http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49711.htm
The Murder of Julian Assange
It was a fool’s errand.
On the day Donald Trump was elected his supporters asked him to pardon the founder and frontman of WikiLeaks, Julian Assange. They flooded social media demanding Assange be allowed to leave the Ecuadorian embassy in London without arrest and extradition to the United States.
Stone silence from Trump and his administration.
A few months before the election, WikiLeaks released a searchable archive of over 30,000 emails and attachments taken from Hillary Clinton’s not-so private email server.
Trump held no aversion to exploiting the emails. He called them the Crooked Hillary emails and said they endangered the national security of the United States.
Democrats called foul, said Assange had colluded with Putin and the Russians.
In April, they filed a lawsuit in federal court against the Russian government, the Trump campaign, and WikiLeaks. They argue there was a widespread conspiracy to swing the 2016 election.
They have zero evidence of this. Evidence is no longer required. Accusations alone now serve to take down leaders and destroy careers.
Julian Assange and WikiLeaks are no longer of use to Donald Trump.
He dished out pardons to ex-Arizona sheriff Joe Arpaio and neocon leaker Scooter Libby. Trump mulled other pardons, including a posthumous one for Muhammad Ali to wipe out his draft dodging conviction. It was reported in June Trump insiders are pushing to pardon the junk bond king Michael Milken and reverse his conviction on securities fraud. The Milken pardon is being pushed by Goldman Sachs alumnus and current Treasury secretary Steven Mnuchin and Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner.
Meanwhile, Julian Assange is left to twist in the wind.
Both Trump’s attorney general and his former CIA director, now secretary of state Mike Pompeo want Assange extradited to the United States where he will face trial and possible execution for espionage.
AG Jeff Sessions said the arrest and prosecution of Assange is a priority for the United States government, while Pompeo denounced him as a “hostile intelligence service,” never mind he had no problem using the Clinton emails to accuse the DNC of sabotaging the Bernie Sanders campaign.
The US has leaned heavy on Ecuador.
Following a meeting with General Joseph DiSalvo of the Southern Command—ostensibly to discuss “security cooperation”—Ecuadorian president Lenín Moreno rolled back security at the embassy and denied Assange access to family, friends, and doctors. They also shut down his internet connection.
This week Ecuador’s Foreign Minister Jose Valencia said his government working on an “exit” plan to remove Assange from the embassy where he has lived the past six years. Valencia told the Associated Press the plan would be “one that encourages an exit, that we do not want to be traumatic… we do not want it to be an exit that may cause dissonance with international law.”
Moreno said Assange interfered in Ecuador’s relationship with other countries by tweeting on political events. He also lamented the “nuisance” of Assange’s political asylum and said the Australian whistleblower is an “inherited problem” left over from the previous administration.
Moreno’s government granted Assange citizenship in a hope diplomatic immunity would be granted and he would leave the embassy. Assange knows better than to fall for this. Immunity or no, he will be arrested the minute he walks out of the embassy.
Activist and filmmaker John Pilger took the Left to task for abandoning Assange. “There is a silence among many who call themselves left,” he said in a statement. “The silence is Julian Assange. As every false accusation has fallen away, every bogus smear shown to be the work of political enemies, Julian stands vindicated as one who has exposed a system that threatens humanity.”
For the establishment, it’s imperative Assange be arrested, extradited, and brought up on espionage charges in the United States. The message will be priceless, the chilling effect invaluable.
The dirty secrets of war, political subterfuge, election fixing, and assorted other crimes and misdeeds are not for public consumption.
The release of the Collateral Damage video and the war logs of Afghanistan and Iraq should have resulted in a larger and more active antiwar movement. This didn’t happen.
Liberal and leftist opposition to war only occurs when a Republican sits in the Oval Office. Obama effectively destroyed what remained of the Bush era antiwar movement. Eights year of Obama worked like a lobotomy on the Left.
Democrats supported Hillary Clinton’s war on the people of Libya. They didn’t have a problem when she arranged weapons collected from the battlefields of Libya to be sent by the CIA to the “rebels” in Syria.
Democrats call for overthrowing Bashar al-Assad in Syria. They believe Russia got Trump elected and Vladimir Putin spreads lies and false news to undermine and destroy our democracy. Large NGOs, foundations, and think tanks are pushing this nonsense.
Due mostly to indoctrination as a result of public education and a herd mentality inculcated by leaders and media, it is a relatively easy task for the financial oligarchy and its corporate partners to brainwash the public. It now disguises war and conquest as humanitarianism.
