lewrockwell | The concept of the Deep State originated in Turkey, which is appropriate since it’s the heir to the totally corrupt Byzantine and Ottoman empires. And in the best Byzantine manner, the Deep State has insinuated itself throughout the fabric of what once was America. Its tendrils reach from Washington down to every part of civil society. Like a metastasized cancer, it can no longer be easily eradicated.
I used to joke that there was nothing wrong with Washington that 10 megatons on the capital couldn’t cure. But I don’t say that anymore. Partially because it’s too dangerous, but mainly because it’s now untrue. What’s now needed is 10 megatons on the capital and four more bursts in a quadrant 10 miles out.
In many ways, Washington models itself after another city with a Deep State, ancient Rome. Here’s how a Victorian freethinker, Winwood Reade, accurately described it:
Rome lived upon its principal till ruin stared it in the face. Industry is the only true source of wealth, and there was no industry in Rome. By day the Ostia road was crowded with carts and muleteers, carrying to the great city the silks and spices of the East, the marble of Asia Minor, the timber of the Atlas, the grain of Africa and Egypt; and the carts brought out nothing but loads of dung. That was their return cargo.
The Deep State controls the political and economic essence of the U.S. This is much more than observing that there’s no real difference between the left and right wings of the Demopublican Party. It’s well known by anyone with any sense (that is, by everybody except the average voter) that although the Republicans say they believe in economic freedom (but don’t), they definitely don’t believe in social freedom. And the Democrats say they believe in social freedom (but don’t), but they definitely don’t believe in economic freedom.
Who Is Part of the Deep State?
The American Deep State is a real, but informal, structure that has arisen to not just profit from, but control, the State.
The Deep State has a life of its own, like the government itself. It’s composed of top-echelon employees of a dozen Praetorian agencies, like the FBI, CIA, and NSA…top generals, admirals, and other military operatives…long-term congressmen and senators…and directors of important regulatory agencies.
But Deep State is much broader than just the government. It includes the heads of major corporations, all of whom are heavily involved in selling to the State and enabling it. That absolutely includes Silicon Valley, although those guys at least have a sense of humor, evidenced by their “Don’t Be Evil” motto. It also includes all the top people in the Fed, and the heads of all the major banks, brokers, and insurers. Add the presidents and many professors at top universities, which act as Deep State recruiting centers…all the top media figures, of course…and many regulars at things like Bohemian Grove and the Council on Foreign Relations. They epitomize the status quo, held together by power, money, and propaganda.
Altogether, I’ll guess these people number a thousand or so. You might analogize the structure of the Deep State with a huge pack of dogs. The people I’ve just described are the top dogs.
CNN | A new decree by Venezuela's government could make its citizens work on farms to tackle the country's severe food shortages.
That "effectively amounts to forced labor," according to Amnesty International, which derided the decree as "unlawful."
In a vaguely-worded decree, Venezuelan officials indicated that public and private sector employees could be forced to work in the country's fields for at least 60-day periods, which may be extended "if circumstances merit."
"Trying to tackle Venezuela's severe food shortages by forcing people to work the fields is like trying to fix a broken leg with a band aid," Erika Guevara Rosas, Americas' Director at Amnesty International, said in astatement.
President Nicolas Maduro is using his executive powers to declare a state of economic emergency. By using a decree, he can legally circumvent Venezuela's opposition-led National Assembly -- the Congress -- which is staunchly against all of Maduro's actions.
According to the decree from July 22, workers would still be paid their normal salary by the government and they can't be fired from their actual job.
RT | A Turkish prosecutor has claimed that the CIA and FBI provided
training for the followers of powerful US-based Turkish cleric Fethullah
Gulen, whom Ankara blames for the coup attempt earlier this month.
The indictment, prepared
by the Edirne Public Prosecutor’s office and accepted by the local
Second Heavy Penal Court, seeks the harshest possible punishment for 43
suspects that have allegedly been linked to the failed coup attempt on
July 15, including the coup’s supposed mastermind, Fethullah Gulen, the
arch-nemesis of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
The prosecutor said on Thursday that members of what it describes as “the Fethullah Terrorist Organization” were trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI).
“The
CIA and FBI provided training in several subjects to the cadre raised
in the culture centers belonging to the Gulen movement. The operations
carried out by prosecutors and security officials during the Dec. 17
process can be taken as a good example of this,” the document says,
referring to a high profile corruption probe that targeted senior
government officials between December 17 and December 25 of 2013, as
reported by the Turkish Hurriyet daily.
The investigation affected
many officials linked to the Turkish Cabinet, which was headed by Recep
Tayyip Erdogan at that time. Erdogan, who is now Turkey’s president,
called it “a judicial coup” attempt, while accusing Gulen and his movement of orchestrating it with the help of some “foreign forces.”
The indictment states that Gulen loyalists received US training and infiltrated judicial and security institutions.
