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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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 ..."
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.”
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.
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.
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.
Most Americans could not even conceive of such a thing. But of
course the truth is that up until just recently most Venezuelans could
not either. In fact, just a couple years ago Venezuela was one of the
most prosperous nations in all of South America…
Two years ago, Venezuela was a normal functioning nation,
relatively speaking of course. It was by no means a free country, but
the people still had a standard of living that was higher than most
developing nations. Venezuelans could still afford the basic necessities
of life, and a few luxuries too.
They could send their children to school and expect them to receive a
reasonably good education, and they could go to the hospital and expect
to be effectively treated with the same medical standards you’d find in
a developed nation. They could go to the grocery store and buy whatever
they needed, and basic government services like law enforcement and
infrastructure maintenance worked fairly well. The system was far from
perfect, but it worked for the most part.
There are all sorts of signs that the thin veneer of civilization
that we all take for granted in the United States is starting to crumble
as well. If you follow End Of The American Dream
on a regular basis, you know that I post articles about this theme all
the time. But today I just want to share one tidbit with you. Reuters is reporting that the number of heroin users in this country has nearly tripled since 2003, and the number of heroin-related deaths is now about five times higher than it was in the year 2000…
A heroin “epidemic” is gripping the United States, where cheap supply has helped push the number of users to a 20-year high, increasing drug-related deaths, the United Nations said on Thursday.
According to the U.N.’s World Drug Report 2016, the number of heroin
users in the United States reached around one million in 2014, almost
three times as many as in 2003. Heroin-related deaths there have
increased five-fold since 2000.
“There is really a huge epidemic (of) heroin in the U.S.,” said
Angela Me, the chief researcher for the report which was released on
Thursday.
Just like Venezuela, our society is rotting too. As I have warned before, the exact same things that are happening down there right now are coming here too.
monetarywatch | When less stuff is being bought, sold and shipped around the country
with each passing month, how in the world can the U.S. economy be in
“good shape”? Unlike official government statistics which are often
based largely on projections, assumptions and numbers seemingly made up
out of thin air, the Cass Freight index is based on real transactions
conducted by real shipping companies. And what the Cass Freight Index
is telling us about the state of the U.S. economy in 2016 lines up
perfectly with all of the other statistics that are clearly indicating that we have now shifted into recession mode.
Since 1995, the Cass Freight Index™ has been a trusted
measure of North American freight volumes and expenditures. Our monthly
Cass Freight Index Report provides valuable insight into freight trends
as they relate to other economic and supply chain indicators and the
overall economy.
Data within the Index includes all domestic freight modes
and is derived from $25 billion in freight transactions processed by
Cass annually on behalf of its client base of hundreds of large shippers.
These companies represent a broad sampling of industries including
consumer packaged goods, food, automotive, chemical, OEM, retail and
heavy equipment. Annual freight volume per organization ranges from $1
million to over $1 billion. The diversity of shippers and aggregate
volume provide a statistically valid representation of North American
shipping activity.
When they say “all domestic freight modes”, that includes air, rail,
truck, etc. As you are about to see, the total amount of stuff that is
being bought, sold and shipped around the country by all these various
methods has now been declining for 15 months in a row.
If it was just one or two months you could say that it was just an
anomaly, but how in the world can anyone explain away 15 consecutive
months?
Not only that, but the brand new number that just came out for May
2016 is the lowest number that we have seen for the month of May in 6 years.
Of course the number for April was the lowest number that we have
seen for that month in 6 years too, and the number for March was also
the lowest number that we have seen for that month in 6 years.
openthebooks |
Special Agents at the IRS equipped with AR15 military rifles?
Health and Human Services ‘Special Office of Inspector General Agents’ being trained by Army’s Special Forces contractors?
The Department of Veterans Affairs arming 3,700 employees?
KEY FINDINGS (FY2006-FY2014) – THE MILITARIZATION OF AMERICA
Sixty-seven non-military federal agencies spent $1.48 billion on guns, ammunition, and military-style equipment.
Of
that total amount, ‘Traditional Law Enforcement’ Agencies spent 77
percent ($1.14 billion) while ‘Administrative’ or ‘General’ Agencies
spent 23 percent ($335.1 million).
