the server, the foundation, billybob - hugh hewitt OWNS clinton apologists...,

hotair |  Finally, let’s stop focusing on the fact that this meeting was inappropriate because Clinton’s wife is under investigation by Lynch’s Justice Department. I mean, that’s bad, but it’s actually letting Lynch and Clinton off the hook a bit. By focusing on the appearance of conflict because Hillary Clinton is being investigated, we are willfully overlooking the very real conflict in the fact that Clinton himself is under investigation, as the Grand Poo-bah at the Clinton Foundation. (Fox News)

The FBI investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of private email as secretary of state has expanded to look at whether the possible “intersection” of Clinton Foundation work and State Department business may have violated public corruption laws, three intelligence sources not authorized to speak on the record told Fox News.

This new investigative track is in addition to the focus on classified material found on Clinton’s personal server.

“The agents are investigating the possible intersection of Clinton Foundation donations, the dispensation of State Department contracts and whether regular processes were followed,” one source said.

Yes, the investigation into the intersection of Clinton Foundation donations and the State Department slimes Hillary Clinton since it happened during her tenure as Secretary of State, but what about Bill Clinton? If the State Department and Hillary Clinton acted improperly or illegally by commingling staff and by granting favors to Clinton Foundation donors, isn’t the Clinton Foundation, and Bill Clinton equally guilty of wrongdoing?

This may explain why the day after the surreptitious meeting in Phoenix, Lynch’s Justice Department informed a judge they were going to drag their feet on the release of emails connecting the former president’s foundation and the State Department: (Daily Caller)

Department of Justice officials filed a motion in federal court late Wednesday seeking a 27-month delay in producing correspondence between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s four top aides and officials with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a closely allied public relations firm that Bill Clinton helped launch.

If the court permits the delay, the public won’t be able to read the communications until October 2018, about 22 months into her prospective first term as President. The four senior Clinton aides involved were Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Michael Fuchs, Ambassador-At-Large Melanne Verveer, Chief of Staff Cheryl Mills, and Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin.

I guess when all of this adds up, it’s clear why Lynch and her FBI agents were so intent on keeping this inappropriate meeting private.

you can't be sure what you think

DOTE |  Implicit bias is usually associated (in research) with racial bias. Thus the Aeon article cited at outset goes through this exercise.

Do you think racial stereotypes are false? Are you sure? I’m not asking if you’re sure whether or not the stereotypes are false, but if you’re sure whether or not you think that they are. That might seem like a strange question.
We all know what we think, don’t we?

But of course the whole point is that we don't know what we think.

...Another consequence [of ISA theory] is that we might be sincerely mistaken about our own beliefs.
Return to my question about racial stereotypes. I guess you said you think they are false. But if the ISA theory is correct, you can’t be sure you think that.
Studies show that people who sincerely say that racial stereotypes are false often continue to behave as if they are true when not paying attention to what they are doing.
Such behavior is usually said to manifest an implicit bias, which conflicts with the person’s explicit beliefs. But the ISA theory offers a simpler explanation. People think that the stereotypes are true but also that it is not acceptable to admit this and therefore say they are false. Moreover, they say this to themselves too, in inner speech, and mistakenly interpret themselves as believing it.
They are hypocrites but not conscious hypocrites. Maybe we all are.

Maybe we're all unconscious hypocrites. In fact, that is part of the Flatland claim. The Flatland model also says that "implicit bias" is far more general than simple racial bias. We can't be sure what we think because those biases exist in the unconscious, which by definition is inaccessible to us.

Now, consider an essay which just appeared in The Guardian called—and I'm not kidding—Why elections are bad for democracy. The author is named David VanReybrouck.

Brexit is a turning point in the history of western democracy. Never before has such a drastic decision been taken through so primitive a procedure — a one-round referendum based on a simple majority.
Never before has the fate of a country—of an entire continent, in fact—been changed by the single swing of such a blunt axe, wielded by disenchanted and poorly informed citizens.

I'm here to tell you that there is nothing more democratic than a simple up/down referendum where each vote counts equally. Nothing. That's as democratic as things get.

the link between language and cognition...,

aeon |  Scientists working on animal cognition often dwell on their desire to talk to the animals. Oddly enough, this particular desire must have passed me by, because I have never felt it. I am not waiting to hear what my animals have to say about themselves, taking the rather Wittgensteinian position that their message might not be all that enlightening. Even with respect to my fellow humans, I am dubious that language tells us what is going on in their heads. I am surrounded by colleagues who study members of our species by presenting them with questionnaires. They trust the answers they receive and have ways, they assure me, of checking their veracity. But who says that what people say about themselves reveals actual emotions and motivations?

This might be true for simple attitudes free from moralisations (‘What is your favourite music?’), but it seems almost pointless to ask people about their love life, eating habits, or treatment of others (‘Are you pleasant to work with?’). It is far too easy to invent post-hoc reasons for one’s behaviour, to be silent about one’s sexual habits, to downplay excessive eating or drinking, or to present oneself as more admirable than one really is.

No one is going to admit to murderous thoughts, stinginess or being a jerk. People lie all the time, so why would they stop in front of a psychologist who writes down everything they say? In one study, female college students reported more sex partners when they were hooked up to a fake lie-detector machine, demonstrating that they had been lying when interviewed without the lie-detector. I am in fact relieved to work with subjects that don’t talk. I don’t need to worry about the truth of their utterances. Instead of asking them how often they engage in sex, I just count the occasions. I am perfectly happy being an animal watcher.

Now that I think of it, my distrust of language goes even deeper, because I am also unconvinced of its role in the thinking process. I am not sure that I think in words, and I never seem to hear any inner voices. This caused a bit of an embarrassment once at a meeting about the evolution of conscience, when fellow scholars kept referring to an inner voice that tells us what is right and wrong. I am sorry, I said, but I never hear such voices.

Am I a man without a conscience, or do I – as the American animal expert Temple Grandin once said about herself – think in pictures? Moreover, which language are we talking about? Speaking two languages at home and a third one at work, my thinking must be awfully muddled. Yet I have never noticed any effect, despite the widespread assumption that language is at the root of human thought. In his 1972 presidential address to the American Philosophical Association, tellingly entitled ‘Thoughtless Brutes’, the American philosopher Norman Malcolm stated that ‘the relationship between language and thought must be… so close that it is really senseless to conjecture that people may not have thoughts, and also senseless to conjecture that animals may have thoughts’.

the meaning of the war on terra...,

energyskeptic |  The opening quote in this book is “We must define the nature and scope of this struggle, or else it will define us.” Obama 2013

Danner has defined the nature and scope of this struggle as a war on terror.  He says that our presence in Iraq and Afghanistan is a Republican attempt to replace “being tough on communism as a defining cause in their political identity” with a war on terrorism.

To make the case for a “war on terror” as our reason for being there, Danner needs to state why we are NOT in the Middle east due to the 1980 Carter doctrine, which states “the overwhelming dependence of the Western democracies on oil supplies from the Middle East…[any] attempt by an outside force to gain control of the Persian Gulf region will be regarded as an assault on the vital interests of the United States of America, and such an assault will be repelled by any means necessary, including military force.”

