peak empire (is the u.s. military past its peak ROI and subject to collapse?)

cluborlov |  In the case of the US empire, it has not continued to expand by territorial acquisition. The last territory acquired was the Marshall Islands in 1947, which then became a UN Trust Territory, followed by Independence in 1986. What has continued to expand is the presence of US military installations all over the world. As the recently deceased analyst Chalmers Johnson explained, the US is an “empire of bases”, not an empire of colonies. The US has 800-1000 foreign military bases and 4-5000 bases in the US. Colonies are so passé these days. Why bother with colonies when you can impose your will with a few bases, and you don’t have to manage the whole country. Besides you can outsource most everything to contractors, so you don’t even need the consent of the governed. All you need is their tax money, which the sheeple continue to provide with barely a bleat.

Looking at the DOD Base Structure reports it is possible to graph the total acreage owned by the US military both in the US, in foreign countries, and in US foreign territories. Since both foreign countries and territories are occupied, I will lump them together. It is also valid to use total military acreage including the US, since the 50 states of the US are essentially occupied territory of the US military as well.

 I was unable to find data before 1957, but total acreage under management by the US military had a recent peak in 2007, while foreign acreage peaked in 2004. This data is from official US DOD base structure reports, which according to Chalmers Johnson leaves out quite a bit, but from a relative point of view over time, it is probably adequate. I have included the excel sheet data, and others are welcome to add to the data and do a more thorough job graphing this data.

Military spending

Looking at US military spending below, it has continued to rise, despite the recent decline in acreage under management. This is entirely consistent with Tainter’s theory of declining marginal utility to expanding empires, as imperial overstretch becomes more and more expensive, and returns to expenditures begins to decline, and even become negative. It would be entirely consistent for the expenditures to continue to rise as the empire attempts to hold onto its existing level of military acreage, until interest on the debt causes a default, and then expenditures also collapse.

by his own admission, scalise is duke without the baggage (he will be whip and not held to account)

WaPo |  That David Duke had a following and a constituency was undeniable, given the support he attracted in his campaigns. Conservatives like Scalise, who came along later, wanted the support of many of Duke’s supporters — even if they rejected his racist politics. 

Robert Mann, who has worked for a number of Democratic elected officials from Louisiana and is now a professor at Louisiana State University, made another point in an e-mail message sent Tuesday. “Duke’s racial views were — and still are to some degree — pretty mainstream among a significant percentage of whites here,” he wrote.

It’s noteworthy that Republicans now have a diverse set of statewide elected officials in the South and elsewhere: an African American senator (Tim Scott of South Carolina), two Indian American governors (Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Nikki Haley of South Carolina), and two Hispanic governors (Susana Martinez of New Mexico and Brian Sandoval of Nevada). 

Equally noteworthy is the degree to which the Republican Party still struggles to expand its voter coalition to include more minorities. That Democrats still command 90 percent of the African American vote and that Mitt Romney won just 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012 underscores the distance Republicans must travel.

Today, the two major parties highlight the racial gaps that exist in society. Scott Clement of The Washington Post’s polling unit looked at the racial makeup of the two political parties, based on surveys conducted in the past 15 months. In those polls, the percentage of self-identified Republicans who were white averaged 85 percent. Among Democrats, the average percentage of whites was 53 percent.

Norman Ornstein of the American Enterprise Institute wrote recently in the National Journal that, with the continuing decline in support for Democrats among working-class whites and the failure of Republicans to attract more support among minorities, “it is possible to see a future where the GOP is clearly and distinctly a white party, while Democrats are clearly a majority-minority party.”

uhmurkan antics through a veblenesque satirical lens...,

farmingpathogens |  On the first day of the year 2015, the local team of “student-athletes,” an untranslatable term of earnest irony, was roundly crushed by a more highly ranked and skilled team from another apartheid state, Missouri. And yet in a periodical widely distributed across the region before the game, every one of five indigenous commentators predicted the local contingent would win. 

The pressures of in-group affirmation appear ritualized even among specialists paid with community surpluses to exercise critical judgment. 