I’m old enough to remember when millions of Americans praised Daniel Ellsberg for releasing the Pentagon Papers. That was then, this is now. Now liberals and progressives want to string up whistleblowers, same as their conservative Republican and neocon counterparts.
Gore Vidal said America suffers from amnesia.
Americans are largely blind to the war and financial crimes perpetuated in their name. Part of this is the result of indoctrination through propaganda media, but to a large degree Americans are incurious and unbothered by the criminality of their leaders and institutions.
Most don’t care Julian Assange is a dead man walking.
They are unable to see the criminal state for what it is—a global Mafia operation that shakes down entire continents and wages wars of conquest and pillage for profit.
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49709.htm
The Persecution of Julian Assange Proves That Western Values No Longer Exist
The Western world never ceases to speak of its “democratic values.” In Western political theory, the way democracy works is by free speech and a free press. By speaking out, citizens and media keep the government accountable.
This liberal tradition means that there are no words or terms that cannot be used because some designated “victim group” can claim to feel offended. The inroads into free speech made by political correctness, now institutionalized in universities and the public school system, in the presstitute media, in American corporations such as Google, and in the enculturated habits of Americans, demonstrate a decline in the status of free speech. Governments have also made inroads, with the “war on terror” becoming a justification for warrantless spying, mass surveillance, and a clampdown on dissent.
The free press has declined even more dramatically than free speech. The NY Times of the Pentagon Papers disappeared during George W. Bush’s first term when the newspaper sat on the story that the Bush regime was spying without warrants. The NY Times sat on the story for a year, allowing Bush to be reelected without controversy and allowing the government time to legalize the spying on an ex post facto basis.
Today the media are a propaganda ministry engaged in the demonization of Russia and Trump and justifying the war crimes of Washington and its vassal states.
This is why there is no media uproar over the 6-year incarceration of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Wikileaks is a news organization and has not done anything that a free press has not always done. Julian Assange is a citizen of Australia and Ecuador. He is not an American and thus cannot be guilty of treason. Yet Washington is believed to have used a grand jury to concoct such a case against him.
The new president of Ecuador is not the strong and good man than his predecessor was. Under Washington’s pressure Moreno is making life in the Ecuadorian embassy as unbearable as possible for Assange in an effort to force him out into British hands. Responding to Washington’s pressure, the British government will not honor his asylum, which prevents Assange from being able to leave the embassy.
There is no presence of “democratic values” in this affair. It is a repeat of the Soviet Union’s treatment of Cardinal Mindszenty, only it is Washington, not Moscow, who is stamping on the face of freedom.
The Australian government, also in deference to Washington, has done nothing to help Assange. Australia, like every other vassal state, puts Washington’s interest ahead of both law and the interest of citizens.
This week there were protests in Australia in support of Assange. However, Western governments are now so far removed from citizens who are today little more than subjects that it is unlikely that anything short of revolution can restore accountability to governments in the West.
“Western democracy” has become an oxymoron. This article by Mike Head shows the distain that the Western elites have for free speech, freedom of the press, truth, and the rights of citizens:
The Persecution of Julian Assange Proves That Western Values No Longer Exist
The Western world never ceases to speak of its “democratic values.” In Western political theory, the way democracy works is by free speech and a free press. By speaking out, citizens and media keep the government accountable.
This liberal tradition means that there are no words or terms that cannot be used because some designated “victim group” can claim to feel offended. The inroads into free speech made by political correctness, now institutionalized in universities and the public school system, in the presstitute media, in American corporations such as Google, and in the enculturated habits of Americans, demonstrate a decline in the status of free speech. Governments have also made inroads, with the “war on terror” becoming a justification for warrantless spying, mass surveillance, and a clampdown on dissent.
The free press has declined even more dramatically than free speech. The NY Times of the Pentagon Papers disappeared during George W. Bush’s first term when the newspaper sat on the story that the Bush regime was spying without warrants. The NY Times sat on the story for a year, allowing Bush to be reelected without controversy and allowing the government time to legalize the spying on an ex post facto basis.
Today the media are a propaganda ministry engaged in the demonization of Russia and Trump and justifying the war crimes of Washington and its vassal states.
This is why there is no media uproar over the 6-year incarceration of Julian Assange in the Ecuadorian embassy in London.
Wikileaks is a news organization and has not done anything that a free press has not always done. Julian Assange is a citizen of Australia and Ecuador. He is not an American and thus cannot be guilty of treason. Yet Washington is believed to have used a grand jury to concoct such a case against him.
