The other night, I saw for the first time a very eye-opening exposition on the criminal profiteering that has taken place pursuant to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. (to the left is a 4 minute excerpt - below I've linked the full monty) If you had any prior doubts about the evils of warsocialism, this movie will completely put those doubts to rest.
Many groups are working on the problem of sustainability. I'm an engineer so I look at sustainability as an engineering problem. First, it would NOT look like Brundtland's meaningless, "feel good" definition. Ultimately, sustainability would require limits on human mobility, reproduction, and consumption.
For many years, thousands of members on my email lists have investigated all, or almost all, disciplines and historical examples of sustainability that others have suggested. With a couple of irrelevant exceptions (e.g., a religious sect that died out) not one example of an intentionally-sustainable (engineer's definition) society could be found.
The central problem that planet Earth faces today is NOT a problem of "running out of energy," or "overfishing," or "the wrong kind of farming," or "the depletion of aquifers," or "too much CO2 in the atmosphere," or [fill in the blanks]...
The problem that threatens to exterminate most higher forms of life on Earth — and soon — is the problem of "human behavior." Therefore, if one is searching for "solutions," one must look closely at what one sees in the mirror every morning. That's the central problem on planet Earth. It lives with all of us. WE ARE THE PROBLEM.
The problem of sustainability can be neatly divided into two sub-problems: 1) An engineering problem. 2) A political problem. [1]
The engineering problem
Even though the engineering problem is gigantic, its solution is fairly straightforward. We need so much of this type of food here, this much of that type of vaccine there, water can't be pumped from an aquifer any faster than that, wastes can't be discharged any faster than this, fishing can't exceed… And so on. Moreover, the problem must be approached globally due to the way our ecosystems are interconnected. Although the problem is immense, I think we could do it.
The political problem
A solution to the political problem of sustainability does not presently exist. Moreover, if we can't solve the politics of sustainability, then nothing else matters. That's Liebig's limiter: politics. To emphasize the point: if we can't solve the political problem, then more efficient PV panels, wind turbines, etc., won't help — and may make the die-off even worse.
Politics is where "evolutionary psychology" (EP) comes in. If a solution to the politics of sustainability can be found, it will be found by those who study human behavior via the scientific method. [2]
EP is a true science based on Neo-Darwinism, [3] which is the name of the modern theory of evolution, and it is the only scientific theory which explains how we became human.
EP attempts to explain mental and psychological traits — such as memory, perception or language — as adaptations, that is, as the functional products of natural selection or sexual selection. Adaptationist thinking about physiological mechanisms, such as the heart, lungs, and immune system, is common in evolutionary biology. Evolutionary psychology applies the same thinking to psychology. [4]
EP argues that our brains come from the factory with hundreds of built-in programs structured to solve prehistoric environmental problems. Throughout life, especially before age ~ 25, these built-in programs are updated by interaction with a person's environment and respond to stimuli from the environment, or from other parts of the body itself, to produce our behavior. In theory, human behavior can be explained by reflex-like brain algorithms.
EP aims to understand how and why our brains make the decisions that they do. EP is a true science unlike the "politics-in-disguise" disciplines of economics and sociology. [5] Therefore, EP represents the possibility of finding a humane solution for our present crisis while economics and sociology represent dead ends (literally.)
To reiterate: WE ARE THE PROBLEM. More energy, less fishing, less CO2, etc., won't solve the problem. Two methods exist to change human behavior: 1) Force. 2) Persuasion.
I think that finding a humane solution for our present crisis is incredibly important. That's why I have dedicated the last fifteen-or-so years of my life to it. The alternative is horrible. No solution yet, but perhaps tomorrow...
Warsocialism | In The Absence of the Sacred, advertising executive and economist Jerry Mander uncovers the true nature of corporations:
The corporation is not as subject to human control as most people believe it is; rather, it is an autonomous technical structure that behaves by a system of logic uniquely well suited to its primary function: to give birth and impetus to profitable new technological forms, and to spread techno-logic around the globe.
We usually become aware of corporate behavior only when a flagrant transgression is reported in the news: the dumping of toxic wastes, the releasing of pollutants, the suppression of research regarding health effects of various products, the tragic mechanical breakdowns such as at Three Mile Island, in Bhopal, or in Prince William Sound, Alaska. Sometimes we become concerned about a large corporation closing a factory, putting 5,000 people out of work, and moving to another country.
Even when we hear such news, our tendency is to respond as if the behaviors described stem from the people within the corporate structure – people who are irresponsible, dishonest, greedy, or overly ambitious. Or else we attribute the problem to the moral decline of the times we live in, or to the failure of the regulatory process.