The rites of prestidigitation, here a representativeness heuristic violating Bayes’ Theorem, extend to other domains of being and becoming. These include attempts at mutual wish fulfillment, presenting, for instance, racial redlining and reverse reparations as mindful liberalism.

the tragedy of the american military

theatlantic |  Ours is the best-equipped fighting force in history, and it is incomparably the most expensive. By all measures, today’s professionalized military is also better trained, motivated, and disciplined than during the draft-army years. No decent person who is exposed to today’s troops can be anything but respectful of them and grateful for what they do.

Yet repeatedly this force has been defeated by less modern, worse-equipped, barely funded foes. Or it has won skirmishes and battles only to lose or get bogged down in a larger war. Although no one can agree on an exact figure, our dozen years of war in Iraq, Afghanistan, and neighboring countries have cost at least $1.5 trillion; Linda J. Bilmes, of the Harvard Kennedy School, recently estimated that the total cost could be three to four times that much. Recall that while Congress was considering whether to authorize the Iraq War, the head of the White House economic council, Lawrence B. Lindsey, was forced to resign for telling The Wall Street Journal that the all-in costs might be as high as $100 billion to $200 billion, or less than the U.S. has spent on Iraq and Afghanistan in many individual years.

Yet from a strategic perspective, to say nothing of the human cost, most of these dollars might as well have been burned. “At this point, it is incontrovertibly evident that the U.S. military failed to achieve any of its strategic goals in Iraq,” a former military intelligence officer named Jim Gourley wrote recently for Thomas E. Ricks’s blog, Best Defense. “Evaluated according to the goals set forth by our military leadership, the war ended in utter defeat for our forces.” In 13 years of continuous combat under the Authorization for the Use of Military Force, the longest stretch of warfare in American history, U.S. forces have achieved one clear strategic success: the raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Their many other tactical victories, from overthrowing Saddam Hussein to allying with Sunni tribal leaders to mounting a “surge” in Iraq, demonstrated great bravery and skill. But they brought no lasting stability to, nor advance of U.S. interests in, that part of the world. When ISIS troops overran much of Iraq last year, the forces that laid down their weapons and fled before them were members of the same Iraqi national army that U.S. advisers had so expensively yet ineffectively trained for more than five years.

ebola in mosul?

zerohedge |  Forget targeted US airstrikes, ISIS faces a new existential threat. Citing an unnamed source in a Mosul hospital, Iraq's official pro-government newspaper, al Sabaah, said Ebola arrived in Mosul from "terrorists" who came "from several countries" and Africa. Mashable further confirms, three outlets reported that Ebola showed up at a hospital in Mosul. For now, it's unclear if any disease experts or doctors in Mosul are even able to test for the Ebola virus; but it would mark the first time the virus had been detected in an area controlled by ISIS, a group that doesn't embrace science and modern medicine.

As Mashable reports,

Reports that Islamic State militants in Mosul have contracted Ebola swirled though Iraqi media sources on Wednesday. World Health Organization officials said they haven't confirmed the cases, but the organization has reached out to offer assistance.

"We have no official notification from [the Iraqi government] that it is Ebola," Christy Feig, WHO's director of communications told Mashable.

Feig added that WHO is in the process of reaching out to government officials in Iraq to see if they need help investigating the cases, a task that could be a challenge, given the restrictions that would come with operating in ISIS-controlled territory.

It's unclear if any disease experts or doctors in Mosul are even able to test for the Ebola virus. A Kurdish official, who was convinced the cases are Ebola, told the Kurdish media outlet Xendan that the militants' symptoms were similar to those of the Ebola virus.

Citing an unnamed source in a Mosul hospital, Iraq's official pro-government newspaper, al Sabaah, said the disease arrived in Mosul from "terrorists" who came "from several countries" and Africa.

If the cases in Mosul turn out to be Ebola — a scenario that, at this point, seems highly unlikely — it would mark the first time the virus had been detected in an area controlled by ISIS, a group that doesn't embrace science and modern medicine.

Over the past few weeks, militants affiliated with ISIS have executed more than a dozen doctors in Mosul, according to Benjamin T. Decker, an intelligence analyst with the Levantine Group, a Middle East-based geopolitical risk and research consultancy.

here's one way to know

Google Play | *This app requires root access and will only run on devices with Qualcomm chipset.*

 

SnoopSnitch collects and analyzes mobile radio data to make you aware of your mobile network security and to warn you about threats like fake base stations (IMSI catchers), user tracking, and SS7 attacks.

