aljazeera | The American people’s lack of faith in and disillusionment with the US establishment is greater now than at any other point in history. The institutions that served US citizens are increasingly regarded as self-serving and the people increasingly divided, increasingly polarised along racial and economic lines.
As new President, Donald Trump, enters the White House on a wave of populism, The Big Picture explores just how America has become so fractured, and how for many, the American Dream has been lost.
We chart the history of that mythic dream to show its power and the ways in which, throughout the last 70 years, it has been undermined by the powerful and shattered for those who still believe in it as truth.
lewrockwell | And for those naive enough to question this basic assessment of the
state’s interests in Syria, ask yourself: if the US and its owned media
clique slavishly calls Assad a butcher and promoted chaos in his country
for purely humanitarian reasons, why aren’t they doing the same in
countries like Equatorial Guinea, Rwanda, and Chad? Those countries are
ruled by brutal dictators too. Yet your vacuous media guardians, those
valiant watchdogs of the truth, do not tell you every day how much of a
butcher they are or how we should overthrow their regimes.
The answer is clear: the financial interests that own these media
puppets do not prioritize those nations’ resources, strategic locations,
or financial structures. So you don’t hear every night how they’re run
by butchers. Instead, you see a congresswoman like Gabbard castigated
and demonized for daring to question their lying interventionist
narrative.
Is that too cynical to consider? Why not hang around your local city
commission for a while and see how much power jockeying, clique
politics, lying and back-stabbing goes on to decide who will get the
contract to build a new 2 million dollar road.
And you think humans, given access to the greatest monopoly of
military leverage in the US government, will magically just act in pure
humanitarian interest when trillions of dollars are at stake?
I’ve got a bridge to sell you in Aleppo.
Gabbard has criticized Assad’s role in the conflict. But she has also
been vocal in denouncing the US’s one party policy of arming terrorists
in Syria. She even introduced
a bill in Congress to stop arming terrorists. Our government aided and
weaponized ISIS and Al-Qaeda terrorists, the same group that attacked us
on 9-11, for the pathetic, pitiful lust for power and money available
in Syrian regime change.
Yet today, you’ll see headlines like these plastered all over the
hegemonic leftist media: POLITICO: Gabbard won’t disclose who’s paying
for secret trip to Syria
DAILY BEAST: Tulsi Gabbard’s Fascist Escorts to Syria The Democratic
congresswoman used affiliates of a violent, anti-Semitic political party
to take tea with Assad.
DAILY KOS: Rep. Tulsi Gabbard has turned into a stooge for Syria’s dictator. Who will primary her?
Remember, these are the same outlets who slavishly lined up to dine with the pro-Syrian coup Clinton campaign, as Wikileaks revealed. These are the same outlets who allowed their key reporters to submit their pre-published content for approval by Clinton operatives.
These reporters are of the same state-religious clique that
threatened Tulsi Gabbard’s career when she refused to bow the knee to
Hillary Clinton in the primary. They want power. They love the state
denomination of establishment leftism which allows them to use Syrian
migrants’ fleeing desperation as a photo-op to bludgeon their rival
state sect embodied in Trump.
The leftist media outlets incessantly questioning Gabbard’s call for
peace and an end to US-backed terrorism in Syria don’t care if our
intervention has destroyed cities and murdered and raped thousands. They
only care about the social status points they get in social circles
where being seen outraged at airport arrival lines is more important
than stopping mass murder for profit and power.
medium | Trump fits into this system snugly. Among his draft executive orders
is one that would open the door for US corporations to engage in
secretive corrupt and criminal practices to buy conflict minerals from
the Congo — which are widely used in electronic products like
smartphones and laptops.
From
this broader perspective, it’s clear that far from representing a force
opposed to the Deep State, the Trump regime represents an interlocking
network of powerful players across sectors which heavily intersect with
the Deep State: finance, energy, military intelligence, private defense,
white nationalist ‘alt-right’ media, and Deep State policy
intellectuals.
According to Scott, this reflects
a deepening “old division within Big Money — roughly speaking, between
those Trilateral Commission progressives, many flourishing from the new
technologies of the global Internet, who wish the state to do more than
at present about problems like wealth disparity, racial injustice and
global warming, and those Heritage Foundation conservatives, many from
finance and oil, who want it to do even less.”