Since then we’ve invaded, occupied, or bombed Iran (1980, 1987–1988); Libya (1981, 1986, 1989, 2011); Lebanon (1983); Kuwait (1991); Iraq (1991–2011, 2014–present); Somalia (1992–1993, 2007-present); Saudi Arabia (1991, 1996); Afghanistan (1998, 2001–present); Sudan (1998); Yemen (2000; 2002-present); Pakistan (2004-present); and now Syria.

The reason Carter said this is because many Americans, Europeans, and Chinese would die if the oil stopped flowing, but especially Americans since no other nation on earth is as dependent on oil as we are (why we have to be the world’s unpaid policeman is another topic).  Just consider a few of the things that what would happen if trucks stopped running:  by day 6 grocery stores would be out of food, restaurants, pharmacies, and factories closed, ATMS out of cash, sewage treatment sludge and slime storage tanks full, gas stations closed, 685,000 tons of trash piling up every day, livestock suffering from lack of feed deliveries. Within 2 weeks clean water would be gone since purification chemicals couldn’t be delivered. Within 1 to 2 months coal power plants would shut down due to lack of coal, and much natural gas is pumped through pipelines electrically, so natural gas power plants would shut down too.  And there goes the financial system – our energy, electricity, and other 16 vital infrastructures are inter-dependent, which makes us incredibly vulnerable, since many of them can pull each other down.

the meaning of lil'pookie pretending to interview AG Lynch about Granny Goodness....,

vanityfair |  I sat on an uncomfortable chair, facing a camera. Generators hummed amid the delphiniums. Good Morning America was first. I had been told that Diane Sawyer would be questioning me from New York, but ABC has a McVeigh “expert,” one Charles Gibson, and he would do the honors. Our interview would be something like four minutes. Yes, I was to be interviewed In Depth. This means that only every other question starts with “Now, tell us, briefly … ” Dutifully, I told, briefly, how it was that McVeigh, whom I had never met, happened to invite me to be one of the five chosen witnesses to his execution.

But I’ve left you behind in the Ravello garden of Klingsor, where, live on television, I mentioned the unmentionable word “why,” followed by the atomic trigger word “Waco.” Charles Gibson, 3,500 miles away, began to hyperventilate. “Now, wait a minute … ” he interrupted. But I talked through him. Suddenly I heard him say, “We’re having trouble with the audio.” Then he pulled the plug that linked ABC and me. The soundman beside me shook his head. “Audio was working perfectly. He just cut you off.” So, in addition to the governmental shredding of Amendments 4, 5, 6, 8, and 14, Mr. Gibson switched off the journalists’ sacred First. 

Why? Like so many of his interchangeable TV colleagues, he is in place to tell the viewers that former senator John Danforth had just concluded a 14-month investigation of the F.B.I. that cleared the bureau of any wrongdoing at Waco. Danforth did admit that “it was like pulling teeth to get all this paper from the F.B.I.”

TV-watchers have no doubt noted so often that they are no longer aware of how often the interchangeable TV hosts handle anyone who tries to explain why something happened. “Are you suggesting that there was a conspiracy?” A twinkle starts in a pair of bright contact lenses. No matter what the answer, there is a wriggling of the body, followed by a tiny snort and a significant glance into the camera to show that the guest has just been delivered to the studio by flying saucer. This is one way for the public never to understand what actual conspirators—whether in the F.B.I. or on the Supreme Court or toiling for Big Tobacco—are up to. It is also a sure way of keeping information from the public. The function, alas, of Corporate Media. 

the meaning of the elite establishment...,

journal-neo |  The long-term Washington strategy since at least 1992, well before September 11, 2001 and the Washington’s declaration of its War on Terror, has been by hook or by crook, by color revolution or outright invasion, to directly, with US “boots-on-the-ground,” militarily control the vast oil reserves and output of the major Arab OPEC oil countries. This is a long-standing institutional consensus, regardless who is President.

Cheney: ‘Where the Prize Ultimately Lies’

To appreciate the long-term strategic planning behind today’s chaotic wars in the Middle East there is no better person to look at than Dick Cheney and his statements as CEO of the then-world largest oilfield services company. In 1998, four years after becoming head of Halliburton, Cheney gave a speech to a group of Texas oilmen. Cheney told the annual meeting of the Panhandle Producers and Royalty Owners Association in reference to finding oil abroad, “You’ve got to go where the oil is. I don’t think about it [political volatility] very much.”

During his first five years as CEO of Halliburton, Cheney took the company from annual revenues of $5.7 billion to $14.9 billion by 1999. Halliburton foreign oilfield operations went from 51% to almost 70% of revenues in that time. Dick Cheney clearly looked at the global oil picture back then more than most.

In September 1999 Cheney delivered a speech to the annual meeting of an elite group of international oilmen in London. One section is worth quoting at length:

“By some estimates there will be an average of two per cent annual growth in global oil demand over the years ahead along with conservatively a three per cent natural decline in production from existing reserves. That means by 2010 we will need on the order of an additional fifty million barrels a day. So where is the oil going to come from?

Governments and the national oil companies are obviously controlling about ninety per cent of the assets. Oil remains fundamentally a government business. While many regions of the world offer great oil opportunities, the Middle East with two thirds of the world’s oil and the lowest cost, is still where the prize ultimately lies, even though companies are anxious for greater access there, progress continues to be slow.”

The PNAC Warplan

Now let’s follow that bouncing ball sometimes called Dick Cheney a bit further. In September 2000 Cheney signed his name before his selection as George W. Bush’s vice presidential running-mate, to an unusual think-tank report that became the de facto blueprint of US military and foreign policy to the present. Another signer of that report was Don Rumsfeld, who would become Defense Secretary under the Cheney-Bush presidency (the order reflects the reality–w.e.)

The think-tank, Project for a New American Century (PNAC), was financed by the US military-industrial complex, supported by a gaggle of other Washington neo-conservative think tanks such as RAND. The PNAC board also included neo-conservative Paul Wolfowitz, later to be Rumsfeld’s Deputy Secretary of Defense; ‘Scooter Libby,’ later Vice President Cheney’s Chief of Staff. It included Victoria Nuland’s husband, Robert Kagan. (Notably Victoria Nuland herself went on in 2001 to become Cheney’s principal deputy foreign policy adviser). It included Cheney-Bush ambassador to US-occupied Afghanistan and Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad, and hapless presidential candidate Jeb Bush.

Cheney’s PNAC report explicitly called on the future US President to remove Iraq’s Saddam Hussein and militarily take control of the Middle East a full year before 911 gave the Cheney-Bush Administration the excuse Cheney needed to invade Iraq.

The PNAC report stated that its recommendations were based on the report in 1992 of then-Secretary of Defense, Dick Cheney: “In broad terms, we saw the project as building upon the defense strategy outlined by the Cheney Defense Department in the waning days of the Bush Administration. The Defense Policy Guidance (DPG) drafted in the early months of 1992 provided a blueprint for maintaining U.S. pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests.”