To use SnoopSnitch, a rooted device with a Qualcomm chipset running stock Android 4.1 or higher is required. Unfortunately, custom ROMs are often unsupported at the moment as they can lack necessary proprietary drivers. (Some successful CyanogenMod installs have been reported.)

This application uses data contributed by other users. By choosing to upload your measurement results or security events, you can help improve this data base and support future research.

are they listening to you

Motherboard | ​Are the police tracking you with a fake cell phone tower? Maybe! Probably, even. But, until now, there was absolutely no way of knowing if your phone was automatically connecting to a so-called "Stingray" or other location tracker. Finally, there's an app that is supposedly able to detect the tools police use to track people en masse.

Law enforcement all around the world have been using International Mobile Subscriber Identity catchers, popularly known by the most popular brand name, Stingray, for several years now to track criminal suspects, all the while snatching up the location data of everyone in a geographical radius. Their use is highly controversial because, due to the nature of the way they work—by posing as a cell phone tower and routing cell connection traffic through the device to actual cell phone towers—it's impossible to avoid snatching up the data of innocent bystanders.

Because of this limitation, their use is illegal in some countries and has been ruled unconstitutional in several states (most recently in Florida).

Beyond that, we generally have no idea where the hell law enforcement is actually using them. Thanks to a combination of Freedom of Information Act requests, court cases in which evidence from IMSI catchers were used, media reports, and information leaks, we now know that at least 12 federal agencies and 19 states use Stingrays, but we have no idea when they're used, the parameters for when they can be used, and where, specifically, they are used. As for the other 31 states? We have no idea.

That's all a long way of saying that the introduction of SnoopSnitch, an app that can detect the use of IMSI catchers in real time is long, long overdue and extremely welcome. The app was announced and released at the Chaos Computer Congress conference this weekend by SRLabs, a team of German security experts led by Alex Senier, Karsten Nohl, and Tobias Engel.

"Your every movement can be tracked all over the world," Engel said. "You, as the subscriber, cannot do anything. You can tell your operator to take action, or you can throw away the phone, but you can't do anything because it's happening at a network level."

does cia/fbi top the society of jesus, or, does the society of jesus top cia/fbi?

 

Wikipedia |  United States, 28 colleges and universities in 19 states^[83]

See also: Association of Jesuit Colleges and Universities

• Boston College
• Canisius College
• College of the Holy Cross
• Creighton University
• Fairfield University
• Fordham University
• Georgetown University
• Gonzaga University
• John Carroll University
• Le Moyne College
• Loyola Marymount University
• Loyola University Chicago
• Loyola University Maryland
• Loyola University New Orleans
• Marquette University
• Regis University
• Rockhurst University
• Saint Joseph's University
• Saint Louis University
• St. Peter's University
• Santa Clara University
• Seattle University
• Spring Hill College
• University of Detroit Mercy
• University of San Francisco
• University of Scranton
• Wheeling Jesuit University
• Xavier University

a human, humane, smiling and intelligent face looking at the core human tragedy of social exclusion...,

esquire |  Papal encyclicals are odd beasts. In the lives of even semi-devout Roman Catholics, an encyclical can simultaneously be a complete anachronism and every bit  as immediate as a trip to druggist to buy your birth control. In Bare Ruined Choirs, historian Garry Wills gives a fine thumbnail history of them in the context of Humanae Vitae, the ruinous encyclical on artificial birth control circulated by Pope Paul VI. Wills traces how encyclicals began as a call from orthodox bishops to ally themselves against various beliefs that they believed to be heretical, specifically Arianism. As the Church centralized itself around the papacy, the collegial aspect of encyclicals withered away and they were transformed into a way for the pope to propound his views to the bishops, and to the Church itself. More to the point, as Wills illustrates through the example of how theologians of both the left and the right found reasons to support Humanae Vitae while the great majority of Catholic laypeople were ignoring it entirely, the former group  used the "old trick of curial theologians" whereby the Clan of the Red Beanie would go about "sneaking generally accepted things up to the scale of authority to 'practical' infallibility," even though encyclicals are not issued under the strict parameters required of infallible pronouncements designed by the First Vatican Council by that prince of fools, Pius IX. Basically, in my experience, and in my own very limited study of the matter, encycicals are basically what you make of them. And, if Papa Francesco is seriously about to do what he's apparently about to do, this is a very big deal, indeed.