The new president of Ecuador is not the strong and good man than his predecessor was. Under Washington’s pressure Moreno is making life in the Ecuadorian embassy as unbearable as possible for Assange in an effort to force him out into British hands. Responding to Washington’s pressure, the British government will not honor his asylum, which prevents Assange from being able to leave the embassy.
There is no presence of “democratic values” in this affair. It is a repeat of the Soviet Union’s treatment of Cardinal Mindszenty, only it is Washington, not Moscow, who is stamping on the face of freedom.
The Australian government, also in deference to Washington, has done nothing to help Assange. Australia, like every other vassal state, puts Washington’s interest ahead of both law and the interest of citizens.
This week there were protests in Australia in support of Assange. However, Western governments are now so far removed from citizens who are today little more than subjects that it is unlikely that anything short of revolution can restore accountability to governments in the West.
“Western democracy” has become an oxymoron. This article by Mike Head shows the distain that the Western elites have for free speech, freedom of the press, truth, and the rights of citizens:
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49718.htm
How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off the Inevitable?
When are America’s global corporations and Wall Street going to sit down with President Trump and explain to him that his trade war is not with China but with them. The biggest chunk of America’s trade deficit with China is the offshored production of America’s global corporations. When the corporations bring the products that they produce in China to the US consumer market, the products are classified as imports from China.
Six years ago when I was writing The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I concluded on the evidence that half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations. Offshoring is a substantial benefit to US corporations because of much lower labor and compliance costs. Profits, executive bonuses, and shareholders’ capital gains receive a large boost from offshoring. The costs of these benefits for a few fall on the many—the former American employees who formerly had a middle class income and expectations for their children.
In my book, I cited evidence that during the first decade of the 21st century “the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent. These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to offshoring. Some are the result of business failures” (p. 100).
In other words, to put it in the most simple and clear terms, millions of Americans lost their middle class jobs not because China played unfairly, but because American corporations betrayed the American people and exported their jobs. “Making America great again” means dealing with these corporations, not with China. When Trump learns this, assuming anyone will tell him, will he back off China and take on the American global corporations?
The loss of middle class jobs has had a dire effect on the hopes and expectations of Americans, on the American economy, on the finances of cities and states and, thereby, on their ability to meet pension obligations and provide public services, and on the tax base for Social Security and Medicare, thus threatening these important elements of the American consensus. In short, the greedy corporate elite have benefitted themselves at enormous cost to the American people and to the economic and social stability of the United States.
The job loss from offshoring also has had a huge and dire impact on Federal Reserve policy. With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled. The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan substituted an expansion in consumer credit for the missing growth in consumer income in order to maintain aggregate consumer demand. Instead of wage increases, Greenspan relied on an increase in consumer debt to fuel the economy.
The credit expansion and consequent rise in real estate prices, together with the deregulation of the banking system, especially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, produced the real estate bubble and the fraud and mortgage-backed derivatives that gave us the 2007-08 financial crash.
The Federal Reserve responded to the crash not by bailing out consumer debt but by bailing out the debt of its only constituency—the big banks. The Federal Reserve let little banks fail and be bought up by the big ones, thus further increasing financial concentration. The multi-trillion dollar increase in the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet was entirely for the benefit of a handful of large banks. Never before in history had an agency of the US government acted so decisively in behalf only of the ownership class.
The way the Federal Reserve saved the irresponsible large banks, which should have failed and have been broken up, was to raise the prices of troubled assets on the banks’ books by lowering interest rates. To be clear, interest rates and bond prices move in opposite directions. When interest rates are lowered by the Federal Reserve, which it achieves by purchasing debt instruments, the prices of bonds rise. As the various debt risks move together, lower interest rates raise the prices of all debt instruments, even troubled ones. Raising the prices of debt instruments produced solvent balance sheets for the big banks.
To achieve its aim, the Federal Reserve had to lower the interest rates to zero, which even the low reported inflation reduced to negative interest rates. These low rates had disastrous consequences. On the one hand low interest rates caused all sorts of speculations. On the other low interest rates deprived retires of interest income on their retirement savings, forcing them to draw down capital, thus reducing accumulated wealth among the 90 percent. The under-reported inflation rate also denied retirees Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, forcing them to spend retirement capital.
The low interest rates also encouraged corporate boards to borrow money in order to buy back the corporation’s stock, thus raising its price and, thereby, the bonuses and stock options of executives and board members and the capital gains of shareholders. In other words, corporations indebted themselves for the short-term benefit of executives and owners. Companies that refused to participate in this scam were threatened by Wall Street with takeovers.