At a time when Iran as a putative nuclear “threat” was not even on the map, PNAC advocated Ballistic Missile Defense: “DEVELOP AND DEPLOY GLOBAL MISSILE DEFENSES to defend the American homeland and American allies, and to provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world. (emphasis added)

In the report Cheney’s cronies further noted that, “The military’s job during the Cold War was to deter Soviet expansionism. Today its task is to secure and expand the “zones of democratic peace; (sic)” to deter the rise of a new great-power competitor; defend key regions of Europe, East Asia and the Middle East; and to preserve American preeminence…”

The Cheney PNAC document of 2000 went on: “The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.“

The quote is worth reading at least twice.

A year after the PNAC report was issued, then-General Wesley Clark, no peacenik to be sure, in a March 2007 speech before the Commonwealth Club of California in San Francisco, told of a Pentagon discussion he had had shortly after the strikes of September 11, 2001 at the World Trade Center and Pentagon with someone he knew in Defense Secretary Rumsfeld’s office.

popular puerto rican opposition to debt enslavement is meaningless...,

sprottmoney |  Where's all the news - where are all the headlines? A major event has taken place yesterday and another event is about to unfold tomorrow. Puerto Rico is going to default on its debt and the US government is A-OK with it.

Once again, the American taxpayers have been on the short end of the stick. This story is receiving little to no press and it is truly baffling given the ramifications and meaning behind it. Perhaps this is exactly why it is receiving so little attention.

The story of the Puerto Rican default is just another example of the crumpling system of the elites. The establishment is desperately trying to keep this broken fiat system together for as long as they possibly can, sucking maximum profits from it before it implodes.

The U.S. Senate has done its part in this farce, as they passed the bailout bill with overwhelming support yesterday, ensuring that Puerto Rico, like Greece, can put off its consequences of overspending for the time being and continue to stagnate. It's another stellar example of extend and pretend by the elites.

Tomorrow, the government of Puerto Rico was supposed to be paying back $2 billion in debt repayments - no small sum of money, but a drop in the bucket when you look at the massive $70 billion that they owe in debt payments.

Fortunately and unfortunately for them, they are being given a "free" pass by the U.S. government this time. I say unfortunately, because the trade-off for them is their freedom and liberty. As part of the bailout deal, the elites will install overseers that will monitor the Puerto Rican government. Essentially, they are giving up their free will.

Despite this being a major story, don't expect to hear much about it. The elites don't want to embolden other states or countries to default on their debt as well. The illusion of debt and fiat money must be maintained at all cost, or they risk completely losing the crumbling empire they have built around them. 

the masses are treated like asses because they can be...,

dote |  I want to explain a few things. As regular DOTE readers know, I don't believe that humans are exercising "free will" because there is no such thing. Thus I am a determinist. Now, when we think about "free will" we (and researchers) naturally think about individuals—his brain, or her brain or, more rarely, my brain.

On the other hand, I've also arrived at the conclusion that the most important stuff going on in the unconscious mind is social in nature. Social instincts (like harmonizing) are hard-wired and therefore wholly automatic, just like fight or flight, negativity bias and many other processes. Thus it might be more appropriate to think in terms of groups rather than individuals in so far as humans naturally and mindlessly form strong social bonds. It is therefore more appropriate to investigate free will questions at the level of large populations or social groups.

There is a great deal of superficial variation at the level of individuals; at the large group level, there are only predictable behaviors because the unconscious mind has free rein, unencumbered by weak and ultimately deceptive "deliberative" processes in individual minds.

This makes politics the best way to observe human instinctual (unconscious) behaviors. Politics is simply inter-group conflict writ large. This year has been very interesting in this regard. I've written a couple posts lately (here and here) on the Brexit which have a theme similar to many things I've written before. The simplified world view of those posts asserts that there are our ruling elites on the one hand, and basically everybody else on the other.

This simplified view is a caricature of reality, but it's a useful one. 6000 years of historical data makes it apparent that social stratification (hierarchy) in large complex human societies is built right in, so these two broadly defined groups will always exist. By definition, one of those groups (ruling elites) exercise broad but onerous control over the other (everybody else). If that control becomes too oppressive—if there are here & now existential threats—everybody else, if they are feeling threatened or pinched, rebels against the political order.

That is the situation we have reached today in Western societies. And this is where predictable large group behaviors kick in (beyond a more fundamental social stratification). Let's list a few of the things we've been able to observe on a large scale in 2016.

is it time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses?

foreignpolicy |  The issue, at bottom, is globalization. Brexit, Trump, the National Front, and so on show that political elites have misjudged the depth of the anger at global forces and thus the demand that someone, somehow, restore the status quo ante. It may seem strange that the reaction has come today rather than immediately after the economic crisis of 2008, but the ebbing of the crisis has led to a new sense of stagnation. With prospects of flat growth in Europe and minimal income growth in the United States, voters are rebelling against their dismal long-term prospects. And globalization means culture as well as economics: Older people whose familiar world is vanishing beneath a welter of foreign tongues and multicultural celebrations are waving their fists at cosmopolitan elites. I was recently in Poland, where a far-right party appealing to nationalism and tradition has gained power despite years of undeniable prosperity under a centrist regime. Supporters use the same words again and again to explain their vote: “values and tradition.” They voted for Polishness against the modernity of Western Europe.

Perhaps politics will realign itself around the axis of globalization, with the fist-shakers on one side and the pragmatists on the other. The nationalists would win the loyalty of working-class and middle-class whites who see themselves as the defenders of sovereignty. The reformed center would include the beneficiaries of globalization and the poor and non-white and marginal citizens who recognize that the celebration of national identity excludes them.

Of course, mainstream parties of both the left and the right are trying to reach the angry nationalists. Sometimes this takes the form of gross truckling, as when Nicolas Sarkozy, who is seeking to regain France’s presidency, denounces the “tyranny of minorities” and invokes the “forever France” of an all-white past. From the left, Hillary Clinton has jettisoned her free-trade past to appeal to union members and others who want to protect national borders against the global market. But left and right disagree so deeply about how best to cushion the effects of globalization, and how to deal with the vast influx of refugees and migrants, that even the threat of extremism may not be enough to bring them to make common cause.

The schism we see opening before us is not just about policies, but about reality. The Brexit forces won because cynical leaders were prepared to cater to voters’ paranoia, lying to them about the dangers of immigration and the costs of membership in the EU. Some of those leaders have already begun to admit that they were lying. Donald Trump has, of course, set a new standard for disingenuousness and catering to voters’ fears, whether over immigration or foreign trade or anything else he can think of. The Republican Party, already rife with science-deniers and economic reality-deniers, has thrown itself into the embrace of a man who fabricates realities that ignorant people like to inhabit.

Did I say “ignorant”? Yes, I did. It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to un-delude them. Is that “elitist”? Maybe it is; maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history. If so, the party of accepting reality must be prepared to take on the party of denying reality, and its enablers among those who know better. If that is the coming realignment, we should embrace it.

is money measurement? backed by murder?

radicalmarijuana |  "... this problem is usually resolved through wars were lots of people get killed and countries destroyed.  With today's weapons, it is not so easy anymore ..."