“This
[failed coup] attempt aimed to weaken the state with all its
institutions by getting rid of the government completely. Those in the
Gulen movement who work in the judicial and security institutions and
who received the aforementioned training, took on this task and moved
into action,” the document says, as quoted by the Anadolu news agency.
It adds that some other foreign secret services were also involved in
training the coup plotters, according to the Turkish Yeni Safak
newspaper.
Relations between Washington and Ankara soured
following the foiled coup attempt on July 15. Some Turkish media and
even government officials, including the labor minister, have claimed
that the US was somehow involved, despite an outright denial from the
US.
Immediately after the failed coup attempt, the Turkish
government criticized the US for providing safe haven for Gulen, saying
that a country that harbors “the coup planner” is “no friend”
to Turkey. Ankara has also repeatedly demanded that the US extradite
Gulen to Turkey, while Washington has maintained that Turkey must first
file a formal extradition request and provide solid proof of his
involvement in the coup.
WaPo | First a heatwave hit Siberia. Then came the anthrax.
Temperatures have soared in western Russia’s Yamal tundra this summer. Across Siberia, some provinces warmed an additional 10 degrees
Fahrenheit beyond normal. In the fields, large bubbles of vegetation
appeared above the melting permafrost — strange pockets of methane or,
more likely, water. Record fires blazed through dry Russian grassland.
In
one of the more unusual symptoms of unseasonable warmth, long-dormant
bacteria appear to be active. For the first time since 1941, anthrax
struck western Siberia. Thirteen Yamal nomads were hospitalized,
including four children, the Siberian Times reported. The bacteria took an even worse toll on wildlife, claiming some 1,500 reindeer since Sunday.
According
to NBC News, the outbreak is thought to stem from a reindeer
carcass that died in the plague 75 years ago. As the old flesh thawed,
the bacteria once again became active. The disease tore through the
reindeer herds, prompting the relocation of dozens of the indigenous
Nenet community. Herders face a quarantine that may last until September.
The
governor, Dmitry Kobylkin, declared a state of emergency. On Tuesday,
Kobylkin said “all measures” had been taken to isolate the area, according
to AP. “Now the most important thing is the safety and health of our
fellow countrymen — the reindeer herders and specialists involved in the
quarantine.”
Anthrax has broken out in Russia several times, including one outbreak stemming from a 1979 accident at a military facility.
To the south of Yamal, anthrax may rarely appear when infection spreads
from cattle; a man died from such exposure in 2012, the Siberian Times reported.
nakedcapitalism | Leading up to Monday’s Democratic Party convention, Hillary chose
Blue Dog Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia as her VP. This was followed by
the Wikileaks release of Democratic National Committee (DNC) e-mail
files showing it acting as the Clinton Campaign Committee even to the
point of using the same lawyers as her own campaign to oppose Bernie
Sanders.
The response across the Democratic neocon spectrum, from Anne Applebaum at the Washington Post
to red-baiting Paul Krugman and the Sunday talk shows it was suggested
that behind the Wikileaks to release DNC e-mails was a Russian plot to
help elect Trump as their agent. Former US ambassador to Russia Michael
McFaul lent his tattered reputation to claim that Putin must have
sponsored the hackers who exposed the DNC dirty tricks against Bernie.
The attack on Trump was of course aimed at Sanders. At first it
didn’t take off. Enough delegates threatened to boo DNC head (and
payday-loan lobbyist) Debbie Wasserman Schultz off stage if she showed
her face at the podium to gavel the convention to order. The down-note
would have threatened the “United Together” theme, so she was forced to
resign. But Hillary rewarded her loyalty by naming her honorary chairman
of her own presidential campaign! If you’re loyal, you get a pay-off.
The DNC was doing what it was supposed to do. No reform seems likely.
The Democratic machine orchestrated a media campaign to distract
attention by attributing the leaks were to a Russian plot to undermine
American democracy (as if the e-mails did not show how undemocratic the
DNC had operated in stacking the primaries). A vote against Hillary
would be a vote for Trump – and a vote for Trump would really be for
Putin. And as Hillary had explained earlier, Putin = Hitler. The media
let it be known that attacking Wasserman Schultz – and by extension,
Hillary’s neocon policies – makes one a Russian dupe. This theme colored
the entire convention week.
Endorsing Hillary’s presidential bid on Monday evening, Sanders
joined in the chorus that this November will pit Good against Evil – or
as Ray McGovern put it on RT’s Cross Talk, at least proxies for
Netanyahu vs. Putin. Wall Street Senator Chuck Schumer went on TV to
heave a sigh of relief that the party was indeed united together.
Many Sanders’ supporters felt no obligation to follow his obeisance.
Many walked out after he closed Tuesday’s state-by-state roll call by
throwing his support behind Clinton. Others chanted “Lock Her Up”.