So
rather than being a nationalist ‘insurgency’ against the corporate
globalist ‘Deep State’, the Trump regime represents a white nationalist
coup by a disgruntled cross-section within the Deep State itself. Rather
than coming into conflict with the Deep State, we are seeing a powerful
military-corporate nexus within the American Deep State come to the
fore. Trump, in this
context, is a tool to re-organize and restructure the Deep State in
reaction to what this faction believe to be an escalating crisis in the
global Deep System.
In
short, the Deep State faction backing Trump is embarking on what it
believes is a unique and special mission: to save the Deep State from a
decline caused by the failures of successive American administrations.
However, what
they are actually doing is accelerating the decline of the American
Deep State and the disruption of the global Deep System.
frontpagemag | Last year, eight members of the House Permanent Select Committee on
Intelligence issued a demand that their staffers be granted access to
top secret classified information.
The signatories to the letter
were Andre Carson, Luis Guiterez, Jim Himes, Terri Sewell, Jackie
Speier, Mike Quigley, Eric Swalwell and Patrick Murphy. All the
signatories were Democrats. Some had a history of attempting to
undermine national security.
Two of them have been linked to an emerging security breach.
The office of Andre Carson, the second Muslim in Congress, had
employed Imran Awan. As did the offices of Jackie Speier and Debbie
Wasserman Schultz; to whom the letter had been addressed.
A member of Congress expressed concern that, “they may have stolen data from us.”
All three of the Pakistani brothers had been employed by Democrats.
The offices that employed them included HPSCI minority members Speier,
Carson and Joaquín Castro. Congressman Castro, who also sits on the
House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence, utilized the services
of Jamal Moiz Awan. Speier and Carson’s offices utilized Imran Awan.
Abid A. Awan was employed by Lois Frankel and Ted Lieu: members of the
House Committee on Foreign Affairs. Also on the committee is Castro. As
is Robin Kelly whose office employed Jamal Awan. Lieu also sits on the
subcommittees on National Security and Information Technology of the
Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.
Tammy
Duckworth’s office had also employed Abid. Before Duckworth successfully
played on the sympathy of voters to become Senator Tammy Duckworth, she
had been on the Subcommittee on Tactical Air and Land Forces of the
Armed Services Committee.
Gwen Graham, who had also been on
the Armed Services Committee and on the Tactical Air and Land Forces
subcommittee, had employed Jamal Awan. Jamal was also employed by Cedric
Richmond’s office. Richmond sits on the Committee on Homeland Security
and on its Terrorism and Cybersecurity subcommittee. He is a ranking
member of the latter subcommittee. Also employing Jamal was Mark Takano
of the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology.
Imran had
worked for the office of John Sarbanes who sits on the House Energy and
Commerce Committee that oversees, among other things, the nuclear
industry. Other members of the Committee employing the brothers included
Yvette Clarke, who also sits on the Bipartisan Encryption Working
Group, Diana DeGette, Dave Loebsack and Tony Cardenas.
foxnews | As President Trumpsometimes awkwardly comes to terms with being the fish in the fishbowl, he gets to observe the case of his National Security Adviser, Michael Flynn.
The main issue for Flynn is that he did not tell the truth
about his conversations with the Russian ambassador to the U.S. It
would have been bad enough if Flynn had simply misled the press, but he
also seems to have let the vice president step forward and repeat those
untruths on his behalf.
Flynn, who has attributed the
misstatements to poor memory and not any intent to deceive, has
reportedly apologized to Pence and is doing his best to dig in against
his internal foes.
The retired general’s perilous position is highlighted in a couple of different ways. We know of reports about tensions between Flynn and Defense Secretary James Mattis.
Mattis has more pull inside the administration, arguably, than any
other cabinet member and if he has issues with Flynn, that’s a big deal.
But more ominous for Flynn was the news over the weekend
that the CIA director had nixed one of Flynn’s top deputies for failing
to qualify for high-level security clearance. If Trump’s newly minted
CIA boss, Mike Pompeo, feels obliged and willing to shut down the president’s closest national security adviser that’s a big deal.
Flynn or his allies seemed to make the case that the deputy got booted
because of a turf war between the agencies and as retribution for
Flynn’s efforts to reform U.S. intelligence.
Remember all of
the drama at the time of the inauguration about Trump questioning U.S.
intelligence and wondering if the Russians weren’t telling the truth and
the CIA lying? That was probably Flynn’s voice coming through.
But to renew allegations of corruption against the CIA after
Trump’s director is in charge is something different. It’s hard to
imagine Trump would believe Pompeo is a crook so soon after selecting
him and so soon after the president visited the agency to make peace.