Seeing corporate behavior as rooted in the people who work within them is like believing that the problems of television are attributable solely to its program content. With corporations, as with television, the basic problems are actually structural. They are problems inherent in the forms and rules by which these entities are compelled to operate. If the problems could be traced to the personnel involved, they could be solved by changing the personnel. Unfortunately, however, all employees are obligated to act in concert, to behave in accordance with corporate form and corporate law. If someone attempted to revolt against these tenets, it would only result in the corporation throwing the person out, and replacing that person with another who would act according to the rules. Form determines content. Corporations are machines.
Corporations – by their very structure – are forced to exhibit Mander’s eleven inherent rules of behavior: The Profit Imperative, The Growth Imperative, Competition and Aggression, Amorality, Hierarchy, Quantification, Linearity and Segmentation, Dehumanization, Exploitation, Ephemerality, Opposition to Nature, and Homogenization. Form determines content. Corporations are machines.
Corporations do not “need” such things as clean air, justice, truth, beauty or love to survive. The only thing that large for-profit corporations “need” to survive is PROFIT. It is impossible for these corporations to forego significant monetary profits for moral reasons. If managers sacrifice significant profits to save important natural ecosystems or a community’s quality of life, they may be fired and/or subject to stockholder litigation. Management must bend itself to the corporate will and that will is to enrich the rich. Today, the richest 1 percent of America’s families controls 28 percent of the nation’s wealth and 60 percent of the nation’s corporate stock. (one-dollar, one-vote)
Thus, a large corporation may be seen as a man-made life form, a beast with a will of its own: an “economic cyborg.” Visualize a powerful creature that has humans for talons, a bank vault for a heart, computers for eyes and an insatiable need for PROFIT. The economic cyborg – a “terminator” – a machine in human disguise!
Economic cyborgs ingest natural materials (including people) in one end, and excrete un-natural products and waste (including worn-out people) out the other. Cyborgs have no innate morals to keep them from seducing our politicians, subverting our democratic processes or lying in order to achieve their own selfish objectives. Moreover, cyborgs are only nominally controlled by laws, because the people who make our laws are in turn controlled by these same cyborgs. Today in America, we live under the de facto plutocracy of the economic cyborgs. (one-dollar, one-vote)
NYTimes | In the midst of two unfinished major wars, the United States has quietly opened a third, largely covert front against Al Qaeda in Yemen.
A year ago, the Central Intelligence Agency sent several of its top field operatives with counterterrorism experience to the country, according a former top agency official. At the same time, some of the most secretive Special Operations commandos have begun training Yemeni security forces in counterterrorism tactics, senior military officers said.
The Pentagon is spending more than $70 million over the next 18 months, and using teams of Special Forces, to train and equip Yemeni military, Interior Ministry and coast guard forces, more than doubling previous military aid levels.
As American investigators sought to corroborate the claims of a 23-year-old Nigerian man that Qaeda leaders in Yemen had trained and equipped him to blow up a Detroit-bound Northwest Airlines jet on Christmas Day, the plot casts a spotlight on the Obama administration’s complicated relationship with Yemen.
The country has long been a refuge for jihadists, in part because Yemen’s government welcomed returning Islamist fighters who had fought in Afghanistan during the 1980s. The Yemen port of Aden was the site of the audacious bombing of the American destroyer Cole in October 2000 by Qaeda militants, which killed 17 sailors.
But Qaeda militants have made much more focused efforts to build a base in Yemen in recent years, drawing recruits from throughout the region and mounting attacks more frequently on foreign embassies and other targets. The White House is seeking to nurture enduring ties with the government of President Ali Abdullah Saleh and prod him to combat the local Qaeda affiliate, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, even as his impoverished country grapples with seemingly intractable internal turmoil.
With fears also growing of a resurgent Islamist extremism in nearby Somalia and East Africa, administration officials and American lawmakers said Yemen could become Al Qaeda’s next operational and training hub, rivaling the lawless tribal areas of Pakistan where the organization’s top leaders operate.
thesaker | We are hard-coded to be credulous and uncritically accept all the
demonization of Nazis and Soviets because we are Jews and White
Russians. Careful here, I am NOT saying that the Nazis and Soviets were
not evil – they definitely were – but what I am saying is that we, Jews
and Russians, are far more willing to accept and endorse any version of
history which makes the Nazis and Soviets some kind of exceptionally
evil people and that, in contrast, we almost instinctively reject any
notion that “our” side (in this case I mean *your* side, the American
one since you, unlike me, consider yourselves American) was just as bad
(if only because your side never murdered Jews and Russians). So let’s
look at this “our/your side” for a few minutes.