VP Kaine as Hillary’s Stand-in if She’s Indicted or Seems Unelectable
Guardian | The Republican party wants my liberal vote. This was the most shocking wave to wash over my brain last week as I sat in the convention center in Cleveland. It was more startling in its way than the storm of hate that I saw descend on former GOP hero Ted Cruz, stranger than the absence of almost all the party’s recent standard-bearers, weirder than the police-state atmosphere that hovered over the streets of the city.
TheRepublicanswere trying to win the support of people like me! Not tactfully or convincingly or successfully, of course: they don’t know the language of liberalism and wouldn’t speak it if they did; and most of the liberals I know will never be swayed anyway. But they were trying nevertheless.
Donald Trump’s many overtures to supporters of Senator Bernie Sanders were just the beginning. He also deliberately echoed the language of Franklin Roosevelt, he denounced “big business” (not once but several times), and certain of his less bloodthirsty foreign policy proposals almost remind one of George McGovern’s campaign theme: “Come home, America.”
Ivanka Trump promised something that sounded like universal day care. Peter Thiel denounced the culture wars as a fraud and a distraction. The Republican platform was altered to include a plank calling for thebreakup of big banksvia the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall. I didn’t hear anyone talk about the need to bring “entitlements” under control. And most crucially, the party’s maximum leader has adopted the left critique of “free trade” almost in its entirety, a critique that I have spent much of my adult life making.
It boggles my simple liberal mind. The party of free trade and free markets now says it wants to break up Wall Street banks and toss Nafta to the winds. The party of family values has nominated a thrice-married vulgarian who doesn’t seem threatened by gay people or concerned about the war over bathrooms. The party of empire wants to withdraw from foreign entanglements.
slate |How do you think about Trump vs. Clinton, given your strong anti-establishment feelings?
Just take a step back for a second. One of the things that is bothering me and bothered me about the Brexit debate, and is bothering me a huge amount about the Trump debate, is that there is zero elite reckoning with their own responsibility in creating the situation that led to both Brexit and Trump and then the broader collapse of elite authority. The reason why Brexit resonated and Trump resonated isn’t that people are too stupid to understand the arguments. The reason they resonated is that people have been so fucked by the prevailing order in such deep and fundamental and enduring ways that they can’t imagine that anything is worse than preservation of the status quo. You have this huge portion of the populace in both the U.K. and the US that is so angry and so helpless that they view exploding things without any idea of what the resulting debris is going to be to be preferable to having things continue, and the people they view as having done this to them to continue in power. That is a really serious and dangerous and not completely invalid perception that a lot of people who spend their days scorning Trump and his supporters or Brexit played a great deal in creating.
So rather than just side with one side or the other and say I am against Brexit or against Trump, I mean, who the fuck needs me to say that? Do you think anyone is going to be influenced by my endorsement? I am not so self-important that I think it matters for me to come out and endorse a candidate.
I’m not—
I know you’re not. I am asked that a lot, or asked why I won’t say that I endorse Hillary or whatever. I see my role as being a corrective to whatever consensus emerges that I don’t think is being subjected to enough critical scrutiny. Just pushing back against that is the most you can hope to do as a journalist, against unquestioned assumptions embedded within the conventional wisdom. I am not a political prognosticator, but I always thought and still think that the chances are overwhelmingly high that Hillary is going to be the next president. I always thought that and still think that. So when I think about the outcome, and what the ultimate result is going to be, I generally look past that, and think about things that can be accomplished before that, or things that can be accomplished once that happens.
I guess the counter is that the people who have been fucked over in our society, and they aren’t just Trump voters, who are almost all white, a Trump presidency for them would mean something much worse. John Lanchester has an essay in the London Review of Books where he says that Brexit probably won’t end up happening, which will screw over the wishes of the white working class who voted for it. Well, if the elites allow it to happen, the white working classes will suffer more and everyone will blame the elites.
Yes, exactly, I agree with that. But this gets back to the point I was trying to make earlier, which is, if you are someone who wants to stop Trump or Brexit, your goal should be to communicate effectively with the people who believe it is in their interest to support Trump or Brexit. I think in general there is no effort on the part of media elites to communicate with those people and do anything other than tell them that they are primitive, racist, and stupid. And if the message being sent is that you are primitive, racist, and stupid, and not that you have been fucked over in ways that are really bad and need to be rectified, of course those people are not going to be receptive to the message coming from the people who view them with contempt and scorn. I think that is why Brexit won, and I think that is the real danger of Trump winning.
FP | Russia’s push into Georgia in 2008, into Ukraine in 2014, and its recent
campaign in Syria, as well as its efforts to consolidate a sphere of
influence in the inner Eurasian heartland of the former USSR called the
Eurasian Union, all are eerily foretold in geopolitical theory.
Mackinder held that geography, not economics, is the fundamental
determinant of world power and Russia, simply by virtue of its physical
location, inherits a primary global role. Under President Vladimir
Putin, the slightly kooky tenets of Mackinder’s theory have made inroads
into the establishment, mostly because of one man, Alexander Dugin, a
right wing intellectual and bohemian who emerged from the Perestroika
era in the the 1980s as one of Russia’s chief nationalists.