In 2015, the pope will issue a lengthy message on the subject to the world's 1.2 billion Catholics, give an address to the UN general assembly and call a summit of the world's main religions. The reason for such frenetic activity, says Bishop Marcelo Sorondo, chancellor of the Vatican's Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is the pope's wish to directly influence next year's crucial UN climate meeting in Paris, when countries will try to conclude 20 years of fraught negotiations with a universal commitment to reduce emissions. "Our academics supported the pope's initiative to influence next year's crucial decisions," Sorondo told Cafod, the Catholic development agency, at a meeting in London. "The idea is to convene a meeting with leaders of the main religions to make all people aware of the state of our climate and the tragedy of social exclusion."  Fist tap Dale.

fascinating how an emphasis on christian morality is greeted as "radical"...,

democracynow |  Given the sheer number of people who identify as Catholics worldwide, the pope’s clarion call to tackle climate change could reach far more people than even the largest environmental groups. Globally, there are 1.2 billion Catholics, of which around 75 million live here in the United States. The pope also plans to address the United Nations General Assembly and convene a summit of the world’s main religions in hopes of bolstering next year’s crucial U.N. climate summit in Paris.

Last year, during his first Christmas mass as head of the Catholic Church, Pope Francis called for protection of the environment from human greed.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] Lord of heaven and Earth, look upon our planet, frequently exploited by human greed and rapacity. Help and protect all of the victims of natural disasters, especially the beloved people of the Philippines gravely affected by the recent typhoon.

AMY GOODMAN: This year, Pope Francis shocked cardinals, bishops and priests by using his annual Christmas remarks to deliver a scathing critique of the Vatican itself, the central governing body of the Catholic Church. He said the Vatican is plagued with "spiritual Alzheimer’s," "existential schizophrenia," "social exhibitionism" and a lust for power—all of which have resulted in an "orchestra that plays out of tune," he said. Pope Francis also lambasted the gossip, pettiness and rivalry he said were infecting the church. This is part of what he said.

POPE FRANCIS: [translated] There is also the sickness of the stony mind and spirit, of those who have a stone heart and a hard neck, of those who along the way lose their inner serenity, their vivacity and their audacity, and end up hiding behind papers, becoming machines for practices and not men of God. It is dangerous to lose the human sensitivity that we need to cry with those who cry and to rejoice with those who rejoice.

AMY GOODMAN: Pope Francis has also captured global attention for his criticism of capitalism, his softer tone on key social issues including abortion and homosexuality, and his calls to refocus the church toward the needs of the poor. In his personal life, the pope has chosen to live simply at the Vatican, residing in a guest house instead of the Apostolic Palace, forgoing a chauffeured Mercedes in favor a plain black sedan.

He’s also made headlines for his everyday acts of extraordinary compassion. He invited a teenager with Down syndrome, Alberto di Tullio, for a ride in the Popemobile. He embraced and kissed Vinicio Riva, a man severely scarred by a genetic disease. And he washed a dozen prisoners’ feet at a jail for juveniles in Rome. The pope also responded to a letter from a rape survivor by personally calling to console her, saying, "You are not alone."

Most recently, the pope has emerged as a star diplomat, a key player in the thawing of relations between the Cuba government and the United States. Cuban President Raúl Castro thanked him for his support.

PRESIDENT RAÚL CASTRO: [translated] This decision by President Obama deserves respect and recognition from our people. I would like to thank and recognize the support of the Vatican, and especially that of Pope Francis, in helping improve the relations between Cuba and the United States.

AMY GOODMAN: Earlier this month, the pope offered to assist the United States with another diplomatic hurdle: its efforts to close Guantánamo prison. The Vatican has reportedly offered to help find adequate humanitarian solutions through its international contacts.

jesuitical rigor and morality on a collision course with evangelical ignorance and hypocrisy...,

guardian |  In recent months, the pope has argued for a radical new financial and economic system to avoid human inequality and ecological devastation. In October he told a meeting of Latin American and Asian landless peasants and other social movements: “An economic system centred on the god of money needs to plunder nature to sustain the frenetic rhythm of consumption that is inherent to it.