Consequently today the combination of offshoring and Federal Reserve policy has left us a situation in which every aspect of the economy is indebted—consumers, government at all levels, and businesses. A recent Federal Reserve study concluded that Americans are so indebted and so poor that 41 percent of the American population cannot raise $400 without borrowing from family and friends or selling personal possessions.
A country whose population is this indebted has no consumer market. Without a consumer market there is no economic growth, other than the false orchestrated figures produced by the US government by under counting the inflation rate.
Without economic growth, consumers, businesses, state, local, and federal governments cannot service their debts and meet their obligations.
The Federal Reserve has learned that it can keep afloat the Ponzi scheme that is the US economy by printing money with which to support financial asset prices. The alleged rise in interest rates by the Federal Reserve are not real interest rates rises. Even the under-reported inflation rate is higher than the interest rate increases, with the result that the real interest rate falls. If the stock market tries to sell off, before much damage can be done the Federal Reserve steps in and purchases S&P futures, thus driving up stock prices.
Normally so much money creation by the Federal Reserve, especially in conjunction with such a high debt level of the US government and also state and local governments, consumers, and businesses, would cause a falling US dollar exchange rate. Why hasn’t this happened?
For three reasons. One is that the central banks of the other three reserve currencies—the Japanese central bank, the European central bank, and the Bank of England—also print money. Their Quantitative Easing, which still continues, offsets the dollars created by the Federal Reserve and keeps the US dollar from depreciating.
A second reason is that when suspicion of the dollar’s worth sends up the gold price, the Federal Reserve or its bullion banks short gold futures with naked contracts. This drives down the gold price. There are numerous columns on my website by myself and Dave Kranzler proving this to be the case. There is no doubt about it.
The third reason is that money managers, individuals, pension funds, everyone and all the rest had rather make money than not. Therefore, they go along with the Ponzi scheme. The people who did not benefit from the Ponzi scheme of the past decade are those who understood it was a Ponzi scheme but did not realize the corruption that has beset the Federal Reserve and the central bank’s ability and willingness to continue to feed the Ponzi scheme.
As I have explained previously, the Ponzi scheme falls apart when it becomes impossible to continue to support the dollar as burdened as the dollar is by debt levels and abundance of dollars that could be dumped on the exchange markets.
This is why Washington is determined to retain its hegemony. It is Washington’s hegemony over Japan, Europe, and the UK that protects the American Ponzi scheme. The moment one of these central banks ceases to support the dollar, the others would follow, and the Ponzi scheme would unravel. If the prices of US debt and stocks were reduced to their real values, the United States would no longer have a place in the ranks of world powers.
The implication is that war, and not economic reform, is America’s most likely future.
In a subsequent column I hope to explain why neither US political party has the awareness and capability to deal with real problems.
How Long Can The Federal Reserve Stave Off the Inevitable?
When are America’s global corporations and Wall Street going to sit down with President Trump and explain to him that his trade war is not with China but with them. The biggest chunk of America’s trade deficit with China is the offshored production of America’s global corporations. When the corporations bring the products that they produce in China to the US consumer market, the products are classified as imports from China.
Six years ago when I was writing The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I concluded on the evidence that half of US imports from China consist of the offshored production of US corporations. Offshoring is a substantial benefit to US corporations because of much lower labor and compliance costs. Profits, executive bonuses, and shareholders’ capital gains receive a large boost from offshoring. The costs of these benefits for a few fall on the many—the former American employees who formerly had a middle class income and expectations for their children.
In my book, I cited evidence that during the first decade of the 21st century “the US lost 54,621 factories, and manufacturing employment fell by 5 million employees. Over the decade, the number of larger factories (those employing 1,000 or more employees) declined by 40 percent. US factories employing 500-1,000 workers declined by 44 percent; those employing between 250-500 workers declined by 37 percent, and those employing between 100-250 workers shrunk by 30 percent. These losses are net of new start-ups. Not all the losses are due to offshoring. Some are the result of business failures” (p. 100).
In other words, to put it in the most simple and clear terms, millions of Americans lost their middle class jobs not because China played unfairly, but because American corporations betrayed the American people and exported their jobs. “Making America great again” means dealing with these corporations, not with China. When Trump learns this, assuming anyone will tell him, will he back off China and take on the American global corporations?
The loss of middle class jobs has had a dire effect on the hopes and expectations of Americans, on the American economy, on the finances of cities and states and, thereby, on their ability to meet pension obligations and provide public services, and on the tax base for Social Security and Medicare, thus threatening these important elements of the American consensus. In short, the greedy corporate elite have benefitted themselves at enormous cost to the American people and to the economic and social stability of the United States.