By the time the USA entered WWII it had already committed the worse
crime in human history, the poly-genocide of an entire continent,
followed by the completely illegal and brutal annexation of the lands
stolen from the Native Americans. Truly, Hitler would have been proud.
But that is hardly all, the Anglo invaders then proceeded to wage
another illegal and brutal war of annexation against Mexico from which
they stole a huge chunk of land which includes modern Texas, California,
Nevada, Utah, Arizona and New Mexico! Yes, all this land was illegally
occupied and stolen by your side not once, but TWICE! And do I even need
to mention the horrors of slavery to add to the “moral tally” of your
side by the time the US entered the war? Right there I think that there
is more than enough evidence that your side was morally worse than
either the Nazis or the Soviets. The entire history of the USA is one of
endless violence, plunder, hypocrisy, exploitation, imperialism,
oppression and wars. Endless wars of aggression. None of them defensive
by any stretch of the imagination. That is quite unique in human
history. Can you think of a nastier, more bloodthirsty regime? I can’t.
Should I even mention the British “atrocities tally”, ranging from
opium wars, to the invention of concentration camps, to the creation of
Apartheid, the horrors of the occupation of Ireland, etc. etc. etc.?
I can just hear you say that yes, this was horrible, but that does
not change the fact that in WWII the USA “saved Europe”. But is that
really so?
To substantiate my position, I have put together a separate PDF file
which lists 5 sources, 3 in English, 2 in Russian. You can download it
here:
I have translated the key excerpts of the Russian sources and I am
presenting them along with the key excerpts of the English sources.
Please take a look at this PDF and, if you can, please read the full
original articles I quote. I have stressed in bold red
the key conclusions of these sources. You will notice that there are
some variations in the figures, but the conclusions are, I think,
undeniable. The historical record show that:
The Soviet Union can be credited with the destruction of roughly 80%
of the Nazi military machine. The US-UK correspondingly can be credited
with no more than 20% of the Allied war effort.
The scale and scope of the battles on the Eastern Front completely
dwarf the biggest battles on the Western Front. Battles in the West
involved Divisions and Brigades, in the East they involved Armies and
Groups of Armies. That is at least one order of magnitude of difference.
The USA only entered the war a year after Stalingrad and the Kursk
battle when it was absolutely clear that the Nazis would lose the war.
The truth is that the Americans only entered the war when it was
clear that the Nazis would be defeated and that their real motive was
not the “liberation of oppressed Europe” but to prevent the Soviets from
occupying all of Europe. The Americans never gave a damn about the mass
murder of Jews or Russians, all they cared about was a massive
land-grab (yet again).
[Sidebar: By the way, and lest you think that I claim
that only Americans act this way, here is another set of interesting
dates:
Nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: August 6 and 9, 1945
Soviet Manchurian Strategic Offensive Operation: August 9–20, 1945
We can clearly see the same pattern here: the Soviets waited until it
was absolutely certain that the USA had defeated the Japanese empire
before striking it themselves. It is also worth noting that it took the
Soviets only 10 days to defeat the entire Kwantung Army, the most
prestigious Army of the Japanese Empire with over one million
well-trained and well-equipped soldiers! That should tell you a little
something about the kind of military machine the Soviet Union had
developed in the course of the war against Nazi Germany (see here for a superb US study of this military operation)]
Did the Americans bring peace and prosperity to western Europe?
To western Europe, to some degree yes, and that is because was easy
for them: they ended the war almost “fresh”, their (stolen) homeland did
not suffer the horrors of war and so, yes, they could bring in peanut
butter, cigarettes and other material goods. They also made sure that
Western Europe would become an immense market for US goods and services
and that European resources would be made available to the US Empire,
especially against the Soviet Union. And how did they finance this
“generosity”? By robbing the so-called Third World blind, that’s all. Is
that something to be proud of? Did Lenin not warn as early as 1917 that
“imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism”? The wealth of Western
Europe was built by the abject poverty of the millions of Africans,
Asians and Latin Americas.
But what about the future of Europe and the European people?
There a number of things upon which the Anglos and Stalin did agree
to at the end of WWII: The four Ds: denazification, disarmament,
demilitarisation, and democratisation of a united Germany and
reparations to rebuild the USSR. Yes, Stalin wanted a united, neutral
Germany. As soon as the war ended, however, the Anglos reneged on all of
these promises: they created a heavily militarized West Germany, they
immediately recruited thousands of top Nazi officials for their
intelligence services, their rocket program and to subvert the Soviet
Union. Worse, they immediately developed plans to attack the Soviet
Union. Right at the end of the WWII, Anglo powers had at least THREE
plans to wage war on the USSR: Operation Dropshot, Plan Totality and Operation Unthinkable.