Largely thanks to Dugin’s murky connections within the elite, Geopolitics today is mainstream.
Mackinder’s arguments were useful to Dugin and other hardliners who
contended that conflict with the West was a permanent condition for
Russia, though they had trouble explaining why. The reasons for the Cold
War had seemingly evaporated with the end of ideological confrontation,
in a new era of universal tolerance, democracy, and the “end of
history.”
The Englishman’s elevation to the status of grand mufti of Atlantic power was assisted by Dugin, who in 1997 published The Foundations of Geopolitics,
one of the most curious, impressive, and terrifying books to come out
of Russia during the entire post-Soviet era, and one that became a pole
star for a broad section of Russian hardliners. The book grew out of
Dugin’s hobnobbing with New Right thinkers and his fortnightly lectures
at the General Staff Academy under the auspices of General Igor
Rodionov, the hardliner’s hardliner who would serve as defense minister
from 1996 to 1997. By 1993, according to Dugin, the notes from his
lectures had been compiled as a set of materials, which all entrants to
the Academy were supposed to use, and which were frequently amended and
annotated by new insights from the generals, or following the odd
lecture by a right-wing ideologue flown in from Paris or Milan.
Dugin thus set out self-consciously to write a how-to manual for
conquest and political rule in the manner of Niccolò Machiavelli. Like The Prince (which
was essentially a fawning job application written to Florentine ruler
Lorenzo de’ Medici after Machiavelli had been out of power and exiled
for ten years), Dugin wrote his book as an ode to Russia’s national
security nomenklatura from the depths of his post-1993
wilderness. Until 1991 he had been one of the hardliners’ chief
propagandists, writing a combination of conspiracy theories and
nationalist demagoguery for The Day, a newspaper funded by the
defense ministry. But following the failed coup by the KGB and the Red
Army in August of that year, Dugin had been in internal exile with
little way to support himself.
Together with fellow nationalist intellectual Eduard Limonov he had
founded a cantankerous political movement called the National Bolshevik
Party (NBP), which he called a “political art project” and in addition
he rather improbably landed a visiting lectureship at the Academy of the
General Staff as a result of connections to the hardliners and to
Rodionov. Drawing on his connections with military academics and sitting
in the dirty basement of the NBP’s Frunzenskaya Street headquarters,
Dugin wrote a book that would become a major influence on Russia’s
hardliners.
In Dugin’s capable hands, Mackinder was transformed from an obscure
Edwardian curiosity who never got tenure at Oxford, into a sort of
Cardinal Richelieu of Whitehall, whose whispered counsels to the great
men of state provided a sure hand on the tiller of British strategic
thinking for half a century, and whose ideas continue to be the
strategic imperatives for a new generation of secret mandarins.
WaPo | Russia believes that its heroin problem was caused, even perhaps
intentionally, by the United States with the destabilization of
Afghanistan. But Russia can also surely see that the war on drugs is
weakening the United States. Every year Americans of all races
collectively spend $100 billion to buy illegal drugs.
As a country, we then bear costs of roughly $100 billion a year from
fighting the crime related to illegal drugs and from the loss to
productivity caused by incarceration. Our national defense budget, by
way of contrast, is $600 billion
a year. If you want a competitor to be thrown off focus by a
distraction, a project that drains its resources at this scale annually
would seem welcome.
Then there is the social division spawned by
the war on drugs. The burdens of mass incarceration and the increased
capacity of the police for violence have fallen most heavily on African
Americans and Latinos, despite the equal-opportunity use of drugs by
whites, blacks and Latinos. The combined impact of racial disparities in
mass incarceration and in the application of police force has now, in
2016, brought about the most severe racial split that our country has
seen in a long time.
This racial division isn’t merely
depressing and dispiriting. It isn’t merely material for politicians
from either party to exploit. It also weakens us as a country. Any
country where citizens are engaged in intense conflict and controversy
among themselves has a reduced capacity to play an impactful role in the
world. What the war on drugs has done to us is good news for Russia.
And
here it is worth remembering that “law-and-order” Donald Trump would
double down. When Trump invokes his mighty wall on the Mexican border,
he often extols as a virtue that it will keep the drugs out. Every time I
hear crowds chant, “Build the wall,”
I can’t help but think about the all the tunnels that international
drug traffickers have already constructed underneath our border. A Trump
wall would go up; the web of drug tunnels would go under.
At
this point, our situation is already crystal clear. The drug war is not
solving the problems of either addiction or crime. It is, however,
tearing our social fabric, and that weakens us as a country, including
within the geopolitical order. Trump and Putin are on the same page
here. With regard to the war on drugs, they are aligned in pursuing a
policy that makes America weaker.
guardian | Last week it was announced that June was the warmest June on record
– making it the 14th consecutive month of a record being set. It comes
at a time our government and many in the media remain wilfully resistant
to efforts to combat climate change, and at a time when the data should
worry everyone.