The job loss from offshoring also has had a huge and dire impact on Federal Reserve policy. With the decline in income growth, the US economy stalled. The Federal Reserve under Alan Greenspan substituted an expansion in consumer credit for the missing growth in consumer income in order to maintain aggregate consumer demand. Instead of wage increases, Greenspan relied on an increase in consumer debt to fuel the economy.
The credit expansion and consequent rise in real estate prices, together with the deregulation of the banking system, especially the repeal of the Glass-Steagall Act, produced the real estate bubble and the fraud and mortgage-backed derivatives that gave us the 2007-08 financial crash.
The Federal Reserve responded to the crash not by bailing out consumer debt but by bailing out the debt of its only constituency—the big banks. The Federal Reserve let little banks fail and be bought up by the big ones, thus further increasing financial concentration. The multi-trillion dollar increase in the Federal Reserve’s balance sheet was entirely for the benefit of a handful of large banks. Never before in history had an agency of the US government acted so decisively in behalf only of the ownership class.
The way the Federal Reserve saved the irresponsible large banks, which should have failed and have been broken up, was to raise the prices of troubled assets on the banks’ books by lowering interest rates. To be clear, interest rates and bond prices move in opposite directions. When interest rates are lowered by the Federal Reserve, which it achieves by purchasing debt instruments, the prices of bonds rise. As the various debt risks move together, lower interest rates raise the prices of all debt instruments, even troubled ones. Raising the prices of debt instruments produced solvent balance sheets for the big banks.
To achieve its aim, the Federal Reserve had to lower the interest rates to zero, which even the low reported inflation reduced to negative interest rates. These low rates had disastrous consequences. On the one hand low interest rates caused all sorts of speculations. On the other low interest rates deprived retires of interest income on their retirement savings, forcing them to draw down capital, thus reducing accumulated wealth among the 90 percent. The under-reported inflation rate also denied retirees Social Security cost-of-living adjustments, forcing them to spend retirement capital.
The low interest rates also encouraged corporate boards to borrow money in order to buy back the corporation’s stock, thus raising its price and, thereby, the bonuses and stock options of executives and board members and the capital gains of shareholders. In other words, corporations indebted themselves for the short-term benefit of executives and owners. Companies that refused to participate in this scam were threatened by Wall Street with takeovers.
Consequently today the combination of offshoring and Federal Reserve policy has left us a situation in which every aspect of the economy is indebted—consumers, government at all levels, and businesses. A recent Federal Reserve study concluded that Americans are so indebted and so poor that 41 percent of the American population cannot raise $400 without borrowing from family and friends or selling personal possessions.
A country whose population is this indebted has no consumer market. Without a consumer market there is no economic growth, other than the false orchestrated figures produced by the US government by under counting the inflation rate.
Without economic growth, consumers, businesses, state, local, and federal governments cannot service their debts and meet their obligations.
The Federal Reserve has learned that it can keep afloat the Ponzi scheme that is the US economy by printing money with which to support financial asset prices. The alleged rise in interest rates by the Federal Reserve are not real interest rates rises. Even the under-reported inflation rate is higher than the interest rate increases, with the result that the real interest rate falls. If the stock market tries to sell off, before much damage can be done the Federal Reserve steps in and purchases S&P futures, thus driving up stock prices.
Normally so much money creation by the Federal Reserve, especially in conjunction with such a high debt level of the US government and also state and local governments, consumers, and businesses, would cause a falling US dollar exchange rate. Why hasn’t this happened?
For three reasons. One is that the central banks of the other three reserve currencies—the Japanese central bank, the European central bank, and the Bank of England—also print money. Their Quantitative Easing, which still continues, offsets the dollars created by the Federal Reserve and keeps the US dollar from depreciating.
A second reason is that when suspicion of the dollar’s worth sends up the gold price, the Federal Reserve or its bullion banks short gold futures with naked contracts. This drives down the gold price. There are numerous columns on my website by myself and Dave Kranzler proving this to be the case. There is no doubt about it.
The third reason is that money managers, individuals, pension funds, everyone and all the rest had rather make money than not. Therefore, they go along with the Ponzi scheme. The people who did not benefit from the Ponzi scheme of the past decade are those who understood it was a Ponzi scheme but did not realize the corruption that has beset the Federal Reserve and the central bank’s ability and willingness to continue to feed the Ponzi scheme.
As I have explained previously, the Ponzi scheme falls apart when it becomes impossible to continue to support the dollar as burdened as the dollar is by debt levels and abundance of dollars that could be dumped on the exchange markets.