Warsocialism | This is the second-most-important lie in economic theory. This lie sets one up to swallow the rest of the lies. Right wingers (it is boilerplate economic theory) deliberately lie about this because they want you to believe that Donald Trump “needs” another million dollar painting on the wall of one of his mansions just as badly as a welfare mother “needs” health care for her children. This amounts to a license for the rich to hog limited resources (on a spherical planet, all resources are “limited”) and serves as the Vaseline for the rest of the lies.
There are three broad aspects to the U.S. debt crisis. First, in the current fiscal year (2008) we are spending insane amounts of money on "defense" projects that bear no relation to the national security of the U.S. We are also keeping the income tax burdens on the richest segment of the population at strikingly low levels.
Second, we continue to believe that we can compensate for the accelerating erosion of our base and our loss of jobs to foreign countries through massive military expenditures -- "military Keynesianism" (which I discuss in detail in my book Nemesis: The Last Days of the American Republic). By that, I mean the mistaken belief that public policies focused on frequent wars, huge expenditures on weapons and munitions, and large standing armies can indefinitely sustain a wealthy capitalist economy. The opposite is actually true.
Third, in our devotion to militarism (despite our limited resources), we are failing to invest in our social infrastructure and other requirements for the long-term health of the U.S. These are what economists call opportunity costs, things not done because we spent our money on something else. Our public education system has deteriorated alarmingly. We have failed to provide health care to all our citizens and neglected our responsibilities as the world's number one polluter. Most important, we have lost our competitiveness as a manufacturer for civilian needs, an infinitely more efficient use of scarce resources than arms manufacturing.
HuffPo | Throughout much of the twentieth century, great powers had vied with one another to create new, or more effective, instruments of coercion. Military innovation assumed many forms. Most obviously, there were the weapons: dreadnoughts and aircraft carriers, rockets and missiles, poison gas, and atomic bombs -- the list is a long one. In their effort to gain an edge, however, nations devoted equal attention to other factors: doctrine and organization, training systems and mobilization schemes, intelligence collection and war plans.
All of this furious activity, whether undertaken by France or Great Britain, Russia or Germany, Japan or the United States, derived from a common belief in the plausibility of victory. Expressed in simplest terms, the Western military tradition could be reduced to this proposition: war remains a viable instrument of statecraft, the accoutrements of modernity serving, if anything, to enhance its utility.
Grand Illusions
That was theory. Reality, above all the two world wars of the last century, told a decidedly different story. Armed conflict in the industrial age reached new heights of lethality and destructiveness. Once begun, wars devoured everything, inflicting staggering material, psychological, and moral damage. Pain vastly exceeded gain. In that regard, the war of 1914-1918 became emblematic: even the winners ended up losers. When fighting eventually stopped, the victors were left not to celebrate but to mourn. As a consequence, well before Fukuyama penned his essay, faith in war’s problem-solving capacity had begun to erode. As early as 1945, among several great powers -- thanks to war, now great in name only -- that faith disappeared altogether.
Among nations classified as liberal democracies, only two resisted this trend. One was the United States, the sole major belligerent to emerge from the Second World War stronger, richer, and more confident. The second was Israel, created as a direct consequence of the horrors unleashed by that cataclysm. By the 1950s, both countries subscribed to this common conviction: national security (and, arguably, national survival) demanded unambiguous military superiority. In the lexicon of American and Israeli politics, “peace” was a codeword. The essential prerequisite for peace was for any and all adversaries, real or potential, to accept a condition of permanent inferiority. In this regard, the two nations -- not yet intimate allies -- stood apart from the rest of the Western world.
So even as they professed their devotion to peace, civilian and military elites in the United States and Israel prepared obsessively for war. They saw no contradiction between rhetoric and reality.
Yet belief in the efficacy of military power almost inevitably breeds the temptation to put that power to work. “Peace through strength” easily enough becomes “peace through war.” Israel succumbed to this temptation in 1967. For Israelis, the Six Day War proved a turning point. Plucky David defeated, and then became, Goliath. Even as the United States was flailing about in Vietnam, Israel had evidently succeeded in definitively mastering war.