One of the best things about the election result has been the cabinet reshuffle, which has seen Greg Hunt no longer the minister for the environment.
I once called him the emptiest suit in the history of Australian
politics, and maybe that was wrong because given how he exited the role,
perhaps a better descriptor is the biggest troll in Australian
politics.
On leaving the job Hunt, told reporters that “I feel as if my work is done.”
No minister for the environment could look at the data of global
temperatures and think their work is done – especially if the majority
of their work involved pushing the con of Direct Action onto the public.
The temperature data is now at such a point that it requires absurd
levels of conspiracy theory to suggest climate change is not occurring.
Last week the US agencies, Nasa and Noaa announced the June figures.
We shouldn’t be too shocked about them – according to Noaa it was the
14th consecutive month in which a new record had been set. The news from
Nasa is not as horrible – June was just the ninth consecutive
record-setting month.
About the best you can say about June is that at least it wasn’t as big a record as the previous months have been this year:
unz | In any event, Putin and Erdogan have settled their differences and
scheduled a meeting for the beginning of August. In other words, the
first world leader Erdogan plans to meet after the coup, is his new
friend, Vladimir Putin. Is Erdogan trying to make a statement? It
certainly looks like it. Here’s the story from the Turkish Daily
Hurriyet:
“Turkish President Recep Tayyip ErdoÄźan and Russian
President Vladimir Putin may meet in a face-to-face meeting in August as
part of mutual efforts to normalize bilateral ties following months of
tension due to the downing of a Russian warplane by the Turkish Air
Forces in November…
With the normalization of ties, Russia removed some sanctions on
trade and restrictions on Russian tourists, though it will continue to
impose visa regime to Turkish nationals. A deeper conversation between
the two countries over a number of international issues like Syria and
Crimea will follow soon between the two foreign ministers before the
Putin-ErdoÄźan meeting.” (Putin, ErdoÄźan to meet soon in bid to start new era in Turkey-Russia ties, Hurriyet)
Is it starting to sound like Turkey may have slipped out of
Washington’s orbit and moved on to more reliable friends that will
respect their interests?
Indeed. And this sudden rapprochement could have catastrophic
implications for US Middle East policy. Consider, for example, that the
US not only depends on Turkey’s Incirlik Airbase to conduct its air
campaign in Syria, but also, that that same facility houses “roughly 90
US tactical nuclear weapons.” What if Erdogan suddenly decides that it’s
no longer in Turkey’s interest to provide the US with access to the
base or that he would rather allow Russian bombers and fighters to use
the base? (According to some reports, this is already in the works.)
More importantly, what happens to US plans to pivot to Asia if the
crucial landbridge (Turkey) that connects Europe and Asia breaks with
Washington and joins the coalition of Central Asian states that are
building a new free trade zone beyond Uncle Sam’s suffocating grip?
One last thing: There was an important one-paragraph article in
Moscow Reuters on Monday that didn’t appear in the western press so
we’ll reprint it here:
MOSCOW (Reuters) – Russia’s joint projects with Turkey,
including the TurkStream undersea natural gas pipeline from Russia to
Turkey, are still on the agenda and have a future, RIA news agency
quoted Russian Deputy Prime Minister Arkady Dvorkovich as saying on
Monday.” (Russian Dep PM says joint projects with Turkey still on agenda, Reuters)
This is big. Erdogan is now reopening the door the Obama team tried
so hard to shut. This is a major blow to Washington’s plan to control
the vital resources flowing into Europe from Asia and to make sure they
remain denominated in US dollars. If the agreement pans out, Putin will
have access to the thriving EU market through the southern corridor
which will strengthen ties between the two continents, expand the use of
the ruble and euro for energy transactions, and create a free trade
zone from Lisbon to Vladivostok. And Uncle Sam will be watching from the
sidelines.
All of a sudden, Washington’s “pivot” plan looks to be in serious trouble.
strategic-culture | NATO
and the US’s other military umbrellas in Asia-Pacific and the Middle
East, are not motivated primarily about maintaining security and peace.
These military pacts are all about providing the US with a political,
legal and moral rationale for intervening its forces in key geopolitical
regions. The massive expenditure by the US on military alliances is
really all about maintaining Washington’s hegemony over allies and
perceived enemies alike. The reality is that America’s «defense» pacts
are more a source of relentless tensions and conflicts. Europe and the
South China Sea are testimony to that if we disabuse the notional
pretensions otherwise.
In
all the heated reaction to Trump’s latest comments on NATO the
over-riding assumption is that the United States is a force for good,
law and order and peace.