This is why Washington is determined to retain its hegemony. It is Washington’s hegemony over Japan, Europe, and the UK that protects the American Ponzi scheme. The moment one of these central banks ceases to support the dollar, the others would follow, and the Ponzi scheme would unravel. If the prices of US debt and stocks were reduced to their real values, the United States would no longer have a place in the ranks of world powers.
The implication is that war, and not economic reform, is America’s most likely future.
In a subsequent column I hope to explain why neither US political party has the awareness and capability to deal with real problems.
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http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49715.htm
American Totalitarianism and the Culture of Fake News
American citizens have a problem telling the difference between facts and opinion. That’s the finding of a recent survey carried out by the respected Pew organization.
It was found that only a quarter of the people polled were able to correctly distinguish between a factual statement and an opinion claim. In other words, the majority of those Americans surveyed wrongly believed that information presented to them purporting as facts were indeed facts, when the information was actually merely a subjective claim or opinion.
For example, when an opinion statement like “democracy is the best form of government” was read to them, most of the respondents defined that as a fact. Only some 25 per cent of the more than 5,000 people surveyed by Pew could correctly differentiate between facts and subjective statements.
Moreover, as the Reuters report on the study, put it: “They tend to disagree with factual statements they incorrectly label as opinions, Pew said.”
The latter tendency suggests that Americans are easily misled by false information, and perhaps more disturbingly, that they are closed-minded towards information that challenges their prejudices.
This commentary is not meant to unduly denigrate American citizens. It would be interesting to see what the results would be from a similar survey conducted in Europe, Russia or China.
Regardless of not having such a comparison, however, the Pew study indicates that there is a significant cognitive problem among US people in being able to assess facts from opinions. Given that opinions can be easily manipulated, misconstrued or mendacious that in turn points to a problem of American society being vulnerable to so-called fake news.
US President Donald Trump has almost singlehandedly coined the phrase “fake news” when he rails against news media which are adverse to his personality and his Republican party politics.
Trump himself is often a brazen purveyor of his own brand of fake news. Recall the absurd spat he had with the media over the size of his inauguration crowd, claiming against aerial photographic evidence to have a record huge attendance.
Nonetheless, to a degree, Trump has a fair point. The US corporate news media in favor of the Democrats have been guilty of pushing stories and issues which lack factual credibility. The biggest one is the whole “Russia-gate” affair which the anti-Trump media have been flogging for nearly two years, claiming that he colluded with Russia to get elected, or that Kremlin agents interfered in the 2016 American presidential elections with “fake news” stories enabling Trump.
The irony is that this alleged Russian “fake news” plied through social media is eclipsed by the overarching and actual fake news told by supposedly prestigious news media like The New York Times and Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and others, in their accusations of Russian “meddling”. Where’s the evidence? There is none. It’s all a fake news narrative told over and over.
Another factor in the fake news phenomenon is of course the new dominance of social media in the information environment. It is said that nearly half of the American population now get their news from social media platforms. That is a sure way to open the sluice gates and the rumor mills in which facts and fabrications are homogenized for millions of daily consumers. And going by the Pew survey, the upshot is a lot of potentially confused or misinformed people out there.
The question arises then: why should American citizens be particularly susceptible to being hoodwinked by fake news?
An anonymous reader comment made recently on the RT op-edge pages provides a plausible explanation. The brief comment said: “Americans have been lied to by their MSM [mainstream media] for so long, no-one knows what to believe and many US citizens no longer watch news casts, just sports and comedy.”
Arguably, this is a key point. Think about it. If a population has been inculcated for decades with “news” that is actually misinformation or downright false, then it is to expected that the public’s ability to exercise critical mental faculties will be impaired. Further, such a public will be encumbered with misconceptions. In short, brainwashed.
Let’s take some major examples of falsehoods peddled and instilled by American news media.
The assassination of President John F Kennedy. More than 50 years after the brutal slaying of Kennedy while riding a motorcade in Dallas, the entire US corporate media still adhere unswervingly to the official narrative. The official narrative being that JFK was shot by a lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. The weight of evidence presented by many serious researchers shows that Oswald could not possibly have carried out the three-bullet killing. Kennedy was far more plausibly assassinated by multiple gunmen in a plot orchestrated by American deep state agencies. The point is that no mainstream US media outlet has ever seriously challenged the blatant falsehood of the official narrative on JFK. Probably because the implications of a coup d’état against a democratically elected American president are so shocking.
A random selection of other major issues include the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the War on Iraq, and the ongoing conflict in Syria. In every case, the US media have served to present these events as fundamentally righteous causes for American power. Some dissent is permitted to the extent that American power is claimed to have erred or lost its inherently “principled philosophy” while becoming mired in “misguided” overseas interventions.
