is money measurement? backed by murder?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Rebellion Is Real; Brexit Was Merely A Warning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

-- Jiddu Krishnamurti

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

-- Aldous Huxley

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Granny Goodness DNC Predictably Tells Progressives DEEZ NUTZ!!!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fleece Johnson nonsense....,

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

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

it IS class warfare

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

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

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

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

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

one day, you'll see armed guards on food trucks in uhmurkah too...,

endoftheamericandream |  Could you imagine living in a nation where all this is going on?

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.

 

It is just a matter of time.

the amount of stuff being bought, sold, and shipped around the u.s. continues to decline...,

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.

If you are not familiar with the Cass Freight Index, here is a definition of the index from the official Cass website…

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.

Are you starting to get the picture?

the FDA is stockpiling military weapons?

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.

OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Militarization of America, click here to download a PDF copy of our report

ethics as an OS - the preconditions of revolution exist in the west

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.'  

Last month, Steele presented a startling paper at the Libtech conference in New York, sponsored by the Internet Society and Reclaim. Drawing on principles set out in his latest book, The Open-Source Everything Manifesto: Transparency, Truth and Trust, he told the audience that all the major preconditions for revolution – set out in his 1976 graduate thesis – were now present in the United States and Britain. 

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."

top people better understand the importance of distributed ownership and governance

forbes |  How do we expect to feed that many people while we exhaust the resources that remain?

Human activities are behind the extinction crisis. Commercial agriculture, timber extraction, and infrastructure development are causing habitat loss and our reliance on fossil fuels is a major contributor to climate change.

Public corporations are responding to consumer demand and pressure from Wall Street. Professors Christopher Wright and Daniel Nyberg published Climate Change, Capitalism and Corporations last 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.

brexit not inevitable, but the removal of self-serving pompous political leaders may be...,

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.”

elite parasites pretend that peasant racism/xenophobia trump their own greed and forced austerity

Time |  In a stunning victory for the anti-establishment forces that have upended mainstream politics across the Western world, British voters chose on Thursday to pull their country out of the European Union, sending global markets into a tailspin and encouraging anti-E.U. forces across the continent to push for their own referenda on whether to break away.

“The E.U. is failing, the E.U. is dying,” declared the leader of the U.K. Independence Party, Nigel Farage, one of the leaders of the campaign for the British exit, or Brexit, from the union formed from the ruins of Europe after World War II. “It’s a victory against big business…against big politics,” he told reporters early on Friday morning, as the results showed 52% of the votes had been cast in favor of leaving and 48% against.

That margin of victory – amounting to around 1.3 million votes – did not simply repudiate the British government’s calls for openness and unity with Europe. It also offered a blueprint for how ballot-box insurgencies across the West could, in the course of a single campaign, shatter the legitimacy of the ruling elites.

This formula is a familiar one, drawing fuel from a potent mix of xenophobia and angst over the loss of sovereignty and national identity. In the last couple of years, it has been deployed with explosive effects across Europe — and looks set to define the race for the U.S. presidency.

Donald Trump, the Republican presidential candidate, just happened to arrive in the U.K. to open a golf resort as the final results were announced, and wasted no time in linking them to his own insurgent campaign. British voters had “taken their country back,” he said, echoing a slogan that has helped him win over the base, if not always the old guard, of the Republican Party.

“In a sense, the result of this referendum is a victory for Trumpism the world over,” says Tony Travers, a noted political scientist in London and adviser to the British parliament. “It definitely has the same roots.” Trump supporters, much like backers of Brexit, tend to feel that traditional parties have ignored their concerns over migration and economic inequality for too long. Their response has been a wide-ranging revolt against the status quo that has opened the political arena to a variety of upstart candidates for the first time in a generation or more.

could Granny's unmitigated arrogance and mendacity provoke a consitutional crisis?

observer |  This gives the lie to Clinton’s much-repeated mantra that she never sent or was sent anything marked classified

In reality, nobody goes to jail for mishandling classified information at the Confidential level. However, the Hanley email proves that Hillary’s staff was emailing her classified information in unclassified channels, that it was marked classified, and that it was transiting Clinton’s personal email server. It’s difficult to believe that a mere aide like Monica Hanley decided to break the law like this, as she surely knew she was, on her own initiative.

It’s also difficult to see how the FBI can ignore such an obvious violation of the law. It likewise raises questions about what was in the 30,000 emails that Clinton decided to delete. In the nearly five months remaining until the presidential election, we can expect a regular drumbeat of revelations about EmailGate, none of them flattering to the Democratic nominee.