Trump will presumably see or has already seen the transcript of Flynn’s
calls and will make up his own mind about whether keeping Flynn’s
counsel is worth the internal strife and external narrative.
But whatever Trump decides, he can learn one key lesson from Flynn: Somebody is always listening.
realclearpolitics | Charles Krauthammer, commenting on the resignation of National
Security Adviser Michael Flynn, said we can not have the government
eavesdrop on conversations and then leak it to the media. From Tuesday's
Special Report:
CHARLES KRAUTHAMMER: Each side always wants to argue the
real story is the misdeeds of the other guy. The fact that there are
real big misdeeds in these leaks, but that doesn't exonerate what
happened within the Trump administration. There are two stories. One is
that the internal dysfunction in the Trump White House, the fact that
Flynn lied internally was untrustworthy. But the other story is the
scandal of these leaks.
Look, we cannot have our intelligence agencies eavesdropping on
Americans and releasing it to the press. We have extremely elaborate
procedures when we eavesdrop on, say, and ambassadors from other
countries, which we do all the time. Everyone does. Everyone knows it.
When the conversation involves an American, there are extremely strict
procedures to blur the identity, to hide the identity and to protect the
information coming from the American. This is the exact opposite of
that and it is scary because it means everybody who communicates with a
foreigner is subject to being exposed by his own government. You can't
have that.
Now let’s immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a
saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world.
That he was not. However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump’s national security policy.
For one thing, Flynn dared the unthinkable: he dared to declare that
the bloated US intelligence community had to be reformed. Flynn also
tried to subordinate the CIA and the Joint Chiefs to the President via
the National Security Council. Put differently, Flynn tried to wrestle
the ultimate power and authority from the CIA and the Pentagon and
subordinate them back to the White House. Flynn also wanted to work
with Russia. Not because he was a Russia lover, the notion of a Director
of the DIA as a Putin-fan is ridiculous, but Flynn was rational, he
understood that Russia was no threat to the USA or to Europe and that
Russia had the West had common interests. That is another absolutely
unforgivable crimethink in Washington DC.
The Neocon run ‘deep state’ has now forced Flynn to resign under the
idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open,
insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador.
And Trump accepted this resignation.
Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after
blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood
doubleplusgoodthinking “stars” and even from European
politicians. And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back.
Nowhere was his famous “you are fired!” to be seen. But I still had
hope. I wanted to hope. I felt that it was my duty to hope.
But now Trump has betrayed us all.
Remember how Obama showed his true face when he hypocritically denounced his friend and pastor Rev. Jeremiah Wright Jr.?
Today, Trump has shown us his true face. Instead of refusing Flynn’s
resignation and instead of firing those who dared cook up these
ridiculous accusations against Flynn, Trump accepted the resignation
strategic-culture | In an article a
few weeks ago, I tried to lay the foundations for a future US
administration, placing a strong focus on foreign policy and revealing a
possible shift in US historic foreign relations. In a passage I wrote:
Donald
Trump has emerged with in mind a precise foreign policy strategy,
forged by various political thinkers of the realist world such as Waltz
and Mearsheimer, trashing all recent neoconservative and neoliberal
policies of foreign intervention (R2P - Right to Protect) and soft power
campaigns in favor of human rights. No more UN resolutions, subtly used
to bomb nations (Libya). Trump doesn’t believe in the central role of
the UN and reaffirmed this repeatedly.
In
general, the Trump administration intends to end the policy of regime
change, interference in foreign governments, Arab springs and color
revolutions. They just don’t work. They cost too much in terms of
political credibility, in Ukraine the US are allied with supporters of
Bandera (historical figure who collaborated with the Nazis) and in
Middle East they finance or indirectly support al Qaeda and al Nusra
front».
The
recent meeting in Washington with Theresa May, the first official
encounter with a prominent US ally, revealed, among other things, a
possible dramatic change in US policy. The Prime Minister of the United
Kingdom expressed her desire to follow a new policy of non-intervention,
in line with the isolationist strategy Trump has spoken about since
running for office. In a joint press conference with the American
president, May said: «The era of military intervention is over. London
and Washington will not return to the failed policy in the past that has
led to intervention in Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya».
During
the election campaign, Trump made his intentions clear in different
contexts, but always coming from the standpoint of non-interventionism
inspired by the concept of isolationism. It is becoming apparent that
these intentions are being put into action, though the rhetoric
regarding Iran has become alarming. In typical Trump fashion (which
contrasts with the Iran issue), the situation in Syria is normalizing
and the initial threats directed at China appear to have been put aside.