“The system continues unchanged, since what dominates are the dynamics of an economy and a finance that are lacking in ethics. It is no longer man who commands, but money. Cash commands.

“The monopolising of lands, deforestation, the appropriation of water, inadequate agro-toxics are some of the evils that tear man from the land of his birth. Climate change, the loss of biodiversity and deforestation are already showing their devastating effects in the great cataclysms we witness,” he said.

In Lima last month, bishops from every continent expressed their frustration with the stalled climate talks and, for the first time, urged rich countries to act.

Sorondo, a fellow Argentinian who is known to be close to Pope Francis, said: “Just as humanity confronted revolutionary change in the 19th century at the time of industrialisation, today we have changed the natural environment so much. If current trends continue, the century will witness unprecedented climate change and destruction of the ecosystem with tragic consequences.”

According to Neil Thorns, head of advocacy at Cafod, said: “The anticipation around Pope Francis’s forthcoming encyclical is unprecedented. We have seen thousands of our supporters commit to making sure their MPs know climate change is affecting the poorest communities.”

However, Francis’s environmental radicalism is likely to attract resistance from Vatican conservatives and in rightwing church circles, particularly in the US – where Catholic climate sceptics also include John Boehner, Republican leader of the House of Representatives and Rick Santorum, the former Republican presidential candidate.

Cardinal George Pell, a former archbishop of Sydney who has been placed in charge of the Vatican’s budget, is a climate change sceptic who has been criticised for claiming that global warming has ceased and that if carbon dioxide in the atmosphere were doubled, then “plants would love it”.

rule of law: we know that "fair and uniform application" ends at the tribal boundaries...,

theatlantic |  The right should greet it with the skepticism they'd typically summon for a rally on behalf of government workers as they seek higher pay, new work rules, and more generous benefits. What's unfolding in New York City is, at its core, a public-employee union using overheated rhetoric and emotional appeals to rile public employees into insubordination. The implied threat to the city's elected leadership and electorate is clear: Cede leverage to the police in the course of negotiating labor agreements or risk an armed, organized army rebelling against civilian control. Such tactics would infuriate the right if deployed by any bureaucracy save law enforcement opposing a left-of-center mayor.

It ought to infuriate them now. Instead, too many are permitting themselves to be baited into viewing discord in New York City through the distorting lens of the culture war, so much so that Al Sharpton's name keeps coming up as if he's at the center of all this. Poppycock. Credit savvy police union misdirection. They're turning conservatives into their useful idiots. If the NYPD succeeds in bullying de Blasio into submission, the most likely consequence will be a labor contract that cedes too much to union negotiators, whether unsustainable pensions of the sort that plague local finances all over the U.S., work rules that prevent police commanders from running the department efficiently, or arbitration rules that prevent the worst cops from being fired. Meanwhile, Al Sharpton will be fine no matter what happens. Will the law-and-order right remain blinded by tribalism or grasp the real stakes before it's too late? Look to National Review and City Journal before laying odds.  Fist tap Arnach.

what would charles koch do?

HuffPo |  Charles Koch, the billionaire chairman and CEO of Koch Industries and leading conservative mega-donor, has set his sights on a new goal: reforming America's criminal justice system. 

In an interview with The Wichita Eagle published Saturday, Koch said his own experiences in courts -- including the time a federal grand jury indicted Koch Industries on 97 counts of environmental crimes in 2000 -- prompted him to study the justice system at both the state and federal level. In that particular case, centered on a Koch Petroleum Group refinery in Corpus Christi, Texas, prosecutors eventually dropped all but one of the charges after the corporation agreed to pay a settlement.

According to Koch's chief counsel Mark Holden, the case made the billionaire industrialist wonder "how the little guy who doesn't have Koch’s resources deals with prosecutions like that," the Eagle reports.

Koch and his brother David have gained notoriety as the bankrollers of Americans for Prosperity, a political advocacy group that backs candidates who favor slashing taxes and shrinking government. But the brothers have also quietly backed criminal justice reform for years, and sponsored a forum on the issue earlier this year. Charles Koch said he plans to ramp up his reform efforts in 2015.