Pretty well all of Hugh-Smith's articles are superficially correct, and relatively interesting, BUT tend to grossly understate the situation, because Hugh-Smith does not like to think through the ways that civilization has been controlled by applications of the methods of organized crime, whereby the murder systems were always the central controls to everything else, and must necessarily have been. There must be some death control systems. The history of civilization was forged in the crucible of conflicts, through the history of warfare, whose successes were based upon backing up deceits with destruction, in which context the treacheries of spies made them the most important soldiers. That became the basis for building political economy wherein financial success became based upon public governments enforcing frauds by private banks.

Since those towards at the top of the social pyramid systems, based upon integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, tend to be the best available professional hypocrites, who benefit the most, in the short to medium term, from the ways that the public "money" supplies are created out of nothing as debts, in order to "pay" for strip-mining the planet's natural resources, the seriousness of that situation tends to be deliberately ignored and misunderstood by them, and the sociopolitical systems that they dominate. The ingredients for baking the economic pies have been strip-mined as fast as possible, by people running on debt engine treadmills, who were "borrowing money" made out of nothing as debts, in order to "pay" for their exponentially increasing economic activities, which were also able to feed an exponentially increasing total human population.

Although it is theoretically possible for to develop better integrated systems of human, industrial and natural ecologies, that would take different death controls in general, and particularly different murder systems, in order to make that work. Although there are an abundance of theoretically possible creative alternatives, which could be assembled into alternative systems, the keystone to any such arch of alternatives would have to be the death control systems. Any possible components of systematic changes to adapt to the realities of the natural resources of a fresh planet having been strip-mined by the development of the technologies of the industrial revolutions would require their death controls to be the lynch pin, to hold those components together in any overall coherent systems of alternatives, which more realistically adapted to the diminishing returns and limits to the growth of the exponentially increasing strip-mining of the planet, which was what thousands of years of previous human history was always based upon being able to continue to do.

There are already combined money/murder systems, whereby the debt controls are backed by the death controls, through the best organized gangsters, the banksters, effectively controlling the biggest forms of organized crime, the governments, were dominated by professional hypocrites who primary skill-sets were to spout bullshit about what they were really doing, which bullshit was usually diametrically opposite to what was actually happening.

The established debt slavery systems have generated numbers which have become debt insanities, and those are tending towards provoking death insanities: "... this problem is usually resolved through wars were lots of people get killed and countries destroyed.  With today's weapons, it is not so easy anymore ..."

Since the existing political economy IS based upon public governments enforcing frauds by private banks, and has been for generation after generation, it is politically impossible for those systems to change to adapt to the underlying reasons for why there is a shrinking pie in any ways which which are relatively rational or sane. Rather, as the diminishing returns from being able to continue to strip-mine the planet manifest as real limits to growth, we are headed towards times of PEAK INSANITIES.

The currently existing political economy is almost totally based upon being able to enforce frauds. While being able to enforce frauds continues to actually operate inside the laws of nature, the mental attitudes of the vast majority of people who adapted to live inside those enforced frauds are based upon the maximum possible deliberately ignorance of the principle of the conservation of energy, and the maximum possible misunderstanding of the concept of entropy. 

Natural selection was internalized as human intelligence, which was then primarily applied to the most important selection pressures, which were other groups of human beings. Hence the history of successful warfare based on backing up deceits with destruction, morphing to become successful finance based upon enforcing frauds. It is one of the corollaries of the ways that civilization is controlled by backing up lies with violence that the social successfulness based upon being able to do that drives the overwhelming vast majority of people to become almost totally brainwashed to believe in the biggest bullies' bullshit, which became the banksters' bullshit about political economy.

It was always obvious that endless exponential growth was absolutely impossible. However, everyone who benefited from each increment of growth developed their full set of rationalizations and justifications, which were supported by attitudes of wilful blindness. Despite that the established economic systems are based upon deliberately ignoring the laws of nature as much as humanly possible, it continues to be the case that the best professional hypocrites are the most socially successful people, by repeating the same old Huge Lies that most other people want to hear, (while also resorting to Violence to back those Lies up as much as necessary, against those who do not believe those Lies.)

The excessive successfulness of controlling civilization through the methods of organized crime have driven civilization to manifest runaway criminal insanities. It is politically impossible to have any relatively rational public debates about the limits to endless exponential growth. Rather, since society is already too terminally sick and insane, the only feasible "solutions" are for spectacular overshooting to result in series of catastrophic collapses into chaos. The only theoretically possible ways to change to adapt to the limits to growth are to change the death control systems, in one way or another, sooner or later. At the present time, the most probable ways that will happen are through eruptions of unprecedented death insanities.

The best, marginally possible, realistic resolution of the real problems would be to perhaps catalyze the death insanities, in order for those to become better death control systems. However, after the development of weapons of mass destruction, doing so requires series of intellectual scientific revolutions, and profound paradigms shifts in political science in general. The most important changes should be the ways that we perceive the death controls. Militarism, as the ideology of the murder system, is the area of politics which most needs to go through series of profound  paradigm shifts. That must especially be the case because money is measurement backed by murder, since the money systems pay for the murder systems, which then back up the money systems in return.

Authors like Hugh-Smith tend to deliberately ignore that understanding political economy must be done inside the context of human ecology, or that the debt controls operate inside the death controls. There are no ways to change the money systems without changing the murder systems at the same time. The existing systems that enforce frauds were originally made and maintained in those ways. However, that drove the development of intense paradoxes, as sets of consistent contradictions, that the biggest and best organized gangs of criminals and terrorists, the bankster dominated governments, were also able to most publicly get away with being professional hypocrites spouting bullshit.

CIVILIZATION IS DOMINATED BY THE BEST AVAILABLE PROFESSIONAL HYPOCRITES, WHO DELIBERATELY IGNORE AND MISUNDERSTAND EVERYTHING AS MUCH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE.  

Thousands of years of civilization based upon being able to back up lies with violence has created a civilization which is almost completely psychotic, due to the degrees to which its dominant social stories are bullshit, based upon deliberately ignoring and misunderstanding the laws of nature in the most absurdly backward ways possible.

It was always inevitable that the economic pie could not continue to become exponentially bigger forever ... We appear to be living through the times when the diminishing returns from having been able to strip-mine the natural resources of a fresh planet, using the technologies provided by the industrial revolutions, are reaching various tipping and turning points. While that is happening, all of the established sociopolitical systems continue to be dominated by the best available professional hypocrites, who will NOT publicly admit and address any of those real problems in any realistic ways. Therefore, the established debt slavery systems continue to generated increasing debt insanities, which have no other feasible resolutions but to provoke death insanities. The established systems will NOT recognize that money is measurement backed by murder. Rather, the established systems are based upon NOT recognizing that the existing political economy has been built upon public governments enforcing frauds by private banks.

Those who most benefit from that are also those who most adamantly refuse to publicly discuss those problems. Systems based upon enforcing frauds are becoming exponentially more fraudulent. However, practically nobody is able and willing to engage in any relatively rational and sane public debates regarding that situation. Rather, civilization continues to automatically become increasingly psychotic, in the sense of more and more out of touch with relatively objective realities. Almost everyone was able to develop attitudes which were adapted to living inside of systems based upon enforcing frauds, which attitudes require that they not understand, and/or not public admit that they understand, that those systems are actually based upon enforcing frauds.