The case of Iran is a different and complex story, requiring a deeper
analysis that deserves a separate article. What will gradually be
important, as the Presidency progresses, is understanding the necessity
to distinguish between words and actions, separating provocations from
intentions.
The "replacement negroe" policy and program is still a forbidden topic in mainstream political discourse. That said, Chuck Todd and Stephen Miller come as close as possible to discussing it on Meet the Press yesterday. Trump policy advisor Stephen Miller does a fine job of handling opposition media feints and jabs from Chuck Todd.
Joy Ann Reid, Rachel Maddow, Alex Witt, Chuck Todd and the whole roster of MSNBC talking heads - are nekkid as jaybirds when it comes to their full-time, vitriolic, and deeply irritating lack of journalistic objectivity and purely oppositional stance to the Trump administration.
alhambrapartners |Commentator Bill Kristol of the Weekly
Standard reignited a fierce debate this week, though it seems like he
correctly surmised at the time anonymity would have been preferable.
Speaking with author Charles Murray, Kristol echoed a sentiment that has
been underneath a lot of what passes for analysis these past few years
of the “rising dollar.” Being one prominent Never-Trumper, the most
prominent, in fact, there is a fair amount of disdain that is political
more than pure economic interpretation. It was the disillusionment,
after all, of the working classes who delivered Mr. Trump his current
Pennsylvania Avenue address.
If you google “job openings” chances
are very good that in almost every one of the news articles that comes
up the words “skills mismatch” are prominently placed. It has become
something of an obsession in official circles, to which Kristol is
apart, because how could it be any different? After massive infusions of
“stimulus”, the economy never caught fire even though it was supposed
to at several points along the way. The JOLTS survey of BLS configured
data has been at record highs for several years, surging in 2015 as the
economy fell off. Therefore it must be something wrong with workers
rather than the economy the “experts” worked tirelessly to bring about
with the best-designed programs in history.
Now after several more years of
economic hardship, the “experts” now consider it more so lazy Americans
whose communities deserve to die. To be fair, Fed officials have never
expressed it in these terms, nor would I expect that they ever would.
However, their analysis is in keeping with the basis for those
unfortunate sentiments. Everything was supposed to be normal by now, but
it isn’t. The Great “Recession” was supposed to have been a recession,
but it wasn’t. What failed? The experts…or you?
Even if there wasn’t self-interest on
the part of Fed officials to answer that question, as noted earlier
today monetary neutrality leaves even credible and intelligent Fed
members (like Tarullo, actually) to have to attribute the lack of
recovery to the same absurdity of Baby Boomer retirement and skills
mismatch that they rightly rejected in 2011 and after. They are
prevented from arriving at common sense because common sense was
renormalized out of the math, and thus out of official analysis that
gets parroted by the rest of the “experts” in deciding what they will
proclaim has been going on.
Populism isn’t a dismissal of the
necessary messiness of rising living standards, it realizes far more
that living standards aren’t doing anything like that, where one symptom
is the utter and obvious lack of opportunity. It has demonized
the globalization of so-called free trade because it is the rejection
of “experts” who have no idea what they are talking about. These are the
same experts who make sweeping generalizations based on sophistry
rather than data, the very deficiency they believe of us. As I wrote
last year, we are notthe barbarians.
We may not have advanced degrees, but we don’t need them to know
exactly who it was that has been incompetent. If the Great “Recession”
wasn’t a recession, and that is now the general consensus, admitted
publicly or not, it’s not my fault for being a little more than upset
about it, and directing that ire at those who for years said it was, and
more than that said first it wasn’t ever even possible.
WaPo | A super PAC formed to reelect Barack Obama in 2012 is driving
activists to congressional town halls. Veterans of Bill Clinton’s
administration are joining marches and plotting bigger ones for the
spring. Democratic senators who had befriended Jeff Sessions in the
Senate voted — 47 to 1 — against his nomination for attorney general.
Three
weeks into President Trump’s term, the Democratic Party and progressive
establishment have almost entirely adopted the demands of a restive,
active and aggressive base. They are hopeful that the new activism more
closely resembles the tea party movement, which embraced electoral
politics, than the Occupy Wall Street movement, which did not.
The
pace of the activists, and the runaway-train approach of Trump’s
administration, have given them little time to puzzle it out.