"Over the next year, we are going to be pushing the issues key to this, which need a lot of work in this country," Koch told the Eagle. "And that would be freedom of speech, cronyism and how that relates to opportunities for the disadvantaged."

start firing overseer thugs for insubordination and violating their oaths...,

NYTimes |  Let’s review the actions that Mr. de Blasio’s harshest critics say have driven the police to such extremes.

1. He campaigned on ending the unconstitutional use of “stop-and-frisk” tactics, which victimized hundreds of thousands of innocent young black and Latino men.
2. He called for creating an inspector general for the department and ending racial profiling.
3. After Eric Garner, an unarmed black man, was killed by a swarm of cops on Staten Island, he convened a meeting with the police commissioner, William Bratton, and the Rev. Al Sharpton, giving Mr. Sharpton greater prominence than police defenders thought he should have had because Mr. Sharpton is a firebrand with an unsavory past.
4. He said after the Garner killing that he had told his biracial son, Dante, to “take special care” in encounters with the police.
5. He generally condoned the peaceful protests for police reform — while condemning those who incited or committed violence — and cited a tagline of the movement: “Black lives matter.”

The list of grievances adds up to very little, unless you look at it through the magnifying lens of resentment fomented by union bosses and right-wing commentators. The falling murder rate, the increased resources for the department, the end of quota-based policing, which the police union despised, the mayor’s commitment to “broken-windows” policing — none of that matters, because many cops have latched on to the narrative that they are hated, with the mayor orchestrating the hate.

It’s a false narrative. Mr. de Blasio was elected by a wide margin on a promise to reform the policing excesses that were found unconstitutional by a federal court. He hired a proven reformer, Mr. Bratton, who had achieved with the Los Angeles Police Department what needs doing in New York. The furor that has gripped the city since the Garner killing has been a complicated mess. But what New Yorkers expect of the Police Department is simple:

1. Don’t violate the Constitution.

2. Don’t kill unarmed people.

To that we can add:

3. Do your jobs. The police are sworn public servants, and refusing to work violates their oath to serve and protect. Mr. Bratton should hold his commanders and supervisors responsible, and turn this insubordination around.

tried to end the year on a high-note, but these knuckleheads pulled me back!!!

nydailynews |  Off the table was any talk of the contentious contract negotiations between the NYPD and the city, sources said.

The Justice League NYC, one of the groups behind the citywide protests, tweeted that de Blasio and the union leaders “should be discussing ending broken windows policing.”

That police strategy is backed by the mayor and Bratton, but critics say it unfairly targets minorities and the poor. Cops were trying to bust Garner on July 17 for peddling untaxed cigarettes when he died.

De Blasio has taken heat for expressing sympathy for protesters demonstrating against the Garner decision and embracing Sharpton, a frequent police critic.

He also angered many rank-and-file officers by revealing that he told his son Dante, who is biracial, to be wary around police officers.

“Instead of saying that while you may be unhappy with the grand jury, you have to respect the decision, he went with ‘200 years of racism’ and advising his son, Dante, not to trust us,” Lynch’s spokesman, Al O’Leary, told Bloomberg News before the meeting.

“If you’re not out there wearing a bulletproof vest, you cannot appreciate the betrayal they feel by those words.”

visiting scholar constructive feedback sums up...,

None of this is surprising.

Here is where I stand today after observing the last 3 US Presidents and how the news media and "THE TEAM" of operatives who operate upon with the two 'Dung Producing Party Animals":

• AMERICAN HEGEMONIC SUPREMACY goes unchallenged, NOT (just) because there is no equal and opposite opposing forces in the world to "check it" but MOSTLY because of the domestic political "proxy battles" which go on - which functionally limit protest or animate it - with regard to WHO is in power.
• I keep focused on international news so I don't get caught up any longer in this scheme.

• YES I supported the Iraq War because I was caught up in the "Fight The Critics" scheme.

• Today I see clearly that THE US GOVERNMENT REMAINS CONSISTENT IN ITS ACTIONS - while the people (American) divide themselves into factions

Today the US "economy" is said to be strong.