The series of articles from Hugh-Smith are typical of the kinds of superficially correct analysis that is presented in the Zero Hedge content. While the life expectancy of everyone eventually drops to zero, the established systems based upon making "money" out of nothing as debts, in order to "pay" to strip-mine the planet have not only deferred those debts onto future generations, but also have deferred those deaths onto future generations. Since the established systems will NOT admit that money is measurement backed by murder, and that the debt controls were backed by the death controls, the runaway debt insanities must provoke death insanities, and those will hit hardest the most vulnerable.

The essential problems are that people can NOT agree upon any better death control systems, and therefore, those conflicts result in the actually existing murder systems being operated in the most deceitful and treacherous ways possible. After the development of weapons of mass destruction, that has become more and more the risk of committing collective suicide. However, the essential problems continue to be that the existing combined money/murder systems are based on the maximum possible deceits and frauds, being operated by the best available professional hypocrites, which all makes it politically impossible for civilization to not automatically become more criminally insane.

The previous systems of paper money frauds, backed by gunpowder weapons, have rapidly become globalized electronic monkey money frauds, backed by the threat of force from apes with atomic bombs. That is the real situation in which there are manifesting various sorts of diminishing returns from being able to continue to strip-mine the natural resources of a fresh planet. While there are theoretically possible an abundance of creative alternatives which could better adapt to those changes, the actually existing political systems are operating through the rulings classes becoming increasingly psychotic psychopaths, while those they rule over are becoming increasingly impotent political idiots. Neither are willing nor able to stop deliberately ignoring and misunderstanding the laws of nature as much as possible: "... this problem is usually resolved through wars were lots of people get killed and countries destroyed.  With today's weapons, it is not so easy anymore ..."

Theoretically speaking, enough people need to go through sufficient intellectual scientific revolutions, whereby they profoundly change the paradigms through which they perceive their political problems. That should be done in ways whereby the progress in physical science is enabled to become more consistent with genuine progress in political science.  However, that is now politically impossible, because of the ways that the established systems have become based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds, which are precisely the problems that they will NOT admit and address in order to better resolve those problems.

The world has truly become an insane asylum, run by the most criminally insane inmates. Essentially, the death control systems control everything else, and must necessarily do so. However, the existing murder systems, that back up the existing money systems, have become based upon the maximum possible deceits, in order to support the maximum possible frauds. There is pretty well NEVER any publicly significant debates about the relationships between natural selection systems and artificial selection systems, due to the ways that natural selection pressures drove the development of those artificial selection systems to become most socially successful by becoming the most dishonest about themselves that they could possibly become.

Although it is theoretically possible for human beings to change to adapt to the economic pie no longer being able to grow at an exponential rate, everything regarding how the existing systems are operated by the best available professional hypocrites makes that be politically impossible to happen in any but the worst possible ways, namely runaway debt insanities provoking runaway death insanities.

The surprising Brexit referendum win is merely one of the tiny tips of iceberg of the deeper, deliberately submerged, reasons for that the previous exponential growth of economic activities and total human population is no longer possible. I repeat my overview that I previously posted here:

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-06-26/rebellion-real-brexit-was-merel...

The Rebellion Is Real; Brexit Was Merely A Warning

It is grossly understating the seriousness of the situation to merely assert that:

The rebellion is real and therefore the causes of the rebellion are also real ... the centralizing tendencies, unchecked immigration, runaway political correctness and metastatic government that have characterized the West in these last decades.

It is NOT merely for a "few decades" that Western Civilization has had problems. Rather, the problems with Neolithic Civilization have been growing at about an exponential rate for thousands of years. The basic problems are that civilization is controlled by being able to back up lies with violence, which became integrated systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, the most significant of which became that public governments enforced frauds by private banks. Governments were ALWAYS the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals, the gangsters known as the banksters, while, for several Centuries, the international banksters have captured increasing control of civilization, BUT that was done by enforcing frauds, in ways which were spinning out of control ...

The European Union was a project of those international banksters, in order to consolidate their power to make the public "money" supplies out of nothing as debts, while those Euros would be enforced by the European Union, in ways that the vast majority of people had even less abilities to restrain than when they still had their national currencies.

It is quite ironic to expect that the possible withdrawal of Britain from the European Union could have any sufficiently significant effects, since the British Pound was the primary way that the international banksters enforced their frauds for Centuries. The Bank of England became the most significant bank that had the legal power to create "money" out of nothing as debts, through fractional reserve banking, which started off a few Centuries ago as merely being able to issue twice as much paper certificates for gold as there was actual physical gold. (Those ratios now exceed 100 to 1.) In general, the overwhelming vast majority of people do not understand that money is measurement backed by murder, because they have been conditioned to not want to understand.

The vast majority of people are not remotely close to being able to engage in any deeper analyses of their problems, due to the degree that the dominate natural languages, and philosophy of science, have become based upon the biggest bullies' bullshit world view, while the public discussions of the political economy is almost totally drowning in mostly taking for granted the banksters' bullshit about "economics." The worst form of "metastatic government" is that the monetary system has become like a totally metastasized cancer. At this point in time, it is politically impossible to imagine any realistic resolutions for those real problems, other than that the existing debt slavery systems, which have manifested as debt insanities, eventually provoke death insanities, inside of the existing systems which are the MAD Money As Debt systems, based upon public governments enforcing frauds by private banks, where those governments rely upon MAD Mutual Assured Destruction systems.

I have no doubt that there will be more and more "rebellions," because the causes of those rebellions ARE real. However, there could not be any better "revolutions" without those becoming based upon a series of intellectual scientific revolutions, and profound paradigm shifts. Since there has been almost exponential progress in physical science,  that is driving the theoretical imperatives to have genuine PROGRESS in political science. However, so far, that has NOT HAPPENED! Furthermore, it appears to be politically impossible for that to happen, because of the degree to which enough people would have to go through series of profound paradigm shifts in the ways that they perceive political problems.

Human beings and civilization live as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows. However, the ways that those actually developed were driven by natural selection pressures to create artificial selection systems based upon the maximum possible deceits and frauds.

That is the context inside of which we have witnessed the exponential growth of "centralizing tendencies, unchecked immigration, runaway political correctness and metastatic government." All of those tendencies have been due to exponential progress in physical science enabling the exponentially increasing enforcement of frauds to become blatantly worse, faster, such as became more apparent "in these last decades."

Human beings and civilization should better understand themselves as manifestations of general energy systems. While that is theoretically possible, it is politically impossible due to that requiring that we should try to stop using the biggest bullies' bullshit, presented through the DUALITIES of false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals. When one thinks more consistently about human beings and civilization living as general energy systems, which operate as entropic pumps of environmental energy flows, the results are that one can theoretically derive the actual empirical observations, namely, that governments are the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals.

The European Union was another manifestation of the best organized gangsters, the international banksters, effectively controlling the national governments, as the biggest local gangs of criminals, to join into a larger group of organized criminals, which continued to be run by the best available professional hypocrites, so that the Euro currency could become an even bigger manifestation of enforced frauds, which could suck various smaller, southern European countries, such as Greece, Cyprus, etc., into worse and worse debt slavery situations, becoming runaway debt insanities.