“He
has a strategy to do so many things that he overwhelms the opposition,”
Gov. John Hickenlooper (D-Colo.) said of Trump, “[but] he’s creating
the largest opposition movement I’ve seen in my lifetime in the United
States.”
After previous defeats, the modern Democratic Party
typically plunged into a discussion between a moderate wing and a
liberal wing. George McGovern’s 1972 loss led to an internal party
battle against the New Left. After Walter Mondale’s 1984 defeat, a group
of moderate strategists formed the Democratic Leadership Council. After
the 2004 defeat of John F. Kerry, a new generation of like-minded
strategists launched Third Way, with a focus on lost moderate voters.
libertyblitzkrieg | My typical writing style consists of taking a particular topic or
train of thought and bringing it to some sort of conclusion within a
single relatively short post. Today’s topic is simply too expansive for
that model, so it’ll be published in at least two parts.
This post needs to be read in the context of my last two posts. If
you haven’t read those, you’ll probably have a difficult time fully
grasping everything I discuss below. Here are those pieces in case you
missed them the first time.
Once again, today’s article will focus on the writings of Ken Wilber.
I’ve been completely blown away by the fact that his insight into a
evolutionary model of human consciousness called Spiral Dynamics, almost
perfectly expresses how I feel about things despite never having
come into contact with the model previously. As most of you know,
I view Trump as a symptom of a diseased societal, political and
economic paradigm, as opposed to the disease itself. Trump was a
reaction, and the way the Democrats handled the primary was the final
nail in the coffin in sealing his victory. People became so fed up with
the insanity of the fake left, many of those who didn’t even like Trump
decided to roll the dice with him anyway.
Ken Wilber’s recent free e-book, Trump and a Post-Truth World,
takes it much further in a thoroughly enlightening manner through the
prism of evolutionary consciousness. In fact, he makes it clear that the
election of someone like Trump was a long time coming and, in fact, the
culmination of a decades-long process of “liberal” ideology
gone completely off the deep-end.
thehindu |Economist-mathematician Nassim Nicholas Taleb contends that there is a global riot against pseudo-experts
After predicting the 2008 economic crisis, the Brexit vote, the
U.S. presidential election and other events correctly, Nassim Nicholas
Taleb, author of the Incerto series on global uncertainties, which
includes The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable,
is seen as something of a maverick and an oracle. Equally, the
economist-mathematician has been criticised for advocating a “dumbing
down” of the economic system, and his reasoning for U.S. President
Donald Trump and global populist movements. In an interview in Jaipur,
Taleb explains why he thinks the world is seeing a “global riot against pseudo-experts”.
I’d like to start by asking about your next book, Skin in the Game,
the fifth of the Incerto series. You do something unusual with your
books: before you launch, you put chapters out on your website. Why is
that?
Putting
my work online motivates me to go deeper into a subject. I put it
online and it gives some structure to my thought. The only way to judge a
book is by something called the Lindy effect, and that is its survival.
My books have survived. I noticed that The Black Swan did well
because it was picked up early online, long before the launch. I also
prefer social media to interviews in the mainstream media as many
journalists don’t do their research, and ‘zeitgeist’ updates [Top Ten
lists] pass for journalism.
The media is not one organisation or a monolithic entity.
Well, I’m talking about the United States where I get more credible news from the social media than the mainstream media. But I am very impressed with the Indian media that seems to present both sides of the story. In the U.S., you only get either the official, bureaucratic or the academic side of the story.
In Skin in the Game, you seem to build on theories from The Black Swan that give a sense of foreboding about the world economy. Do you see another crisis coming?
Oh, absolutely! The
last crisis [2008] hasn’t ended yet because they just delayed it.
[Barack] Obama is an actor. He looks good, he raises good children, he
is respectable. But he didn’t fix the economic system, he put novocaine
[local anaesthetic] in the system. He delayed the problem by
working with the bankers whom he should have prosecuted. And now we have
double the deficit, adjusted for GDP, to create six million jobs, with a
massive debt and the system isn’t cured. We retained zero interest
rates, and that hasn’t helped. Basically we shifted the problem from the
private corporates to the government in the U.S. So, the system remains very fragile.
sprottmoney |What metric does PricewaterhouseCooper rely upon
as the basis for its economic projection? It uses an economic term
called “purchasing power parity”. It is the total purchasing power of
that population.
PWC argues that this produces a clearer picture of
actual economic strength because it cancels out price differentials
between economies. In general, prices are much higher in Western
economies than in the Emerging Market countries (and even BRICS
nations), thus having higher nominal amounts of wealth circulating in Western economies can be deceiving, since it can buy less stuff.