Under the headline «Trump NATO plan would be sharp break with decades-long US policy», this Reuters reportage belies the false indoctrination of what US and NATO’s purpose is actually about. It reports: «Republican
foreign policy veterans and outside experts warned that the suggestion
by Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump that he might abandon
NATO’s pledge to automatically defend all alliance members could destroy
an organization that has helped keep the peace for 66 years and could
invite Russian aggression».
Really?
Maintaining peace for 66 years? Not if you live in former Yugoslavia,
Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, or Ukraine and Syria where NATO powers have
been covertly orchestrating and sponsoring conflicts.
Also note the unquestioned insinuation by Reuters that without NATO that would «invite Russian aggression».
If we return to the original question posed by the New York Times, which sparked the flurry of pro-NATO reaction, the newspaper put it to Trump like this:
«Asked
about Russia’s threatening activities, which have unnerved the small
Baltic States that are among the more recent entrants into NATO, Mr
Trump said that if Russia attacked them, he would decide whether to come
to their aid only after reviewing if those nations have fulfilled their
obligations to us».
The NY Times,
like so many NATO advocates who went apoplectic over Trump, is
constructing its argument on an entirely false and illusory premise of «Russia’s threatening activities».
Unfortunately,
it seems, Trump bought into this false premise by answering the
question, even though his conditional answer has set off a firestorm
among NATO and Western foreign policy establishments. Can you imagine
the reaction if he had, instead, rebutted the false assertion about
there even being Russian aggression?
But
this fabrication of «Russian threat» is an essential part of the wider
fabrication about what the US-led NATO alliance is really functioning
for. It is not about defending «the free world» from Russian or Soviet
«aggression», or, for that matter, from Iranian, Chinese, North Korean,
or Islamic terrorist threats. In short, NATO and US military
«protection» has got nothing to do with defense and peace. It is about
protecting American corporate profits and hegemony.
Ever
since its inception in 1949 by the US under President Truman, NATO is a
construct that serves to project American presence and power around the
world, as well as propping up its taxpayer-subsidized
military-industrial complex. The most geopolitically vital theatre is
Europe, where the European nations must be kept divided from any form of
normal political and economic relations with Russia. If that were to
happen, American hegemonic power, as we know it, is over. That’s what
the alarmism among the NATO advocates over Trump is really about.
journal-neo | For 17 months, since the Minsk
Agreements were signed in February 2015 to try to bring peace to the
eastern Ukraine the Kiev regime, and its neo-Nazi and NATO allies, have
been preparing for a new offensive against the east Ukraine republics.
On July 22nd the Russian Ambassador Vitaly Churkin stated in a letter to
the UN Security Council that “a relapse of large-scale military
operations in eastern Ukraine may bury the process of peace settlement
there.” He then called on Kiev’s allies to pressure Kiev to back off its
war preparations which include the continuous shelling of civilian
areas by Ukraine heavy and medium artillery and constant probing attacks
by Ukraine and foreign units over the past spring and summer months.
The shelling has destroyed civilian
housing, a water treatment plant and other infrastructure with the clear
objective of forcing out the residents and to prepare the ground for a
large scale offensive. Ambassador Churkin added that not only were
regular Kiev forces massing in the east but they had also deployed the
new-Nazi Azov and Donbas “volunteer” battalions, and that Kiev has begun
a wide ranging seizure of land in the neutral zone and the towns
located there.
The Germans have also made noises about
being prepared to halt this economic warfare against Russia, about how
much they regret it and how they desire only peace and harmony, but,
again, only if Russia adheres to their demands.
internationalman | Probably the most objectionable thing I find about Hillary is her reckless promotion of war.
I think she advocated for just about every conflict the U.S. has gotten
involved with in the past 30 years, most of which have been unmitigated
disasters.
She’s an ardent supporter of arming the so-called moderate Syrian rebels and toppling Bashar Al-Assad.
She’s supported the regime change in Ukraine.
She backed the surge in Afghanistan, which, predictably, accomplished exactly nothing.
She was the deciding factor in pushing Bill to bomb Serbia in the 1990s.
She infamously voted for the 2003 Iraq invasion.
And, of course, she was one of the main pushers of the NATO
intervention in Libya that toppled Muammar Gaddafi. After rebels
gruesomely executed Gaddafi—they reportedly sodomized him with a
bayonet—Hillary said on national TV, “We came, we saw, he died.” It’s
sort of a sociopathic spin on “Veni, vidi, vici,” a famous saying from Julius Caesar, the Roman leader, which means “I came, I saw, I conquered.”
These are just some examples off the top of my head. She has apparently
learned nothing—or the completely wrong lessons—from this trail of
disasters. She’s an unrepentant warmonger. And I think the odds of WWIII
breaking out will be much higher under a Hillary presidency.
One nugget from Hillary’s email scandal, known as the Blumenthal Memo,
basically disclosed that the real reason NATO wanted to go after Gaddafi
was not a desire to bring freedom, democracy and unicorns to the Libyan
people, but because NATO feared that Gaddafi would use his vast gold
reserves to back a currency that would displace a version of the French
franc that is used in Central and Western Africa.