European Union was a larger regional consolidation of the previously established, combined money/murder systems. Those systems are things that the vast majority of Europeans do not understand, and do not want to understand, because of the degree to which they take for granted thinking using the biggest bullies' bullshit languages, based upon DUALITIES, false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals. Since the vast majority of people continue to want to believe in various old-fashioned impossible ideals, their "rebellions" are probably going to backfire badly, and cause the opposite to happen in the real world.

While it should be theoretically obvious that human beings and civilization should attempt to understand themselves better as manifestations of general energy systems, there are virtually no significant, publicly presented, abilities to think like that. Using more UNITARY MECHANISMS to understand our real problems requires facing the facts regarding how and why governments are necessarily the biggest forms of organized crime, controlled by the best organized gangs of criminals.

In that context, the Brexit referendum was a public expression of how more people are generally fed up with all of the ways that the enforcement of frauds have become exponentially more fraudulent, while the public spaces were more and more being dominated by the best available professional hypocrites, and thus, the actual social facts diverged wider and wider from the bullshit spouted by the professional hypocrites, such as through "runaway political correctness," etc. ...

The European Union was intended to be a stepping stone towards the globalized consolidation of controlling civilization through being able to enforce frauds, despite that the overall fraudulence of that would spin out of control. The underlying problems are that enforcing frauds becomes exponentially more fraudulent, in proportion to how socially successful the systems of legalized lies, backed by legalized violence, become. There are intense paradoxes which are inherent in civilization based on being able to back up deceits with destruction, that became based upon being able to enforce frauds. The social successfulness of the most wealthy and powerful people, who participated in doing that the most, has generated sets of consistent contradictions, in the form of a culture which is operated by ruling classes who became increasingly psychotic psychopaths, ruling over people who became increasingly impotent political idiots.

The Brexit referendum was a sign that more people are not as willing to act like political idiots than previously was routinely the case. However, their superficial "rebellions" are NOT enough without enough of them going through series of intellectual scientific revolutions, which apply profound paradigm shifts throughout all the realms of political science. The almost exponential progress in physical sciences are making it become more and more imperative that human beings and civilization should better understand themselves as manifestations of general energy systems. While there is nothing that makes progress in political science not be theoretically possible, at the present time that appears to be politically impossible, because of the ways that enough people would have to go through series of profound  paradigm shifts, in order to better understand the how and why civilization has ended up being almost totally dominated by professional liars and immaculate hypocrites.

The European Union was publicly presented by those kinds of professional hypocrites, whose impossible ideals always backfired badly, and actually caused the opposite to happen in the real world. However, the same mostly applies to the layers of the various controlled opposition groups, including most of those who publicly led the Brexit campaign to its small margin of apparent victory. "Rebellions" are NOT the same as what is truly needed, which are series of intellectual scientific revolutions, in order to enable much more real, radical, revolutions.

There may well be more and more public "rebellions" against the consequences of the enforcement of frauds becoming exponentially more fraudulent. However, there is practically NONE of the kinds of intellectual scientific revolutions and profound changes in the ways that political science is perceived, in order to cope with the ways that the previous systems of paper money frauds, backed by gunpowder weapons, have become globalized electronic frauds, backed by atomic weapons.

THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ARE NOT WILLING AND ABLE TO THINK THROUGH THE WAYS THAT "THEIR" WORLD HAS BECOME DOMINATED BY GLOBALIZED ELECTRONIC MONKEY MONEY FRAUDS, BACKED BY THE THREAT OF FORCE FROM APES WITH ATOMIC BOMBS.

THE DEEPER LEVELS OF THE PROBLEMS THAT ARISE FROM THE COMBINATION OF POLITICAL PROCESSES CONTROLLED BY ENFORCING FRAUDS, PLUS ADVANCING TECHNOLOGIES ENABLING THAT ENFORCEMENT OF FRAUDS TO BECOME EXPONENTIALLY MORE FRAUDULENT, ARE WAY WORSE THAN THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ARE ABLE AND WILLING TO ADMIT OR ADDRESS ...

THERE IS ALMOST NOTHING BUT THE CENTRAL CORE OF TRIUMPHANT ORGANIZED CRIME, BANKSTER DOMINATED GOVERNMENTS, SURROUNDED BY LAYERS OF CONTROLLED OPPOSITION GROUPS. ONE OF THE ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF THE EXISTING COMBINED MONEY/MURDER SYSTEMS ARE THAT THEIR CONTROLLED OPPOSITION GROUPS DELIBERATELY DO NOT ENGAGE IN ANY DEEPER ANALYSES REGARDING HOW AND WHY THAT IS THE CASE, AND MUST NECESSARILY BE THE CASE. THE ESTABLISHED SYSTEMS HAVE BEEN DOMINATED BY THE BEST AVAILABLE PROFESSIONAL HYPOCRITES, FOR GENERATION, AFTER GENERATION, SUCH THAT NOT ONLY ARE GOVERNMENTS NECESSARILY THE BIGGEST FORMS OF ORGANIZED CRIME, CONTROLLED BY THE BEST ORGANIZED GANGS OF CRIMINALS, BUT ALSO, THERE IS NO PUBLICLY SIGNIFICANT GENUINE OPPOSITION THAT PRESENTS ANY REALISTIC RESOLUTIONS OF THOSE REAL PROBLEMS, BECAUSE IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO STOP MONEY BEING MEASUREMENT BACKED BY MURDER.

GENERALLY SPEAKING, THE VAST MAJORITY OF PEOPLE ARE SO USED TO TAKING FOR GRANTED THE BULLSHIT THAT GOVERNMENTS ARE NOT THE BIGGEST FORMS OF ORGANIZED CRIME, THAT THEY ALSO TAKE FOR GRANTED PROPOSING AND PROMOTING BOGUS "SOLUTIONS" WHICH ARE BASED UPON DELIBERATELY IGNORING, AND/OR MISUNDERSTANDING, HOW AND WHY THOSE ARE THE ACTUAL SOCIAL FACTS.

Of course, I recognize that it is practically pointless for me to shout that out ... For the foreseeable future, it continues to be politically impossible for political processes to not continue being dominated by professional hypocrites, because of the degree to which almost everyone almost totally takes for granted thinking and communicating through the use of DUALITIES, false fundamental dichotomies, and the related impossible ideals. Indeed, while physical science has achieved prodigious progress by going through series of profound paradigm shifts, in order to be able to better understand things like electrical and atomic energy, and the resulting technologies, meanwhile, political science continues to be an oxymoron, because it deliberately refuses to go through sufficient series of intellectual scientific revolutions, and profound paradigm shifts in the perception of political problems.

There is nothing but the dynamic equilibria between different systems of more or less organized lies operating robberies. Over and over again, the biggest and best organized systems of lies and robberies, such as the symbolic robberies achieved by the public governments enforcing frauds by private banks, become excessively successful, and therefore, are able to create more and more unbalanced systems. The runaway successfulness of the biggest and best organized lies operating robberies is able to drive extreme disequilibria. Too many people become too brainwashed to believe in bullshit for them to be able to effectively resist that automatically continuing to get worse, faster ...