Look at the international press and note that mostly every other nation is suffering and on the brink of recession (especially the "Oil Producing States" and they are being forced to make massive government spending cuts/ layoffs).

The USA has the power of the "US Federal Reserve System" which used a $3.5 trillion credit card to produce FAKE MONEY to keep the US economy going - all the while the IMF/World Bank forced "austerity measures" in other nations who don't have the fiscal power to print fake money without suffering from INFLATIONARY FORCES.

The only way this smoke and mirror scheme is going to be address - so that 330 million Americans don't get isolated from the travails of the billions of other people in the world is to force "IMF-like" controls upon the domestic US fiscal policy - to reflect the $18 trillion in debt that the USA is able to abstract.

This is not an "Anti-American" stance. It is an acknowledgment that other nations without the same power are caught up in the wake that American and European policies produce. The worst thing they are doing is allowing their citizens to become NET CONSUMERS, further deleveraging their ability to achieve "Self-Determination".

Military Power / Fiscal Power / Foreign Policy Sanctions / Intelligence Agency Insurgency / Cultural Colonialism / Consumerism - are different sides of the very same cube.

necropolitics: operation ghetto storm

operationghettostorm |  2012 Annual Report on the extrajudicial killing of 313 Black people by police, security guards and vigilantes  

The Report exposes how every 28 hours someone inside the United States, employed or protected by the U.S. government kills a Black child, woman or man.

These state-sanctioned killings are the casualties of what we call  "Operation Ghetto Storm," a perpetual war to invade, occupy and pacify Black communities-- much like the U.S. invades and occupies the Middle East.

"Operation Ghetto Storm" written by Arlene Eisen, with preface by Kali Akuno, is published by the Malcolm X Grassroots Committee. It is also available, with other important resources at www.mxgm.org.

Read the Report, talk about it, take action.

necropolitics: after scrutiny, cia mandate is untouched...,

NYTimes |  But the scathing report the Senate Intelligence Committee delivered this month is unlikely to significantly change the role the C.I.A. now plays in running America’s secret wars. A number of factors — from steadfast backing by Congress and the White House to strong public support for clandestine operations — ensure that an agency that has been ascendant since President Obama came into office is not likely to see its mission diminished, either during his waning years in the White House or for some time after that.

The Church Committee’s revelations about the abuses committed by the intelligence community — and a parallel House investigation led by Representative Otis G. Pike of New York — came at the end of America’s wrenching military involvement in Vietnam, and during a period of détente with the Soviet Union. The disclosures of C.I.A. assassination schemes and spying on Vietnam War protesters fueled a post-Watergate fury among many Americans who had grown cynical about secret plots hatched in Washington.

The grim details, shocking at the time, led to a gutting of the agency’s ranks and a ban on assassinations, imposed by President Gerald R. Ford. They also led to the creation of the congressional intelligence committees and a requirement that the C.I.A. regularly report its covert activities to the oversight panels.

By contrast, the Senate Intelligence Committee’s recent report on C.I.A. excesses since the Sept. 11 attacks arrived in the midst of renewed fears of global terrorism, the rise of the Islamic State and grisly beheading videos of American hostages.

Loch K. Johnson, a professor at the University of Georgia and a former Church Committee investigator, said that the committee did its work “in a semi-benign period of international affairs.”

“There wasn’t the same kind of fear in the air,” he said.

A CBS News poll released last week found that though 69 percent of those asked consider waterboarding to be torture, 49 percent think that brutal interrogation methods are sometimes justified. More than half, 57 percent, believe that the tactics are at least sometimes effective in producing valuable intelligence to help stop terrorist attacks.

Senator Angus King, a member of the Intelligence Committee, said that Hollywood depictions of torture have distorted the public’s view of its efficacy.

“Every week, Jack Bauer saves civilization by torturing someone, and it works,” said Mr. King, the independent from Maine, referring to the lead character of the television show “24.”

Mr. King said that he was initially skeptical about the need to release the torture report, but when he spent five straight evenings reading it in a secure room on Capitol Hill he decided that the C.I.A. abuses needed a public airing.

“It went from interest, to a sick feeling, to disgust, and finally to anger,” he said.