But again this is the media establishment functioning as a ministry of misinformation to obscure from the public the reality of American capitalist power in the world. It is inconceivable that such media would speak the unvarnished truth to power, by reporting on how US governments have systematically committed genocide against millions of people for the furtherance of American corporate profits.
It is inconceivable that US media would report on how American military intelligence has covertly weaponized terrorist proxy groups in Syria for the past seven years in order to topple the elected government of President Assad. Such an exposé by American news media is unthinkable. It just wouldn’t happen. Instead, the US public are told that the Pentagon is supporting “moderate rebels” who are seeking to “overthrow a dictator”.
We can cite many other major world events as examples of where the US media have systematically spun false narratives and outright lies to cover up for the criminality of the rulers in Washington.
So, when such media deprecate Trump over his “fake news” flaws, the resounding irony is that these same media have for decades poisoned the minds of the American public with outrageous fake news and fake narratives on an industrial scale.
This culture of systematic brainwashing – in a much-vaunted democracy by a self-declared free, independent news media – is undoubtedly a factor in why American citizens seem to have such a hard time telling facts from fiction. The fake news phenomenon in the US is neither new nor unexpected. It’s a corollary of the way the population has for decades been degraded to a status of controlled subjects. This has long been the objective of US elite propagandists like Edward Bernays who in the 1920s strove to “control the habits and thoughts of the populace”.
As former CIA chief William Casey would later cynically brag to President Ronald Reagan during a cabinet meeting: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
The fascinating and distinguishing thing about the de facto US totalitarian system is the illusion that the public has of being “free” – the biggest fake news of all.
This complacent acceptance of “freedom” as a seeming “fact” is perhaps the key factor in why the US and Western capitalist system perpetuates. Few suspect that they are in actual fact nothing but captives, slaves, subjects, in a menagerie of fakery, or false consciousness, about the oppressive condition of their lives.
The proof of this is the way truth-tellers are shunned and censored by the US mainstream media. An indoctrinated totalitarian system cannot abide dissent or criticism.
American Totalitarianism and the Culture of Fake News
American citizens have a problem telling the difference between facts and opinion. That’s the finding of a recent survey carried out by the respected Pew organization.
It was found that only a quarter of the people polled were able to correctly distinguish between a factual statement and an opinion claim. In other words, the majority of those Americans surveyed wrongly believed that information presented to them purporting as facts were indeed facts, when the information was actually merely a subjective claim or opinion.
For example, when an opinion statement like “democracy is the best form of government” was read to them, most of the respondents defined that as a fact. Only some 25 per cent of the more than 5,000 people surveyed by Pew could correctly differentiate between facts and subjective statements.
Moreover, as the Reuters report on the study, put it: “They tend to disagree with factual statements they incorrectly label as opinions, Pew said.”
The latter tendency suggests that Americans are easily misled by false information, and perhaps more disturbingly, that they are closed-minded towards information that challenges their prejudices.
This commentary is not meant to unduly denigrate American citizens. It would be interesting to see what the results would be from a similar survey conducted in Europe, Russia or China.
Regardless of not having such a comparison, however, the Pew study indicates that there is a significant cognitive problem among US people in being able to assess facts from opinions. Given that opinions can be easily manipulated, misconstrued or mendacious that in turn points to a problem of American society being vulnerable to so-called fake news.
US President Donald Trump has almost singlehandedly coined the phrase “fake news” when he rails against news media which are adverse to his personality and his Republican party politics.
Trump himself is often a brazen purveyor of his own brand of fake news. Recall the absurd spat he had with the media over the size of his inauguration crowd, claiming against aerial photographic evidence to have a record huge attendance.
Nonetheless, to a degree, Trump has a fair point. The US corporate news media in favor of the Democrats have been guilty of pushing stories and issues which lack factual credibility. The biggest one is the whole “Russia-gate” affair which the anti-Trump media have been flogging for nearly two years, claiming that he colluded with Russia to get elected, or that Kremlin agents interfered in the 2016 American presidential elections with “fake news” stories enabling Trump.
The irony is that this alleged Russian “fake news” plied through social media is eclipsed by the overarching and actual fake news told by supposedly prestigious news media like The New York Times and Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, and others, in their accusations of Russian “meddling”. Where’s the evidence? There is none. It’s all a fake news narrative told over and over.
Another factor in the fake news phenomenon is of course the new dominance of social media in the information environment. It is said that nearly half of the American population now get their news from social media platforms. That is a sure way to open the sluice gates and the rumor mills in which facts and fabrications are homogenized for millions of daily consumers. And going by the Pew survey, the upshot is a lot of potentially confused or misinformed people out there.