What makes this metric and report so interesting is that PWC is essentially projecting the real wealth levels of these populations. This projection is about a lot more than just evening out price differentials.
Canada’s GDP is more than four times as much as
that of Egypt, and more than five times as much as that of Pakistan.
Even by 2050; PWC estimates that Canada will still have GDP greater than
either nation. But Egypt and Pakistan will have stronger economies,
because their populations will have more real wealth circulating in
those economies.
We’re not dealing with a small differential here.
Note that PWC is talking about Egypt and Pakistan having much stronger
economies than Canada. By 2050, measured in purchasing power parity,
both Egypt and Pakistan will have economies more than 1/3 stronger than Canada.
This seems to be incongruous. If Canada will still have the larger economy by 2050 (as measured in GDP), why will Egypt and Pakistan both have stronger
economies, as measured in the real wealth circulating within that
economy? We get a large clue by looking at a chart which is familiar to
regular readers.
For the past 8+ years; the bankers of the Federal Reserve and the bankers of Wall Street have been boasting about all the “wealth” that has been created in the United States during the mythical U.S. recovery. Yes, lots and lots of wealth.
Regular readers know that B.S. Bernanke conjured
more than $3 trillion of new U.S. funny-money into existence during the
infamous Bernanke Helicopter Drop, quintupling the entire U.S. money supply in less than five years. And every, single dollar was handed to the Big Banks of Wall Street – for free. But that’s just the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks to the magic of “fractional-reserve
banking”, where U.S. banks are allowed to lend $35 for every $1 they
receive. The $3+ trillion which B.S. Bernanke handed to them became well over $100 trillion in new liquidity. That works out to more than $300,000 per American.
So why are there roughly 50 million permanently unemployed
Americans? Why are more than 40 million forced to rely upon food stamps
to survive? Because when the bankers conjured their $100+ trillion into
existence (for free), they kept it all – kept it all for their Masters, the oligarchs. What did the oligarchs do with that extra $100+ trillion?
As the chart above clearly shows, the oligarchs
stuffed most of that $100+ trillion into their own hoards, spending
virtually nothing. Of course that’s not entirely true either. They
gambled with much of their funny money, in the bankers’ private,
unregulated, rigged casino – the derivatives market. The derivatives
market is a hoard of private wealth which never circulates in the real
economy that is somewhere in the magnitude of $1.5 quadrillion ($1,500
trillion).
We’re no longer sure how large the rigged casino
has swollen, since in 2010 the bankers changed their “definition” of
the casino, and overnight the derivatives market (supposedly) shrunk by
50%. This financial cesspool is the most gigantic repository of dark
pool liquidity the world has ever seen.
The gambling done in the derivatives market is
used to manipulate the real economy, but none of the “wealth” in that
rigged casino ever circulates within the real economy. The chart above,
the heartbeat of the U.S. economy, shows what happens when most of the
wealth/liquidity in an economy is hoarded: the economy withers and dies.
washingtonsblog |One of the themes I’ve been addressing since 2008 is the neocolonial-plantation structure of the U.S. economy.
The old models of colonial exploitation that optimized plantations
worked by cheap imported labor (or situated in peripheral nations with
plenty of cheap labor) have, beneath the surface, been adapted to
advanced capitalist democracies.
The adaptations have been so
successful that not only do we not even recognize the Plantation
structure–we love our servitude within it.
As noted yesterday, the current mode of production optimizes the commoditization of everything: computer chips, fish and chips, labor, expertise, everything.
This commoditization optimizes the Plantation Model
of integrated production, global supply chains and distribution to
global marketplaces, a hierarchical management focused on maximizing
profits to send back to the owners, a ruthless focus on lowering costs
via labor arbitrage (commoditize the work so it can be performed
anywhere labor is cheaper/more desperate) and a fanatical desire to
eliminate competition or fix prices via cartels to ensure high profits.
Global capital has optimized the Plantation Model in the form of global corporations.
Wal-Mart is the quintessential example. Like a classic agricultural
plantation, Wal-Mart enters a region with a diverse, employment-rich
ecology of small businesses and supply chains of local and regional
manufacturers and distributors, and it bulldozes the entire “forest” of
businesses, suppliers and distributors with the irresistible blade of
integrated global supply chains and “lower prices, always.”