Last week the Associated Press broke a big story about how Clinton’s “unclassified” emails included the true names of CIA personnel serving overseas under cover. This was hardly news, in fact I broke the same story four months ago in this column. However, the AP account adds detail to what Clinton and her staff did, actions that placed the lives of CIA clandestine personnel at risk. It also may be a violation of theIntelligence Identities Protection Act, a 1982 law that featured prominently in the mid-aughts scandal surrounding CIA officer Valerie Plame, which so captivated the mainstream media. More recently, former CIA officer John Kiriakou spent two years in Federal prison for violating this law.

To make matters worse for Team Clinton, last week it emerged that several of the classified emails under investigation involved discussions of impending CIA drone strikes in Pakistan. Clinton aides were careful to avoid hot-button words like “CIA” and “drone” in these “unclassified” emails, engaging in a practice that spies term “talking around” an issue.

However, the salient fact is that the CIA—which has the say here—considers this information to be Top Secret, as well as enormously sensitive. It had no business being in anybody’s unclassified emails. As the secretary of state, Ms. Clinton and her top staff had access to classified communications systems 24 hours a day. They chose not to use them here—a choice that clearly violated Federal law. Moreover, this new report demonstrates that a previous Clintonian EmailGate talking point, that discussions of drones in emails were no more than pasting press pieces, and therefore innocuous, was yet another bald-faced lie.

How the FBI can look at all this and not recommend prosecution of someone for something in EmailGate strains the imagination. Yet President Obama has clearly signaled that it’s all no big deal. Director James Comey has a tough job before him when he takes the FBI’s official recommendations regarding EmailGate to Attorney General Lynch for action, probably sometime this summer. Since Comey is now under a cloud over the FBI’s embarrassing mishandling of Omar Mateen, the Orlando jihadist mass murderer, perhaps his resignation over that matter would be welcome in the White House, which then could find a new director more willing to bend to Obama’s wishes.

tone-deaf/odor-blind neoliberalcons dropping all partisan pretence to fundraise for granny goodness....,

FP |  A prominent neoconservative intellectual and early promoter of the Iraq War is headlining an official campaign fundraiser for Hillary Clinton next month, Foreign Policy has learned. The move signals a shift in the Clinton campaign’s willingness to associate with prominent Republicans and is the latest sign of how far some GOP defectors are willing to go to block a Donald Trump presidency.

Robert Kagan, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a co-founder of the Project for the New American Century, will speak at a Hillary for America fundraiser in Washington’s Logan Circle neighborhood on July 21. According to an invite obtained by FP, the “event will include an off-the-record conversation on America’s continued investment in NATO, key European allies and partners, and the EU.”

Kagan did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

The Clinton campaign has made clear it believes Trump’s high unfavorable ratings and provocative comments have created an opening for her candidacy among traditional GOP voters, and will soon begin actively courting the Republican electorate.

The campaign has been careful about such overtures in the past as it fended off criticisms from the left by her primary rival Bernie Sanders, who highlighted her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq War, ties to controversial Republican figures like Henry Kissinger, and warm relationship with Wall Street.

“In her book and in this last debate, she talked about getting the approval or the support or the mentoring of Henry Kissinger,” Sanders said during a February debate. “Now, I find it rather amazing, because I happen to believe that Henry Kissinger was one of the most destructive secretaries of state in the modern history of this country.”

While dozens of Republican foreign-policy insiders have publicly renounced Trump, far fewer have announced their support for Clinton. But cracks are beginning to emerge.

more corporatist twaddle blithely not-seeing the Left Behind...,

newyorker |  If you are reading this post, the likelihood is that you, like me, are one of the winners. Highly educated, professional people tend to work in sectors of the economy that have benefitted from the changes in the international division of labor (e.g., finance, consulting, media, tech) or have been largely spared the rigors of global competition (e.g., law, medicine, academia). From a secure perch on the economic ladder, it is easy to celebrate the gains that technology and globalization have brought, such as a cornucopia of cheap goods in rich countries and rising prosperity in poor ones. It’s also tempting to dismiss the arguments of people who ignore the benefits of this process, or who can’t see that it is irreversible.

But, as Baker points out, “it is a bit hypocritical of those who have benefited” from this economic transformation to be “mocking the poor judgment of its victims”—especially now that the forces of global competition and technological progress are reaching into areas that were previously protected. In a world of self-driving cars and trucks, what is the future for truck drivers, cab and limo drivers, and delivery men? Not a very prosperous one, surely. And the creative destruction that the Austrian economist Joseph Schumpeter celebrated won’t stop there. With software that can transfer money at zero cost, medical robots that can carry out the most delicate of operations, and smart algorithms that can diagnose diseases or dispense legal advice, what is the future for bankers, surgeons, doctors, lawyers, and other professionals?