Non-military federal spending on guns and ammunition jumped 104 percent from $55 million (FY2006) to $112 million (FY2011).
Nearly
6 percent ($42 million) of all federal guns and ammunition purchase
transactions were wrongly coded. Some purchases were actually for
ping-pong balls, gym equipment, bread, copiers, cotton balls, or cable
television including a line item from the Coast Guard entered as "Cable
Dude".
Administrative agencies including the Food and Drug
Administration (FDA), Small Business Administration (SBA), Smithsonian
Institution, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and
Atmospheric Administration, United States Mint, Department of
Education, Bureau of Engraving and Printing, National Institute of
Standards and Technology, and many other agencies purchased guns, ammo,
and military-style equipment.
Since 2004, Department of Homeland
Security (DHS) purchased 1.7 billion bullets including 453 million
hollow-point bullets. As of 1/1/2014, DHS estimated its bullet
inventory-reserve at 22-months, or 160 million rounds.
Between 1998
and 2008 (the most recent comprehensive data available) the number of
law enforcement officers employed by federal agencies increased nearly
50 percent from 83,000 (1998) to 120,000 (2008). However, Department of
Justice officer count increased from 40,000 (2008) to 69,000 (2013) and
Department of Homeland Security officer count increased from 55,000
(2008) to 70,000 (2013).
The Internal Revenue Service, with its
2,316 special agents, spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and
military-style equipment.
The Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
spent $3.1 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment.
The EPA has spent $715 million on its ‘Criminal Enforcement Division’
from FY2005 to present even as the agency has come under fire for
failing to perform its basic functions.
Federal agencies spent
$313,958 on paintball equipment, along with $14.7 million on Tasers,
$1.6 million on unmanned aircraft, $8.2 million on buckshot, $7.44
million on projectiles, and $4 million on grenades/launchers.
The
Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) spent $11.66 million including more
than $200,000 on ‘night vision equipment,’ $2.3 million on ‘armor –
personal,’ more than $2 million on guns, and $3.6 million on
ammunition. Veterans Affairs has 3,700 law enforcement officers
guarding and securing VA medical centers.
12. The Animal and Plant
Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, .308
caliber rifles, night vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid
explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote
controlled helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal
infrared scopes, and more.
theguardian | Robert David Steele, former Marine, CIA
case officer, and US co-founder of the US Marine Corps intelligence
activity, is a man on a mission. But it's a mission that frightens the
US intelligence establishment to its core.
With 18 years experience
working across the US intelligence community, followed by 20 more years
in commercial intelligence and training, Steele's exemplary career has
spanned almost all areas of both the clandestine world.
Steele started off as a Marine Corps infantry and intelligence
officer. After four years on active duty, he joined the CIA for about a
decade before co-founding the Marine Corps Intelligence Activity, where
he was deputy director. Widely recognised as the leader of the Open
Source Intelligence (OSINT) paradigm, Steele went on to write the
handbooks on OSINT for NATO, the US Defense Intelligence Agency and the
U.S. Special Operations Forces. In passing, he personally trained 7,500
officers from over 66 countries.
In 1992, despite opposition from the CIA, he obtained Marine Corps
permission to organise a landmark international conference on open
source intelligence – the paradigm of deriving information to support
policy decisions not through secret activities, but from open public
sources available to all. The conference was such a success it brought
in over 620 attendees from the intelligence world.
But the CIA wasn't happy, and ensured that Steele was prohibited from
running a second conference. The clash prompted him to resign from his
position as second-ranking civilian in Marine Corps intelligence, and
pursue the open source paradigm elsewhere. He went on to found and head
up the Open Source Solutions Network Inc. and later the non-profit Earth
Intelligence Network which runs the Public Intelligence Blog.
I first came across Steele when I discovered his Amazon review of my
third book, The War on Truth: 9/11, Disinformation and the Anatomy of
Terrorism. A voracious reader, Steele is the number 1 Amazon reviewer
for non-fiction across 98 categories. He also reviewed my latest book, A
User's Guide to the Crisis of Civilization, but told me I'd overlooked
an important early work – 'A More Secure World: Our Shared Responsibility, Report of the UN High-Level Panel on Threats, Challenges, and Change.'