Wal-Mart replaces the localized economy
with a low-pay, highly efficient plantation economy in which the
townpeople’s only choice is to work for Wal-Mart or scrape out a living
feeding the Wal-Mart workers, doing their laundry, etc.–exactly as on a
classic plantation.
On a classic plantation, the wages are
low and the “company store” offers easy credit, binding the workers to
the corporation not just for wages but for credit.
Those few who manage to save up enough
capital to start small service businesses– laundry, cafes, etc.–must do
so in the shadow of the Company, which can always drive them out of
business should they speak against their corporate overlords.
A once-diverse landscape is reduced to a
monoculture wasteland dependent on subsidies, either implicit or
explicit. Wal-Mart’s low wages leave many of its workers’ families on
state aid or food stamps to survive, and so it prospers on the backs of
taxpayers who subsidize its low wages.
oilprice | Former Secretary of State, Condaleeza Rice, who also sits on the BoD,
along with Former CIA Director and Defense Secretary, Robert Gates,
both listed as an Exxon consultant, also were strong backers of
Tillerson to Trump.
It’s hardly a coincidence that Henry
Kissinger, for decades, the Rockefeller Family’s chief foreign policy
advisor, with strong personal connections to Russian President Putin,
has emerged as a chief foreign policy advisor to the Trump
Administration.
Nor is it surprising that published reports of
Kissinger’s advice to Trump is to seek to normalize US/Russian
relations, diametrically opposed to the Obama/Clinton policies of
confrontation with Russia.
It is also part of a broader strategy
to tempt Russia towards closer relations with the US/EU while
sacrificing its growing close relations with China, viewed by Trump, as
it was by Obama and Clinton, as the chief obstacle to the U.S. dominant
global leadership. As a critical part of the deal, Russia is expected to
accede to sacrifice its budding alliance with Iran.
Now the human
drama watch begins; will Putin cave in to the demands of the West to
renounce his allies in exchange for the improved relation and the
dropping of sanctions?
The West has in hand some very powerful
means of persuasion, including increased Russian access to the huge
European energy market, restored western financial credit, access to
Western technology, and a seat at the global decision-making table, all
of which Russia badly needs and wants. Consider that three Russian
proposed natural gas pipelines to Europe have been stalled since
sanctions were imposed over Ukraine, leaving billions of dollars on the
table.
Foreshadowing all of this was a news leak late last year in
Germany’s Bild Zeitung, that Kissinger has drafted a plan to officially
recognize Crimea as part of Russia and lift the Obama administration’s
economic sanctions.
What this means for Russia, just now emerging
from nearly two years of recession, is a possible return to prosperity,
an offer that any national leader would find hard to resist.
theburningplatform | First, we can all agree that Trump, if nothing else, throws a lot of
punches. We really saw this in the primaries where barely a day could go
by without some scandal that would supposedly end his presidential bid.
His opponents and the press erroneously thought that responding to each
and every “outrage” was the correct thing to do without ever taking the
time to think whether or not they had just walked into a trap. They
would use their turn to block his Twitter attack but he wouldn’t move
that piece again once that was in play but, instead, brought on the next
outrage – just like my coach instructed me to do.
Second, Trump is very vocal in what he is going to do. Just like I
had my students announced to each other their plans, Trump has been
nothing but transparent about what he intends to do. After all,
announcing your plans only works if your position is unassailable. It
demoralizes your opponent. You rub their face in it. Another benefit to
being vocal is that it encourages your opponent to bring out his
favorite piece to deal with said announced plans. This is a big mistake
as any good chess player will quickly recognize which piece his opponent
favors and then go take them.
Time has been the one area that our president is having problems.
Executive Orders and Twitter Wars have pushed the opposition off balance
but he has not been able to use this time to get all of his pieces into
play. The Justice Department (his Queen) is still stuck behind a wall
of pawns.
Furthermore, only 5 of his 15 Cabinet picks have been
confirmed as of this writing. Without control over these departments,
the president can fight a war of attrition but he really can’t go on the
offensive. In chess, I will gladly trade a piece for a piece if it
means you have to waste your turn dealing with it. It isn’t a long term
strategy if you do not have all of your pieces ready to go.
In the end it would appear that Trump is playing the kind of game
that I was taught to play by my coach. His opponents are never given
time to mount an attack. Their queen – the MSM has been removed from the
board and their favorite piece – the Celebrities are locked in a war of
attrition while Trump gets the rest of his pieces on the board.