After NATO-backed rebels toppled Gaddafi, plans for the gold-backed
currency, along with the gold itself, vanished like a double
cheeseburger placed in front of Chris Christie.
Strangely, this damning piece of information from her emails barely gets a peep in the mass media narrative.
economic-undertow | The West was to become a Keynesian paradise of endless abundance and leisure, a suburbanite fairyland of Negro-free gated ‘communities’, of pastel McMansions and luxury SUVs; of gourmet meals crafted from GMO ingredients washed down with magnums of Veuve Clicquot and narcissism. We would play croquet as eternal children under the glorious sunshine of prosperity while ‘disutility’ (labor) would be performed ‘somewhere else’ (Mexico). The waste and destruction associated with industrialization would vanish because we would all be rich enough to hire robots to clean up after us.
There were a few clouds: the tail-end of trivial conflicts in Central America; the ‘War on Drugs’, the Asian finance crisis in 1997 and the collapse of the Russian economy the following year.Long Term Capital Managementfollowed the Russian economy into the toilet in early 1998 necessitating the first ‘rescue us or else’ mega-bailout of Wall Street. These events were diversionary theater: people who could afford it lost some money, bosses who badly needed new jobs lost theirs. All in all the entire reconfiguration process turned out to be remarkably painless.
Looking back, the notion of final geopolitical resolution was naively optimistic, a quaint artifact of a particular zeitgeist, like Beatle Boots or flip cellphones. What was really happening was the ending of the ending: ancient monsters were not vanquished only hibernating so as to take new forms. Now, when we need it most and want it least, history has stormed out of its coffin like a vengeful, blood-hungry vampire, reminding us all why we wanted to be rid of it in the first place.
This is the terror that dares not speak its name; not to be engulfed by refugees or shot by militants but forced by desperate necessity to become one! Rage is fear by another name.
Tyrants like Trump and Erdogan (and Clinton) are products of industrial resource capitalism no different from McMansions and automobiles, they are also fetishes. Unlike vicarious pleasure-pussy Taylor Swift, tyrants symbolize power, ruthlessness and control … and increasing surpluses. Their promise to harvest gains by whatever means is the substance of their public appeal. The relationship between tyrant and followers is symbiotic and self-reinforcing. Adherents give form and color to the tyrant’s outline while the tyrant suspends- or outruns institutional restraints, providing the necessary sanction for adherents to act out their own impulses, destructive or otherwise.
The emergence of tyrants like Trump and Erdogan (and Clintons) is suggestive: that technology cannot produce the consumer outcomes we are desperate to preserve. If technology could save us autocrats would not be necessary. They are reductive rather than creative, their first- and last resort is coercion as when governmentsdragoon pensioners rather than machines to rescue finance.
bloomberg | How does a company lose 69 million customers? Just ask Citigroup Inc.
Once upon a time, about a decade ago, the New York-based bank
had a global retail empire stretching from Tokyo to Tegucigalpa. It
offered consumer banking in 50 countries, covering half the planet’s
land mass, and served 268 million people.
Then a financial crisis, billions of dollars of losses from
complicated securities linked to subprime mortgages and a government
bailout upended its plans. The bank has since sold or shut retail
operations in more than half the countries in which it had a presence,
including Guatemala, Egypt and Japan. It reduced the number of branches
in the U.S. by more than two-thirds and has gotten out of subprime
lending, student loans and life insurance. In the process, it let go
about 25 percent of its customers along with more than 40 percent of its
workforce.
“Banks are figuring out that providing every product and
every service to every client in every country was just wrong,” said
Vikram Pandit, who led Citigroup from 2007 to 2012 and used to tout what
he called the company’s globality. “So they are unwinding and shedding
assets. We’re not close to being done.”
The transformation of Citigroup, and similar changes at HSBC Holdings
Plc and other global banks, isn’t just about cutting expenses. It’s
also about looking for greater returns by focusing on the richest
customers -- high-net-worth individuals, large corporations and
institutional investors.
Citigroup says it’s leaner and safer today. But in serving
those clients, the bank has bulked up on trading, a business that helped
get it into trouble before. It doubled the amount of derivatives
contracts it has underwritten since the crisis to $56 trillion. The
company, which used to make most of its profit from consumer banking,
now gets the majority from corporate and investment banking.
HSBC, which had an even bigger global retail footprint than
Citigroup’s and advertised itself as “the world’s local bank,” also has
retreated, quitting or planning to get out of consumer banking in more
than half the countries it was in and jettisoning 80 million customers.
Retail banking’s share of profit has dropped by half as commercial
lending and investment banking filled the gap.
Spencer’s arguments should of course be
evaluated on their own merits, regardless of who commissioned them.
However, it turns out that they have little merit on which to stand. The
white paper is a classic example of a Gish Gallop – producing such a large volume of nonsense arguments that refuting all of them is too time-consuming.