A quarter-century later, U.S. forces seemingly caught up. In 1991, Operation Desert Storm, George H.W. Bush’s war against Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, showed that American troops like Israeli soldiers knew how to win quickly, cheaply, and humanely. Generals like H. Norman Schwarzkopf persuaded themselves that their brief desert campaign against Iraq had replicated -- even eclipsed -- the battlefield exploits of such famous Israeli warriors as Moshe Dayan and Yitzhak Rabin. Vietnam faded into irrelevance.
For both Israel and the United States, however, appearances proved deceptive. Apart from fostering grand illusions, the splendid wars of 1967 and 1991 decided little. In both cases, victory turned out to be more apparent than real. Worse, triumphalism fostered massive future miscalculation.
npr | "To be clear, I'm not arguing that this is at all representative of
Vietnam veterans — this is a tiny, tiny percentage of returning
veterans," Belew says. "But it is a large and instrumental number of
people within the White Power movement — and they play really important
roles in changing the course of movement action."
In her new book, Bring the War Home,
Belew argues that as disparate racist groups came together, the
movement's goal shifted from one of "vigilante activism" to something
more wide-reaching: "It's aimed at unseating the federal government. ...
It's aimed at undermining infrastructure and currency to foment race
war."
The Vietnam War narrative works first of all to unite people who had
previously not been able to be in a room together and to have a shared
sense of mission. So, for instance, Klansmen and neo-Nazis after World
War II had a very difficult time aligning, because Klansmen tended to
see neo-Nazis as enemies ... the people they were confronting in World
War II. But after Vietnam they see common cause around their betrayal by
the government and around the failed project of the Vietnam War. So
that's one function.
Another function of the Vietnam War is to
provide a narrative that shapes the violence itself, and this is partly
material in that veterans who are trained in Vietnam War boot camps come
back and create boot camps to train other White Power activists. People
who didn't serve in Vietnam War combat even use U.S. Army training
manuals and other kind of paramilitary infrastructure to shape White
Power violence and they even choose Vietnam War issue weapons, uniforms
and material and even obtain stolen military weapons to foment activism.
On the White Power movement turning on the state
The
turn on the state happened in 1983. It happened at the Aryan Nations
World Congress, which was a meeting of many different factions of the
White Power movement and the thing that's important about this turn on
the state is that it's openly anti-state for the first time in the 20th
century. Prior Klan mobilizations had really been organized about
maintaining the status quo or maintaining what historians would call
"systemic power," which is to say, state power and all of the other
kinds of power that are bound up in state power.
thenation | The belief expressed here is that the majority of Americans are soft
and insulated, ignorant of a long-running war, and that revolutionary
racist terror is the only remedy for an American society suffering from a
terminal cancer of liberalism and tolerance. This conviction may seem
obscure and The Turner Diaries mere fiction, but as the historian Kathleen Belew demonstrates in her compelling new book, Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, it has been at the core of decades of white-supremacist organizing and violence.
Meticulously researched and powerfully argued, Belew’s
book isn’t only a definitive history of white-racist violence in
late-20th-century America, but also a rigorous meditation on the
relationship between American militarism abroad and extremism at home,
with distressing implications for the United States in 2018 and beyond.
Two fundamental insights underpin the book: first, that there exists a
profound relationship between America’s military violence and domestic
right-wing paramilitary organizations, and, second, that the character
of that relationship underwent a decisive change in the late 1970s and
early ’80s.
Warsocialism | The “bad news” is that “peak oil” marks the beginning of the end of capitalism and market politics because many decades of declining “net energy”[1] will result in many decades of declining economic activity. And since capitalism can’t run backwards, a new method of distributing goods and services must be found. The “good news” is that our “market system” is fantastically inefficient!
In order to avoid anarchy, rebellion, civil war and global nuclear conflict, Americans must force a fundamental change in our political process. We can keep the same political structures and people, but must totally eliminate special interests from our political environment. A careful review of the progressive assault on laissez faire constitutionalism and neoclassical economics, from the 1880s through the 1930s, explains how this can be done legally and without violence. These early progressives showed how we can save our country. All that is lacking now is the political will. I call this adjustment of our political environment “America 2.0.”
To achieve America 2.0, we must first separate and isolate our political system from our economic system so that government can begin to actually address and solve societal problems rather than merely catering to corporate interests. The second step is to retire most working American citizens with an annuity sufficient for health and happiness, as government begins to eliminate the current enormous waste of vital resources by delivering goods and services directly. This would allow most adults to stay at home with their families but still receive the goods and services they need to enjoy life.