But the Obama administration has made clear that it has no plans to make anyone legally accountable for the practices described by the C.I.A. as enhanced interrogation techniques and the Intelligence Committee as torture.

necropolitics: resources need not even be involved...,

michaelparenti |   For ten years, US and NATO forces waged a campaign to dismember Yugoslavia, including 78 days of round-the-clock aerial attacks in 1999 that killed or injured upwards of six thousand people. Drawing on a wide range of published and unpublished material (mostly Western sources) and observations gathered from his visit to Yugoslavia in 1999 shortly after the bombings, Michael Parenti challenges the mainstream media demonization of Yugoslavia and the Serbs, and uncovers the real goals behind Western talk of “genocide,” “ethnic cleansing,” and “democracy.” 

 

To Kill A Nation reveals a decade-long disinformation campaign waged by Western leaders and NATO officials in their pursuit of free-market “reforms.” The political and economic destabilization of the former Yugoslavia continues today, Parenti shows, as does the forced privatization and Third Worldization of the entire region. 

 

necropolitics: pinker ignores the megadeath we inflict on others unfortunate enough to live on resources we covet

prospect |  “Today we take it for granted that war happens in smaller, poorer and more backward countries,” Steven Pinker writes in his new book, The Better Angels of Our Nature: the Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes. The celebrated Harvard professor of psychology is discussing what he calls “the Long Peace”: the period since the end of the second world war in which “the great powers, and developed states in general, have stopped waging war on one another.” As a result of “this blessed state of affairs,” he notes, “two entire categories of war—the imperial war to acquire colonies, and the colonial war to keep them—no longer exist.” Now and then there have been minor conflicts. “To be sure, [the super-powers] occasionally fought each other’s smaller allies and stoked proxy wars among their client states.” But these episodes do not diminish Pinker’s enthusiasm about the Long Peace. Chronic warfare is only to be expected in backward parts of the world. “Tribal, civil, private, slave-raiding, imperial, and colonial wars have inflamed the territories of the developing world for millennia.” In more civilised zones, war has all but disappeared. There is nothing inevitable in the process; major wars could break out again, even among the great powers. But the change in human affairs that has occurred is fundamental. “An underlying shift that supports predictions about the future,” the Long Peace points to a world in which violence is in steady decline.

A sceptical reader might wonder whether the outbreak of peace in developed countries and endemic conflict in less fortunate lands might not be somehow connected. Was the immense violence that ravaged southeast Asia after 1945 a result of immemorial backwardness in the region? Or was a subtle and refined civilisation wrecked by world war and the aftermath of decades of neo-colonial conflict—as Norman Lewis intimated would happen in his prophetic account of his travels in the region, A Dragon Apparent (1951)? It is true that the second world war was followed by over 40 years of peace in North America and Europe—even if for the eastern half of the continent it was a peace that rested on Soviet conquest. But there was no peace between the powers that had emerged as rivals from the global conflict.

In much the same way that rich societies exported their pollution to developing countries, the societies of the highly-developed world exported their conflicts. They were at war with one another the entire time—not only in Indo-China but in other parts of Asia, the Middle East, Africa and Latin America. The Korean war, the Chinese invasion of Tibet, British counter-insurgency warfare in Malaya and Kenya, the abortive Franco-British invasion of Suez, the Angolan civil war, decades of civil war in the Congo and Guatemala, the Six Day War, the Soviet invasion of Hungary in 1956 and of Czechoslovakia in 1968, the Iran-Iraq war and the Soviet-Afghan war—these are only some of the armed conflicts through which the great powers pursued their rivalries while avoiding direct war with each other. When the end of the Cold War removed the Soviet Union from the scene, war did not end. It continued in the first Gulf war, the Balkan wars, Chechnya, the Iraq war and in Afghanistan and Kashmir, among other conflicts. Taken together these conflicts add up to a formidable sum of violence. For Pinker they are minor, peripheral and hardly worth mentioning. The real story, for him, is the outbreak of peace in advanced societies, a shift that augurs an unprecedented transformation in human affairs.

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While Pinker makes a great show of relying on evidence—the 700-odd pages of this bulky treatise are stuffed with impressive-looking graphs and statistics—his argument that violence is on the way out does not, in the end, rest on scientific investigation.