There is no straightforward answer to this question, just as there is no easy answer to the question of what can be done to help those who have already lost out. One option is to strengthen the social safety net and, perhaps, to move toward some sort of universal basic income, which would guarantee a minimum standard of living to everybody, regardless of employment prospects. The political enactment of such solutions, however, is contingent on the existence of social solidarity, which the very process of economic and technological change, by heightening inequalities and eroding communal institutions, undermines.

epic corporatist FAIL and twaddle - but at least we got teh geh marriage...,

theguardian |  They used to call it Greek tragedy when the fates wrought their revenge on human folly and weakness. But maybe a better term in the case of the folly and weakness of the modern Tory party is European tragedy. For, as a broken David Cameron announced his resignation on Friday morning, one question must have been battering his exhausted brain more than any other.

How was it that a modern-minded liberal Conservative leader who long ago told his party to “stop banging on about Europe” if it wanted to get back into power after three successive defeats – and who then delivered two terms in government – has himself been brought down by that same party over that same European question?

Cameron himself played the role of tragic hero as he notified the nation of his intention to step down before the autumn. “There can be no doubt about the result,” he said. “The British people have voted to leave the European Union and their will must be respected.”

But he added that the tortuous negotiations ahead with the EU would require “strong determined and committed leadership” that he felt he could no longer provide. “The country requires fresh leadership to take it in this direction.”

And there seemed scant consolation in his laconic summary of what he would rather be remembered for. “I believe we’ve made great steps, with more people in work than ever before in our history, with reforms to welfare and education, increasing people’s life chances, building a bigger and stronger society, keeping our promises to the poorest people in the world and enabling those who love each other to get married whatever their sexuality, but above all restoring Britain’s economic strength.”

is it on a par with black wednesday?

marketwatch |  U.S. stock futures unraveled early Friday morning in New York, after the U.K. declared its intention to end its four-decade relationship with the European Union after a so-called Brexit vote.

Investors have been fretting that such an unprecedented decision to leave Europe’s trading bloc could destabilize the Europe’s fragile union and rattle markets.

Futures for the Dow Jones Industrial Average YMU6, -2.53%  fell as much as 700 points, but losses were paring from that ugly fall. 

Most recently, the Dow was down 485 points, or 2.7%, to 17,436. Futures for the S&P 500 ESU6, -3.26% tumbled 80 points, or 3.7%, to 2,028 and Nasdaq-100 futures NQU6, -3.24% cratered 173 points, or 3.9%, to 4,289.

Check out: MarketWatch’s live blog on Brexit

Markets began plunging after U.K. broadcasters BBC and ITV in the early hours of Friday morning local time forecast that the “leave” campaign had won the Brexit referendum and that the U.K. will sever its ties with the trading bloc it has been a member of since 1973. 

European stock-market indexes were being punished in the aftermath of the vote, with the Stoxx Europe 600 SXXP, -6.61%  off 8% at 318.81.

But moves in currencies, in particular, the British pound USDGBP, +6.7519% were the most pronounced. Sterling hit a low of $1.3230, a 10% slide from $1.4871 late Thursday in New York. But it has since pared some of that decline most recently at $1.3796. 

The stunning moves come after global markets rallied, betting that Britons would vote to reject Brexit, or a British exit from the EU. 

All three U.S. indexes soared into Thursday’s close, with the Dow DJIA, +1.29%  surging 230.24 points, or 1.3%, to finish at 18,011.07, while the S&P 500 SPX, +1.34% gained 27.87 points, or 1.3%, to close at 2,113.32. Meanwhile, the Nasdaq Composite Index COMP, +1.59%  climbed 76.72 points, or 1.6%, to close at 4,910.04.

Indications that the “leave” vote has won sets up global markets for the most volatile and frightening trading day since the market sank last August on fears about a slowdown in China’s stock market.