Warsocialism | This is the founding lie (actually an “idiosyncratic redefinition” of terms) which is designed to prevent engineers and scientists from investigating our money-based political system objectively. Economists know that people who do not have economic training are going to assume that “efficient” is used in the same way that engineers use the word: acting or producing effectively with a minimum of waste, expense, or unnecessary effort.
But for economists, “efficient” is always about “money" and means either “efficient distribution” of profits or “efficient production” ("cheapest production" as measured by money) of products – not the “efficient use of materials.” Since the market economizes “money” (that which is in limitless supply [4] ), the rich get richer and the poor get poorer. The reason economists use idiosyncratic redefinitions instead of coining new terms (like every other discipline) is to make them better liars!
Idiosyncratic redefinition allows economists to stand in front of your local Rotary Club and appear to HONESTLY use words that mean one thing to them, while Club members think they mean something completely different. This is how economists evade our innate ability to spot liars.
Far from being “efficient”, the so-called “market system” is probably the MOST INEFFICIENT social organization possible! The overhead (commuting to work, banks, insurance companies, advertising agencies, etc.) associated with our present way of organizing consumes the largest fraction BY FAR of our natural resources – something like 2 billion tonnes of oil equivalent per year! [5]
Seems like it may be time to do a memory refresh on the institutional expanse and behemoth totality of what Pres. Obama and SecDef Gates are wrestling with. It took me longer than I thought it would to find instances of the Joint Vision 2020 Report and its predecessor Joint Vision 2010. Though getting a sweeping strategic interpretation of what these doctrinal realignments portend was fairly easy to do.
Oil Wars- Not only are the raging wars in the Middle East responsible for energy price inflation, they are also responsible for price inflation of many other commodities, especially grains and other foodstuff, whose production and transportation depend on fuel. According to the World Bank, food prices have more than doubled over the past three years. The price of rice, the staple for billions of Asians, is up 147% over the past year alone. The mounting food prices have caused hunger and deadly violence in many countries, including Haiti, Egypt, Thailand, Indonesia, Senegal, and Malaysia.[...]
Neoconservative forces in and around the Bush administration and beneficiaries of war dividends—wishing to deflect attention away from war as the main culprit for the skyrocketing energy prices—tend to blame secondary or marginally relevant factors: OPEC, China and India for their increased demand for energy, or supply-demand imbalances in global markets.[...]
It is not surprising, then, that many elected officials with input or voting power in the process of the appropriation of the Pentagon budget find themselves in the pocket of defense contractors. Neither is it surprising that these dubious relationships should serve as breeding grounds for the near legendary levels of waste, inefficiency, and corruption that surround the military-industrial-congressional complex.
Two major conclusions follow from this discussion. The first is that, as pointed out earlier, war and political instability in the Middle East are the major driving forces behind the soaring price of oil; and that, therefore, to contain or reverse the rising trend of energy prices requires bringing U.S. troops home. The second conclusion is that achievement of this goal, the goal of ending U.S. wars of aggression, is possible only if (a) money or profits are taken out of war, and (b) money is taken out of elections.
theeconomiccollapseblog |If you are not familiar with the petrodollar system, it really is not that complicated. Basically, almost all of the oil in the world is traded in U.S. dollars. The origin of the petrodollar system was detailed in a recent article by Jerry Robinson....
In 1973, a deal was struck between Saudi Arabia and the United States in which every barrel of oil purchased from the Saudis would be denominated in U.S. dollars. Under this new arrangement, any country that sought to purchase oil from Saudi Arabia would be required to first exchange their own national currency for U.S. dollars. In exchange for Saudi Arabia's willingness to denominate their oil sales exclusively in U.S. dollars, the United States offered weapons and protection of their oil fields from neighboring nations, including Israel.
By 1975, all of the OPEC nations had agreed to price their own oil supplies exclusively in U.S. dollars in exchange for weapons and military protection.
This petrodollar system, or more simply known as an "oil for dollars" system, created an immediate artificial demand for U.S. dollars around the globe. And of course, as global oil demand increased, so did the demand for U.S. dollars.
Once you understand the petrodollar system, it becomes much easier to understand why our politicians treat Saudi leaders with kid gloves. The U.S. government does not want to see anything happen that would jeopardize the status quo.
A recent article by Marin Katusa described some more of the benefits that the petrodollar system has had for the U.S. economy....
The "petrodollar" system was a brilliant political and economic move. It forced the world's oil money to flow through the US Federal Reserve, creating ever-growing international demand for both US dollars and US debt, while essentially letting the US pretty much own the world's oil for free, since oil's value is denominated in a currency that America controls and prints. The petrodollar system spread beyond oil: the majority of international trade is done in US dollars. That means that from Russia to China, Brazil to South Korea, every country aims to maximize the US-dollar surplus garnered from its export trade to buy oil.