Remember, these are all Tactics but Strategy flows from Tactics. Sooner
or later the Left will find itself in some terrible position and the
Strategy to drain the swamp will present itself.
NYTimes | The
war on drugs is essentially a war on people. But old habits die hard.
Many countries are still addicted to waging this war. As Colombia’s
current president, Juan Manuel Santos, said,
“We are still thinking within the same framework as we have done for
the last 40 years.” Fortunately, more and more governments also concede
that a new approach is needed, one that strips out the profits that
accompany drug sales while ensuring the basic human rights and public
health of all citizens.
If we are going to get drugs under control, we need to have an honest conversation. The Global Commission on Drug Policy
— of which I am a founding member — has supported an open,
evidence-based debate on drugs since 2011. We strongly support reducing
drug supply and demand, but differ fundamentally with hard-liners about
how this should be achieved. We are not soft on drugs. Far from it.
What
do we propose? Well, for one, we do not believe that military hardware,
repressive policing and bigger prisons are the answer. Real reductions
in drug supply and demand will come through improving public health and
safety, strengthening anticorruption measures — especially those that
combat money laundering — and investing in sustainable development. We
also believe that the smartest pathway to tackling drugs is
decriminalizing consumption and ensuring that governments regulate
certain drugs, including for medical and recreational purposes.
charleshughsmith | An insightful correspondent recently remarked on the striking transition
of American neighborhoods from commercial districts dominated by locally
owned businesses to streets lined with look-alike outlets of Corporate
America. This transition is so obvious that few even comment on it,
much less ask if this wholesale replacement is in the best interests of
residents and consumers.
I have long suggested starting any inquiry with a simple question: cui bono-- to whose benefit? Let's add a second essential question: what does the system optimize?
By this I mean: what is optimized by the infrastructure, regulations, political structure, etc.--what we call the mode of production.
I think it's abundantly clear that our mode of production optimizes large-scale global corporations, which
have access to the capital and expertise needed to optimize production,
management, employee training and discipline, supply chains and the
purchase of political influence.
tonyskansascity | ANOTHER KANSAS CITY COUNTRY CLUB PLAZA BIZ CALLS IT QUITS!!!
Higher crime and generic competition didn't inspire this local biz to remain in this town's most embattled entertainment district. Take a look:
counterpunch | Obama’s administration was, to be frank, a veritable killing machine,
one comprising almost daily drone strikes, kill lists, and the
wholesale destruction of entire countries, as in the case of Libya. In
his final year in office the US dropped 27,000 bombs, up from the number dropped in 2015. Yet we are meant to regard the 44th
president and recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize as the modern
incarnation of Dr Martin Luther King, a president who worked tirelessly
for peace and justice.
Reminding Mr O’Reilly and his ilk of a few basic facts when it comes
to the difference between Moscow and Washington’s actions around the
world in recent years, there is a significant difference between a
foreign policy driven by restoring stability and security to entire
regions, in the case of Russia vis-à-vis the Middle East, and a foreign
policy that has only succeeded in sowing instability and terrorism
across those regions, in the case of the United States.
Bill O’Reilly’s discomfort at being corrected by the country’s
President on the egregious record of his own country when it comes to
body count, was redolent to that of a vampire suddenly exposed to
daylight. The Fox News anchor was left floundering around in his chair,
rattled by Trump’s simple yet withering words of truth in response to
the kind of statement that has no place being made by any
self-respecting journalist.
But then the Bill O’Reilly’s of our world are not journalists they
are propagandists, engaged in spreading disinformation in the cause of
the previously mentioned myths that both sustain and nourish a perverse
worldview. America, the ‘land of the free’, is a force for good in the
world people such as him choose to believe. When we kill people we only
do so reluctantly and in service to the greater good of freedom and
liberty. Thus our bombs are good bombs, a fact that should be of comfort
to the families and loved ones of those we obliterate.
What needs to be explored in light of Mr O’Reilly’s interview with
President Trump is not so much his journalistic credentials but the
education system of which he is a product. It reveals a man who when
confronted with the choice between embracing truth or ideology has
chosen ideology.
While nobody should be under any illusions when it comes to Donald
Trump as the reincarnation of Hugo Chavez, he has revealed a propensity
for dropping the odd ‘truth bomb’ here and there, much to chagrin of
conservative and liberal commentators alike. And such truth bombs are
the killers that Bill O’Reilly truly fears – killing the smug
complacency and hypocrisy without which life loses all meaning.
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sciencemag | This spring, after days of flulike symptoms and fever, a man
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