the syrian strategic agenda of Granny Goodness and her furies...,

wikileaks |  UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05794498

Date: 11/30/2015 RELEASE IN FULL The best way to help Israel deal with Iran's growing nuclear capability is to help the people of Syria overthrow the regime of Bashar Assad. Negotiations to limit Iran's nuclear program will not solve Israel's security dilemma. Nor will they stop Iran from improving the crucial part of any nuclear weapons program — the capability to enrich uranium. At best, the talks between the world's major powers and Iran that began in Istanbul this April and will continue in Baghdad in May will enable Israel to postpone by a few months a decision whether to launch an attack on Iran that could provoke a major Mideast war. Iran's nuclear program and Syria's civil war may seem unconnected, but they are. For Israeli leaders, the real threat from a nuclear-armed Iran is not the prospect of an insane Iranian leader launching an unprovoked Iranian nuclear attack on Israel that would lead to the annihilation of both countries. What Israeli military leaders really worry about -- but cannot talk about -- is losing their nuclear monopoly. An Iranian nuclear weapons capability would not only end that nuclear monopoly but could also prompt other adversaries, like Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to go nuclear as well. The result would be a precarious nuclear balance in which Israel could not respond to provocations with conventional military strikes on Syria and Lebanon, as it can today. If Iran were to reach the threshold of a nuclear weapons state, Tehran would find it much easier to call on its allies in Syria and Hezbollah to strike Israel, knowing that its nuclear weapons would serve as a deterrent to Israel responding against Iran itself. Back to Syria. It is the strategic relationship between Iran and the regime of Bashar Assad in Syria that makes it possible for Iran to undermine Israel's security — not through a direct attack, which in the thirty years of hostility between Iran and Israel has never occurred, but through its proxies in Lebanon, like Hezbollah, that are sustained, armed and trained by Iran via Syria. The end of the Assad regime would end this dangerous alliance. Israel's leadership understands well why defeating Assad is now in its interests. Speaking on CNN's Amanpour show last week, Defense Minister Ehud Barak argued that "the toppling down of Assad will be a major blow to the radical axis, major blow to Iran.... It's the only kind of outpost of the Iranian influence in the Arab world...and it will weaken dramatically both Hezbollah in Lebanon and Hamas and Islamic Jihad in Gaza." Bringing down Assad would not only be a massive boon to Israel's security, it would also ease Israel's understandable fear of losing its nuclear monopoly. Then, Israel and the United States might be able to develop a common view of when the Iranian program is so dangerous that military action could be warranted. Right now, it is the combination of Iran's strategic alliance with Syria and the steady progress in Iran's nuclear enrichment program that has led Israeli leaders to contemplate a surprise attack — if necessary over the objections of Washington. With Assad gone, and Iran no longer able to threaten Israel through its, proxies, it is possible that the United States and Israel can agree on red lines for when Iran's program has crossed an unacceptable threshold. In short, the White House can ease the tension that has developed with Israel over Iran by doing the right thing in Syria. The rebellion in Syria has now lasted more than a year. The opposition is not going away, nor is the regime going to accept a diplomatic solution from the outside. With his life and his family at risk, only the threat or use of force will change the Syrian dictator Bashar Assad's mind. UNCLASSIFIED U.S. Department of State Case No. F-2014-20439 Doc No. C05794498 Date: 11/30/2015 The Obama administration has been understandably wary of engaging in an air operation in Syria like the one conducted in Libya for three main reasons. Unlike the Libyan opposition forces, the Syrian rebels are not unified and do not hold territory. The Arab League has not called for outside military intervention as it did in Libya. And the Russians are opposed. Libya was an easier case. But other than the laudable purpose of saving Libyan civilians from likely attacks by Qaddafi's regime, the Libyan operation had no long-lasting consequences for the region. Syria is harder. But success in Syria would be a transformative event for the Middle East. Not only would another ruthless dictator succumb to mass opposition on the streets, but the region would be changed for the better as Iran would no longer have a foothold in the Middle East from which to threaten Israel and undermine stability in the region. Unlike in Libya, a successful intervention in Syria would require substantial diplomatic and military leadership from the United States. Washington should start by expressing its willingness to work with regional allies like Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar to organize, train and arm Syrian rebel forces. The announcement of such a decision would, by itself, likely cause substantial defections from the Syrian military. Then, using territory in Turkey and possibly Jordan, U.S. diplomats and Pentagon officials can start strengthening the opposition. It will take time. But the rebellion is going to go on for a long time, with or without U.S. involvement. The second step is to develop international support for a coalition air operation. Russia will never support such a mission, so there is no point operating through the UN Security Council. Some argue that U.S. involvement risks a wider war with Russia. But the Kosovo example shows otherwise. In that case, Russia had genuine ethnic and political ties to the Serbs, which don't exist between Russia and Syria, and even then Russia did little more than complain. Russian officials have already acknowledged they won't stand in the way if intervention comes. Arming the Syrian rebels and using western air power to ground Syrian helicopters and airplanes is a low-cost high payoff approach. As long as Washington's political leaders stay firm that no U.S. ground troops will be deployed, as they did in both Kosovo and Libya, the costs to the United States will be limited. Victory may not come quickly or easily, but it will come. And the payoff will be substantial. Iran would be strategically isolated, unable to exert its influence in the Middle East. The resulting regime in Syria will see the United States as a friend, not an enemy. Washington would gain substantial recognition as fighting for the people in the Arab world, not the corrupt regimes. For Israel, the rationale for a bolt from the blue attack on Iran's nuclear facilities would be eased. And a new Syrian regime might well be open to early action on the frozen peace talks with Israel. Hezbollah in Lebanon would be cut off from its Iranian sponsor since Syria would no longer be a transit point for Iranian training, assistance and missiles. All these strategic benefits and the prospect of saving thousands of civilians from murder at the hands of the Assad regime (10,000 have already been killed in this first year of civil war). With the veil of fear lifted from the Syrian people, they seem determine to fight for their freedom. America can and should help them — and by doing so help Israel and help reduce the risk of a wider war.