The USSR was made that way, the EU was made that way. Furthermore the USA was made that way too. Indeed, the deeper levels of the political problems that Neolithic Civilization has are all due to the history of successful warfare based upon being able to back up deceits with destruction, becoming financial successfulness based upon enforcing frauds. The EU, with the Euro currency, is merely another episode which is manifesting the ways in which successfully enforcing frauds drives exponentially increasing fraudulence.

Moreover, the relatively few that recognize those social facts mostly still continue to then propose and promote bogus "solutions"based upon somehow actualizing the same old-fashioned impossible ideals. The established systems are totally based upon their bullshit, while their degree of success in the past has made sure that there is no publicly significant opposition that is not controlled to stay within the same frame of reference of bullshit. 

Therefore, not only was the EU built on triumphant bullshit, there is no public significant opposition which is not similarly based upon bullshit, because of the degree to which the overwhelming vast majority of people have been very deeply brainwashed to believe in bullshit for generation after generation. I REPEAT AGAIN FOR EMPHASIS THAT MONEY IS MEASUREMENT BACKED BY MURDER. 

Therefore, to change the money systems must mean changing the murder systems. The European Union was already built on the basis of states with sovereign powers (which are the powers to rob and the power to kill, i.e., taxation and law enforcement), having those public powers more and more effectively privatized through the vicious spirals of political funding, resulting in the enforcement of frauds becoming exponentially more fraudulent.

The bigger the government, the bigger organized crime it necessarily is. The central controls are always the death controls. Hence, the murder systems back up the money systems, while the vast majority of people were brainwashed to believe in bullshit about that, for generation after generation. Hence, civilization was always dominated by the biggest  bullies' bullshit, which became the banksters' bullshit. It was within that context that it was possible to advance the European Union and its Euro currency. However, it is also within the context that there is NO publicly significant genuine opposition, but only various controlled opposition groups, due to the degree to which almost everyone almost totally takes for granted thinking and communicating through bullshit-based languages and all the related bullshit-based presumptions.

Generally speaking, the typical tragedies are that after enough people recognize that the established systems are based on bullshit, they tend to have only done that in superficial ways, and therefore, are susceptible to the next crop of professional hypocrites, who are then best able to persuade enough people to continue to believe in some slightly different brand of bullshit. The European Union may well be suffering from the ways in which excessively successful enforcement of frauds becomes exponentially more fraudulent, which are ways that become increasingly flabbergasting, and more unsustainable. (And so, Brexit referendum barely win.) HOWEVER, one can be quite confident that enough people are probably NOT going to go through enough intellectual scientific revolutions and profound paradigm shifts in the ways that they perceive those political problems. Thousands of years of Neolithic Civilization based upon being able to back up lies with violence has created a completely crazy and corrupt to the core kind of civilization. The USSR was one example of that, while the EU was another similar example. However, there are NO examples anywhere that actually exist which are not also basically the same.

The essential political problem is that there must be some death control systems, with murder systems as the most extreme form of those. Furthermore, those are the central core controls, whose effects then control everything else. Human civilization has always operated through applications of the principles and methods of organized crime. However, because of that, civilization has also developed to be dominated by the best available professional hypocrites, who are the best at being dishonest about what they are really doing. One way or another, sooner or later, we are going to be forced to develop different death control systems. Ideally, that should be done by more people understanding that better. However, so far, that continues to actually be done by burying the combined money/murder systems under the maximum possible deceits and frauds, promoted through the bullshit spouted by the best available professional hypocrites, who are currently the most socially successful people, due to them having best adapted to living inside systems based upon enforcing frauds.

Paradoxically, the better people adapt to living inside systems based upon enforcing frauds, the more criminally insane they actually become. However, they continue to appear to themselves, and to most other people, as still being socially successful:

"It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society."

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

"They are normal not in what may be called the absolute sense of the word; they are normal only in relation to a profoundly abnormal society. Their perfect adjustment to that abnormal society is a measure of their mental sickness."

-- Aldous Huxley

It was always obvious to any intellect with a shred of appreciation of the mathematics of exponential growth that endless exponential growth of civilization was absolutely impossible. Furthermore, many relatively well-informed people have been predicting for at least several decades that the manifestations of diminishing returns as the real limits to growth would probably start to become significant about now, and likely get exponentially worse in the next few decades. However, since the established systems were based upon public governments enforcing frauds by private banks, while those who were nearer the sources of that public "money" being made out of nothing as debts, in order to "pay" to continue to strip-mine the planet, were "benefiting" the most from those systems, as well as were able to become the best available professional hypocrites, who could best bullshit about themselves "benefiting" from those kinds of systems, regardless of the ways that those enforced frauds were becoming exponentially more fraudulent, and actually runaway psychoses, there has NEVER been any practically possible ways to stop that from continuing to happen.

THE BOTTOM LINE CONTINUES TO BE THAT MONEY IS MEASUREMENT BACKED BY MURDER. IT IS WITHIN THAT CONTEXT THAT THE SHRINKING OF THE ECONOMIC PIE WILL ACTUALLY MANIFEST. WHILE IT MAY APPEAR TO BE THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE THAT CIVILIZATION COULD CHANGE TO ADAPT TO THAT IN BETTER WAYS, THE MOST PROBABLE FORESEEABLE FUTURES ARE THE MANIFESTATIONS OF PEAK INSANITIES, EVENTUALLY TAKING THE FORM OF DEATH INSANITIES.

THE ONLY GENUINE ALTERNATIVE SOLUTIONS MUST BE DEVELOPING BETTER DEATH CONTROL SYSTEMS. HOWEVER, THAT RUNS INTO A HEAD-ON COLLISION WITH THE ALREADY ENTRENCHED MURDER SYSTEMS BEING BASED ON THE MAXIMUM POSSIBLE DECEITS ABOUT THEMSELVES, AS WELL AS THOSE BEING SURROUNDED BY VARIOUS LAYERS OF CONTROLLED OPPOSITION GROUPS THAT STAY INSIDE THE SAME OVERALL FRAME OF REFERENCE OF DECEITS REGARDING THE DEATH CONTROL SYSTEMS.

WHILE IT IS THEORETICALLY POSSIBLE FOR HUMAN BEINGS AND CIVILIZATION TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THEMSELVES, AND THE RELATIONSHIPS BETWEEN NATURAL SELECTION AND ARTIFICIAL SELECTION, THE ACTUALLY EXISTING ARTIFICIAL SELECTION SYSTEMS ARE BASED UPON DELIBERATELY NOT DOING THAT, BUT RATHER, DELIBERATELY MISREPRESENTING THAT AS MUCH AS HUMANLY POSSIBLE: 

"... this problem is usually resolved through wars were lots of people get killed and countries destroyed.  With today's weapons, it is not so easy anymore ..."

unemployed peasants chimp-out in sacramento and trump gets blamed for it?

thenation |  For the past month, the Ku Klux Klan, various neo-Nazi groups, and the Traditionalist Worker Party, a far-right nationalist party established last year to promote the values of “faith, family, and folk,” have been preparing for a demonstration on the steps of Sacramento’s capitol. In response, an array of ad-hoc anti-fascist and anti-racist groups announced they would blockade the capitol to prevent the Nazis from gathering. 