The US has reaped many rewards. As oil usage increased in the 1980s, demand for the US dollar rose with it, lifting the US economy to new heights. But even without economic success at home the US dollar would have soared, because the petrodollar system created consistent international demand for US dollars, which in turn gained in value. A strong US dollar allowed Americans to buy imported goods at a massive discount – the petrodollar system essentially creating a subsidy for US consumers at the expense of the rest of the world. Here, finally, the US hit on a downside: The availability of cheap imports hit the US manufacturing industry hard, and the disappearance of manufacturing jobs remains one of the biggest challenges in resurrecting the US economy today.
So what happens if the petrodollar system collapses?
Well, for one thing the value of the U.S. dollar would plummet big time.
U.S. consumers would suddenly find that all of those "cheap imported goods" would rise in price dramatically as would the price of gasoline.
If you think the price of gas is high now, you just wait until the petrodollar system collapses.
In addition, there would be much less of a demand for U.S. government debt since countries would not have so many excess U.S. dollars lying around.
So needless to say, the U.S. government really needs the petrodollar system to continue.
But in the end, it is Saudi Arabia that is holding the cards. Fist tap Big Don.
moonofalabama | It is indisputable that the generals are now ruling in Washington DC. They came to power over decades by shaping culture
through their sponsorship of Hollywood, by manipulating the media
through "embedded" reporting and by forming and maintaining the
countries infrastructure through the Army Corps of Engineers. The
military, through the NSA as well as through its purchasing power,
controls the information flow on the internet. Until recently the
military establishment only ruled from behind the scene. The other parts
of the power triangle,
the corporation executives and the political establishment, were more
visible and significant. But during the 2016 election the military bet
on Trump and is now, after he unexpectedly won, collecting its price.
Trump's success as the "Not-Hillary" candidate
was based on an anti-establishment insurgency. Representatives of that
insurgency, Flynn, Bannon and the MAGA voters, drove him through his
first months in office. An intense media campaign was launched to
counter them and the military took control of the White House. The
anti-establishment insurgents were fired. Trump is now reduced to public
figure head of a stratocracy - a military junta which nominally follows
the rule of law.
Ultimate power to shape American foreign and security policy has fallen into the hands of three military men [...] ... Being ruled by generals seems preferable to the alternative. It isn’t. ... [It]
leads toward a distorted set of national priorities, with military
“needs” always rated more important than domestic ones. ... It
is no great surprise that Trump has been drawn into the foreign policy
mainstream; the same happened to President Obama early in his
presidency. More ominous is that Trump has turned much of his power over to generals. Worst of all, many Americans find this reassuring.
They are so disgusted by the corruption and shortsightedness of our
political class that they turn to soldiers as an alternative. It is a
dangerous temptation.
The country has fallen to that temptation even on social-economic issues:
In the wake of the deadly racial violence in Charlottesville
this month, five of the Joint Chiefs of Staff were hailed as moral
authorities for condemning hate in less equivocal terms than the
commander in chief did. ... On social policy, military leaders have been voices for moderation.
Warsocialism | THE ONE-AND-ONLY HUMANE SOLUTION: Mutual coercion, mutually agreed upon; a global system of coercion – laws, police, punishments and rewards. In principle, the global commons can only be managed at the global level by people who understand the physical systems involved: scientists. Global coercion can be seen in the worldwide reactions to ozone depletion and global warming. Besides laws and paychecks, coercion can take many forms:
“It is not necessary to construct a theory of intentional cultural control. In truth, the strength of the control process rests in its apparent absence. The desired systemic result is achieved ordinarily by a loose though effective institutional process. It utilizes the education of journalists and other media professionals, built-in penalties and rewards for doing what is expected, norms presented as objective rules, and the occasional but telling direct intrusion from above. The main lever is the internalization of values.”
Step one would be to establish a global government of some sort with the authority to protect the global commons – our life-support system – as well as protecting universal human rights. This government would also oversee the “clean” manufacturing of “repairable” and “reusable” energy-efficient appliances and transportation systems. It would also insure the sustainable production of staples like wheat, rice, oats, and fish.
Does this new global government sound repressive or restrictive? Not at all! A great deal of freedom is possible – in fact, far more than we have now.