Steele's book is a must-read, a powerful yet still pragmatic roadmap
to a new civilisational paradigm that simultaneously offers a trenchant,
unrelenting critique of the prevailing global order. His
interdisciplinary 'whole systems' approach dramatically connects up the
increasing corruption, inefficiency and unaccountability of the
intelligence system and its political and financial masters with
escalating inequalities and environmental crises. But he also offers a
comprehensive vision of hope that activist networks like Reclaim are
implementing today.
"We are at the end of a five-thousand-year-plus historical process
during which human society grew in scale while it abandoned the early
indigenous wisdom councils and communal decision-making," he writes in The Open Source Everything Manifesto.
"Power was centralised in the hands of increasingly specialised
'elites' and 'experts' who not only failed to achieve all they promised
but used secrecy and the control of information to deceive the public
into allowing them to retain power over community resources that they
ultimately looted."
Public corporations are responding to consumer demand and pressure
from Wall Street. Professors Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg
published Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporationslast fall, arguing that businesses are locked in a cycle of exploiting the world’s resources in ever more creative ways.
“Our book shows how large corporations are able to continue
engaging in increasingly environmentally exploitative behaviour by
obscuring the link between endless economic growth and worsening
environmental destruction,” they wrote.
Yale sociologist Justin Farrell studied
20 years of corporate funding and found that “corporations have used
their wealth to amplify contrarian views [of climate change] and create
an impression of greater scientific uncertainty than actually exists.”
Corporate capitalism is committed to the relentless pursuit of growth, even if it ravages the planet and threatens human health.
We need to build a new system: one that will balance economic growth with sustainability and human flourishing.
A new generation of companies are showing the way forward.
They’re infusing capitalism with fresh ideas, specifically in regards to
employee ownership and agile management.
theintercept | “In voting to leave
the EU, it is vital to stress that there is no need for haste,” Johnson
said, “and indeed, as the prime minister has just said, nothing will
change over the short term, except that work will have to begin on how
to give effect to the will of the people and to extricate this country
from the supranational system.”
Given that the popular mandate his side had just won was summed up in
a single word on the backdrop behind him, “Leave,” it seemed odd that
Johnson made no mention of the fastest way to get that process started,
by pressing for an immediate Article 50 declaration.
That fact did not escape observers in other parts of Europe, like the former foreign minister of Sweden, Carl Bildt.
The reason could be that Johnson has something very different in
mind: a negotiated compromise that would preserve most of the benefits
of EU membership for British citizens and businesses but still satisfy
the popular will to escape the attendant responsibilities and costs.
In this context, it is important to keep two things in mind. First,
it was Johnson himself who suggested, when he joined the Leave campaign
in February, that a vote to depart could be used as a stick to negotiate
not a full departure from the EU, but a better deal for the UK. “There
is only one way to get the change we need, and that is to vote to go,
because all EU history shows that they only really listen to a
population when it says ‘No,'” Johnson wrote then. “It is time to seek a new relationship, in which we manage to extricate ourselves from most of the supranational elements.”
Second, as the legal blogger David Allen Green has explained clearly,
the measure Britons just voted for “was an advisory not a mandatory
referendum,” meaning that it is not legally binding on the government.
No matter who the prime minister is, he or she is not required by the
outcome to trigger Article 50. And, despite what senior figures in the
EU and its other states might say, there is no way for them to force the
UK to invoke Article 50.
What all this means in practice is that, while it would be political
suicide for any leader to try to avoid acting to satisfy the popular
will expressed at the ballot box, there is some wiggle room for a new
government to try to find a compromise arrangement that would satisfy a
larger share of the population than just the slim majority of voters who
demanded separation.
As he makes up his mind on whether to seek the premiership, and
considers how to appeal to the nearly half of the British population
that wanted to stay in the EU, Johnson did not have to go far to get a
sense of the seething outrage in parts of the country, like London, that
voted overwhelmingly against leaving. Walking out of his home on
Friday, Johnson was booed and jeered by some of his neighbors, who
chanted, “scum” and “traitor.”
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