‘There are no jokes. The truth is the funniest joke of all.’ Muhammad Ali
Introduction
Writing up articles on climate change is difficult these days. Last
week alone, 46 new papers and reports were published. I am certain that
there are many more. The figure only refers to the sources I usually
consult. I try to read all abstracts and all articles I find
interesting, but sometimes I shy away from it: it is just too
depressing. According to Naomi Oreskes,
a great number of climate change scientists (she interviewed most of
the top 200 climate change scientists in the US) suffer from some sort
of mood imbalance or mild or serious depression. It is easy to
understand why: we see the climate change taking the planet apart right
in front of our eyes. We also clearly see, right in front of us, what
urgently needs to done to stave off global disaster on an unprecedented
scale. We need carbon taxes and the reconversion of industry and energy
towards zero CO2 emissions systems. This route is without any doubt
technically and economically feasible, but politically it seems to be
permanently locked. If we do not unlock it, the future looks bleak, not
to say hopeless, for humankind.
Data on warming, rain bombs, storms and water vapour feedbacks
NASA recently released data showing that the planet has just seen seven straight months of not just record-breaking, but record-shattering heat (see here). We are well on track to see what will likely be the largest increase in global temperature a single year has ever seen (see here and here).
The NASA data show that May was the hottest May ever recorded, as well
as the fact that it crushed the previous May record by the largest
margin of increase ever recorded. The same is now true for June (see here). That makes it five months in a row that the monthly record has been broken and by the largest margin ever. When record-smashing months started in February, scientists began talking about a “climate emergency.” Since then the situation has only escalated.
The answer to the oft-asked
question of whether an event is caused by climate change is that this is
the wrong question. All weather events are affected by climate change
because the environment in which they occur is warmer and moister than
it used to be. Changes in extremes, such as higher temperatures and
increases in heavy rains and droughts are not related to climate change,
they are climate change (see here).
ourfiniteworld | Does it make a difference if our models of energy and the economy are
overly simple? I would argue that it depends on what we plan to use the
models for. If all we want to do is determine approximately how many
years in the future energy supplies will turn down, then a simple model
is perfectly sufficient. But if we want to determine how we might change
the current economy to make it hold up better against the forces it is
facing, we need a more complex model that explains the economy’s real
problems as we reach limits. We need a model that tells the correct shape of the curve, as well as the approximate timing. I suggest reading my recent post regarding complexity and its effects as background for this post.
The common lay interpretation of simple models is that running out
of energy supplies can be expected to be our overwhelming problem in
the future. A more complete model suggests that our problems as we
approach limits are likely to be quite different: growing wealth
disparity, inability to maintain complex infrastructure, and growing
debt problems. Energy supplies that look easy to extract will not, in fact, be available because prices will not rise high enough.
These problems can be expected to change the shape of the curve of
future energy consumption to one with a fairly fast decline, such as the
Seneca Cliff.
It is not intuitive, but complexity-related issues create a situation
in which economies need to grow, or they will collapse. See my post, The Physics of Energy and the Economy.
The popular idea that we extract 50% of a resource before peak, and 50%
after peak will be found not to be true–much of the second 50% will
stay in the ground.
Some readers may be interested in a new article that I assisted in
writing, relating to the role that price plays in the quantity of oil
extracted. The article is called, “An oil production forecast for China considering economic limits.” This article has been published by the academic journal Energy, and is available as a free download for 50 days.
wikipedia |Clinton Cash is an investigation of the foreign benefactors of Bill and Hillary Clinton and the Clinton Foundation.[6] It investigates alleged connections between Clinton Foundation donors and Hillary Clinton’s work at the State Department.[7]
The book argues that the Clinton family accepted lavish donations and
speaking fees from foreign donors at times when the State Department
was considering whether or not to award large contracts to groups and
people affiliated with those donors.[8]
The book is organized into eleven chapters. Some chapters focus on
particular transactions or deals, such as the creation of UrAsia Energy
and Uranium One in Kazkakhstan, and the connection shareholders had and
have to the Clintons. Other chapters focus on a broader set of
relationships, particularly with regard to Bill Clinton’s paid speeches
during the years Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State, and
whether those paying for his speeches had significant business before
the State Department.[8] Schweizer dubs the Clintons' blend of government service and private remuneration the “Clinton blur.”
A Foundation of Joy
-
Two years and I've lost count of how many times my eye has been operated
on, either beating the fuck out of the tumor, or reattaching that slippery
eel ...
April Three
-
4/3
43
When 1 = A and 26 = Z
March = 43
What day?
4 to the power of 3 is 64
64th day is March 5
My birthday
March also has 5 letters.
4 x 3 = 12
...
Return of the Magi
-
Lately, the Holy Spirit is in the air. Emotional energy is swirling out of
the earth.I can feel it bubbling up, effervescing and evaporating around
us, s...
New Travels
-
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
-
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 ...