From 9am this Sunday, anti-fascist groups began gathering on the streets surrounding the capitol. There were people flying banners with traditional civil rights and anti-hate messages; individuals flying gay-pride banners; representatives from immigrant-rights organizations; and student activists from the local community colleges and California State University campus. But there were also an array of sectarian groups—masked anarchists, waving their black-and-red flag, many carrying sticks and makeshift Plexiglas shields—through to revolutionary organizations like the Marxist-Leninist Progressive Labor Party. These groups had come from as far afield as San Diego and Portland—and they weren’t aiming for a simple statement of disgust at the Nazis; rather, they were pledged to shut them down. 

At 9:55, the PLP adherents, marching behind a red flag, came north up 9th Street, on the west side of the capitol, chanting “Death! Death! Death to the Fascists! Power! Power! Power to the Workers!” 

By mid-morning, as the temperature soared past 100 degrees, each entrance to the capitol was covered by large throngs of anti-Nazis. Roving groups, many of them masked, patrolled the park trying to spot incoming fascists. In clusters around the statehouse and in the streets surrounding it, the police stood by, in heavy riot gear, some on foot and others on horseback. 

The neo-Nazis started making their way into the capitol grounds at about 11:30. Within minutes, the beautiful park surrounding the soaring, domed capitol was a bloodbath. 

Every time the crowd spotted a skinhead or other white nationalist trying to move toward the steps, they surged forward, north, south, east, west, chasing down and beating the skinhead. But the Nazis had also come armed and prepared. Wielding knives and sticks, they hurled themselves into the enraged crowd. A 46-year-old anti-Nazi, Yvette Felarea, was wounded, her left arm and head streaming with blood. As she was being attended by fellow demonstrators, she was defiant and somewhat jubilant. “Let them know they got worse,” she said of the Nazis, who had been run off somewhere to the south of the capitol. “I’m proud we made this happen. And I’d do it again. The Nazis were scared, and they needed to be. They stabbed someone.”

Granny Goodness DNC Predictably Tells Progressives DEEZ NUTZ!!!

commondreams |  Despite its claims to want to unify voters ahead of November's election, the Democratic party appears to be pushing for an agenda that critics say ignores basic progressive policies, "staying true" to their Corporate donors above all else.

During a 9-hour meeting in St. Louis, Missouri on Friday, members of the DNC's platform drafting committee voted down a number of measures proposed by Bernie Sanders surrogates that would have come out against the contentious Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), fracking, and the Israeli occupation of Palestine. At the same time, proposals to support a carbon tax, Single Payer healthcare, and a $15 minimum wage tied to inflation were also disregarded.

In a statement, Sanders said he was "disappointed and dismayed" that representatives of Hillary Clinton and DNC chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schulz rejected the proposal on trade put forth by Sanders appointee Rep. Keith Ellison (D-Minn.), despite the fact that the presumed nominee has herself come out against the 12-nation deal.

so confused, who was stabbing and who got stabbed? (and has the booty-warrior been paroled yet?)

sacbee |  A rally by a small group of neo-Nazi demonstrators at the state Capitol on Sunday erupted into a violent clash with protesters that left at least 10 people injured – five of them stabbed – and closed down streets as more than 100 police in riot gear and on horseback intervened to halt the mayhem.

Demonstrators battled with sticks, protest signs and other weapons as the Traditionalist Worker Party group – which said it wanted to assist supporters of presumptive Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump – began setting up for a scheduled noon rally on the west steps of the Capitol.

Even before the event began, clashes broke out at numerous locations around the Capitol grounds among the 400 people gathered for and against the rally, which had been heavily promoted – and denounced – in recent days on various websites. Injuries were reported on both sides of the altercation.

“We had some pretty dynamic and chaotic situations,” said Sacramento Fire Department spokesman Chris Harvey, who arrived as a public information officer and quickly found himself working as a paramedic.

“We had a number of times where we had a patient on the ground and crews were trying to do triage and take care of them and the chaos was enveloping them. They were surrounded by the CHP and police officers just trying to keep the general surge of people away.”

Witnesses said the violence erupted at different locations around the Capitol grounds, hindering the initial law enforcement response as confrontations began before the event was scheduled to start.

The first sign of violence came just before 11 a.m., when KCRA reporter Mike Luery and his cameraman were caught in an altercation with anti-fascist protesters shouting “no cameras” and demanding they leave.

“We’re not causing the problem; your belligerent people are causing the problem,” Luery told the crowd before someone knocked his mike from his hand and others tried to grab the camera. The pair were eventually shoved out of the crowd and crossed the street away from the protesters.

Fleece Johnson nonsense....,

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article86099332.html#storylink=cpy

Read more here: http://www.sacbee.com/news/local/crime/article86099332.html#storylink=cpy

it IS class warfare

theintercept |  Indeed, media reaction to the Brexit vote — filled with unreflective rage, condescension, and contempt toward those who voted wrong — perfectly illustrates the dynamics that caused all of this in the first place. Media elites, by virtue of their position, adore the status quo. It rewards them, vests them with prestige and position, welcomes them into exclusive circles, allows them to be close to (if not themselves wielding) great power while traveling their country and the world, provides them with a platform, fills them with esteem and purpose. The same is true of academic elites, financial elites, and political elites. Elites love the status quo that has given them, and then protected, their elite position.

Because of how generally satisfied they are with their lot, they regard with affection and respect the internationalist institutions that safeguard the West’s prevailing order: the World Bank and IMF, NATO and the West’s military forces, the Federal Reserve, Wall Street, the EU. While they express some piecemeal criticisms of each, they literally cannot comprehend how anyone would be fundamentally disillusioned by and angry with these institutions, let alone want to break from them. They are far removed from the suffering that causes those anti-establishment sentiments. So they search and search in vain for some rationale that could explain something like Brexit, or the establishment-condemning movements on the right and left, and can find only one way to process it: These people are not motivated by any legitimate grievances or economic suffering, but instead they are just broken, ungrateful, immoral, hateful, racist, and ignorant.

Of course it is the case that some, perhaps much, of the support given to these anti-establishment movements is grounded in those sorts of ugly sentiments. But it’s also the case that the media elites’ revered establishment institutions in finance, media, and politics are driven by all sorts of equally ugly impulses, as the rotted fruit of their actions conclusively proves.

Even more important, the mechanism that Western citizens are expected to use to express and rectify dissatisfaction — elections — has largely ceased to serve any corrective function. As Hayes, in a widely cited tweet, put it this week about Brexit:

But that is exactly the choice presented not only by Brexit but also Western elections generally, including the 2016 Clinton v. Trump general election (just look at the powerful array of Wall Street tycoons and war-loving neocons that — long before Trump — viewed the former Democratic New York senator and secretary of state as their best hope for having their agenda and interests served). When democracy is preserved only in form, structured to change little to nothing about power distribution, people naturally seek alternatives for the redress of their grievances, particularly when they suffer.