Facebook to undermine American Democracy, this is cog TDS. The fringe NY Boss Presidential acting out threatens the global system. The paid cogs are unaware of the wheel that they keep spinning. One day the wheels will fall off, like they have done repeatedly throughout history, and will destroy the aristocrat’s wealth. Except rarely, when the Elite realize that the rule of law and providing life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness for the people is in their own best interests. This requires the restoration of the superiority of democratic nation states over the plutocracy.
Facts can’t be hidden despite the best attempt of the media moguls. The USA, France and the United Kingdom are led by second rate incompetents; each pushing the West towards collapse. Failure is built into rule by corrupt oligarchs. With the rise of neoliberalism, building infrastructure was privatized. Users pay the costs to global financiers. In Northern Virginia the tolls range up to $47 for a one way commute in rush hour. Drivers who can’t afford this, adjusted their work hours and jammed up free side roads. Loudoun County Supervisor; “This tolling system has just made driving impossible and not affordable.” This is identical to picking fights with everyone else by the military and the legal/finance system to extort money. It is not sustainable. Either government by and for the people is restored or a Western Middle Class revolt is inevitable.
I remember being shocked seeing Baltimore’s row housing from the Metroliner. They are now being torn down for their old growth lumber. The houses were built this way so the workers could walk to the factories. Electric trams started suburbanization. The Yellow Vest provincials in Paris are protesting the loss of these factories and being forced to pay the costs for peak oil and climate change. We are rapidity being forced backwards to the world like it was in 1914. Except, the belligerents now have over 4000 operational nuclear weapons. Also, the top 20% that still can afford suburbia will never give up their mammoth SUVs.
Government today is just as incompetent as then.