Warsocialism |“The human mind evolved to believe in gods... Acceptance of the supernatural conveyed a great advantage throughout prehistory, when the brain was evolving. Thus it is in sharp contrast to [science] which was developed as a product of the modern age and is not underwritten by genetic algorithms.” – E.O. Wilson
“Magical thinking” is defined as “non-scientific causal reasoning” or “correlation”. I define “political thinking” (which apparently has no formal definition) as trying to prove one’s assertions are true instead of trying to “falsify” them like a scientist or a good engineer.
We are genetically both “magical” and “political” thinkers. However, we can be specifically trained to use the scientific thinking in specific domains. Unfortunately, training in one domain does not mean we automatically use scientific thinking in other domains. The best scientists are just as likely as anyone else to use magic and politics in domains they haven’t been trained in.
Imagine yourself in Africa and you notice a herd of zebra staring intently at the trees. You stop and look at the trees, but you can not see anything. Suddenly a huge lion bursts out of the tree line, grabs an impala, and hauls it off. Every time after that, when you see zebras staring at trees, you will think “lions”. That is precisely the kind of magical thinking which would have kept our ancestors alive.
Political thinking co-evolved and was required to give magical thinking at least half of its value. Saving the lives of your fellows – by convincing them that a lion was nearby – was absolutely vital to your own survival. A few thousand years ago, almost no penalty would be attached to a “false positive” in this “lion in the trees” situation. Today, magical false positives on the part of social scientists are going to kill us all:
“Oil is a renewable resource, with no intrinsic value over and above its marginal cost... There is no original stock or store of wealth to be doled out on any special criterion... Capital markets are equipped to handle [oil depletion].” – M. A. Adelman
The social sciences employ magical (correlation) and political (proving oneself right) thinking. False positives on the part of economists (all economic theory) caused WW1 & WW2.
The “economic method” (correlation and “post hoc, ergo propter hoc”) is the opposite of the “scientific method”:
You may not know it yet, but the world changed on March 1st, 2018, an
old era was ended, and a new era begun. In very great part, the
meaning of this new era is up to you.
On that historic day, Vladimir Putin revealed to the world that the US
military is now obsolete, and no longer capable of "projecting power",
committing war crimes, or intimidating and destroying smaller nations
around the world. That day has ended forever, one way or another. The
US military is still completely capable of the mission it needs and
deserves to do, which is to defend the territory and people of the
United States of America. You are safe. There is no threat. But the
days of your government threatening and destroying other countries is
over. I hope you understand this.
Putin's revelation of Russia's game-changing weapons, against which the
US military is literally defenseless, is not a threat or a bluff. Only
liars and fools speak of "Russian aggression", and the stupidity of
anyone who says or believes "Putin is bluffing" is beyond measure.
Russia's weapons are real, and the US military industrial complex (that
Dwight Eisenhower warned about 57 years ago) has absolutely no defense
against them. In spite of plundering and squandering literally trillions
of dollars from the US treasury and the American People in the name of
"defense", they are defenseless.
Russia's new weapons present no threat to the American People, unless
you allow the people who own and control your government to to start a
world war and force the Russians to use them. But if you do allow that
to happen, the American people will get exactly what the "good Germans"
got in 1945. And you will deserve it, just as much as they did. For the
exact same reasons.
With 360-degree scanning capability and an Automatic Identification System — meaning it can classify different types of ships by itself — the MQ-C4 is pegged to be the mainstay of the Navy's spying capabilities at sea from 2015 onwards.
But even without its state-of-the-art sensors and cameras, the aircraft itself is capable. It can fly for over a day at twice the altitude of commercial jets, reaching a maximum height of 60,000 feet (11 miles) overhead.
And Popular Mechanics explains that the drone is "vertically agile", so it won't have a problem quickly swooping down from high altitudes to take pictures of ships.
Apart from being used for combat-related surveillance missions, the drone could also keep tabs on piracy, human smuggling, fishery violations, and organized crime. Essentially, it's all-seeing.
Here's a break-down of the new drone and how it'll give the Navy even more control of the high seas. Fist tap Big Don.
Rejuvenation Pills
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No one likes getting old. Everyone would like to be immorbid. Let's be
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Death of the Author — at the Hands of Cthulhu
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In 1967, French literary theorist and philosopher Roland Barthes wrote of
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from au...
9/29 again
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"On this sacred day of Michaelmas, former President Donald Trump invoked
the heavenly power of St. Michael the Archangel, sharing a powerful prayer
for pro...
Return of the Magi
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Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
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us, s...
New Travels
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Haven’t published on the Blog in quite a while. I at least part have been
immersed in the area of writing books. My focus is on Science Fiction an
Historic...
Covid-19 Preys Upon The Elderly And The Obese
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
arrived at the emergency room at the University of Vermont Medical Center.
He ...