The question arises then: why should American citizens be particularly susceptible to being hoodwinked by fake news?
An anonymous reader comment made recently on the RT op-edge pages provides a plausible explanation. The brief comment said: “Americans have been lied to by their MSM [mainstream media] for so long, no-one knows what to believe and many US citizens no longer watch news casts, just sports and comedy.”
Arguably, this is a key point. Think about it. If a population has been inculcated for decades with “news” that is actually misinformation or downright false, then it is to expected that the public’s ability to exercise critical mental faculties will be impaired. Further, such a public will be encumbered with misconceptions. In short, brainwashed.
Let’s take some major examples of falsehoods peddled and instilled by American news media.
The assassination of President John F Kennedy. More than 50 years after the brutal slaying of Kennedy while riding a motorcade in Dallas, the entire US corporate media still adhere unswervingly to the official narrative. The official narrative being that JFK was shot by a lone gunman Lee Harvey Oswald. The weight of evidence presented by many serious researchers shows that Oswald could not possibly have carried out the three-bullet killing. Kennedy was far more plausibly assassinated by multiple gunmen in a plot orchestrated by American deep state agencies. The point is that no mainstream US media outlet has ever seriously challenged the blatant falsehood of the official narrative on JFK. Probably because the implications of a coup d’état against a democratically elected American president are so shocking.
A random selection of other major issues include the dropping of atomic bombs on Japan, the Korean War, Vietnam War, the War on Iraq, and the ongoing conflict in Syria. In every case, the US media have served to present these events as fundamentally righteous causes for American power. Some dissent is permitted to the extent that American power is claimed to have erred or lost its inherently “principled philosophy” while becoming mired in “misguided” overseas interventions.
But again this is the media establishment functioning as a ministry of misinformation to obscure from the public the reality of American capitalist power in the world. It is inconceivable that such media would speak the unvarnished truth to power, by reporting on how US governments have systematically committed genocide against millions of people for the furtherance of American corporate profits.
It is inconceivable that US media would report on how American military intelligence has covertly weaponized terrorist proxy groups in Syria for the past seven years in order to topple the elected government of President Assad. Such an exposé by American news media is unthinkable. It just wouldn’t happen. Instead, the US public are told that the Pentagon is supporting “moderate rebels” who are seeking to “overthrow a dictator”.
We can cite many other major world events as examples of where the US media have systematically spun false narratives and outright lies to cover up for the criminality of the rulers in Washington.
So, when such media deprecate Trump over his “fake news” flaws, the resounding irony is that these same media have for decades poisoned the minds of the American public with outrageous fake news and fake narratives on an industrial scale.
This culture of systematic brainwashing – in a much-vaunted democracy by a self-declared free, independent news media – is undoubtedly a factor in why American citizens seem to have such a hard time telling facts from fiction. The fake news phenomenon in the US is neither new nor unexpected. It’s a corollary of the way the population has for decades been degraded to a status of controlled subjects. This has long been the objective of US elite propagandists like Edward Bernays who in the 1920s strove to “control the habits and thoughts of the populace”.
As former CIA chief William Casey would later cynically brag to President Ronald Reagan during a cabinet meeting: “We’ll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false.”
The fascinating and distinguishing thing about the de facto US totalitarian system is the illusion that the public has of being “free” – the biggest fake news of all.
This complacent acceptance of “freedom” as a seeming “fact” is perhaps the key factor in why the US and Western capitalist system perpetuates. Few suspect that they are in actual fact nothing but captives, slaves, subjects, in a menagerie of fakery, or false consciousness, about the oppressive condition of their lives.
The proof of this is the way truth-tellers are shunned and censored by the US mainstream media. An indoctrinated totalitarian system cannot abide dissent or criticism.
SC168-2
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49728.htm
Immigration: Western Wars and Imperial Exploitation Uproot Millions
“Immigration” has become the dominant issue dividing Europe and the US, yet the most important matter which is driving millions to emigrate is overlooked — wars.
In this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely (1) imperial wars (2) multi-national corporate expansion (3) the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe (4) the weakness of the trade union and solidarity movements.
We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to the western powers forcing refugees to ‘follow’ the flows of profits.
Imperial Wars and Mass Immigration
The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood, housing and communities and undermining there security.
As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight. Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.
Others who fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East or Latin America were persecuted, or resided in countries too poor to offer them employment or opportunities for a livelihood.
Some Afghans fled to Pakistan or the Middle East but discovered that these regions were also subject to armed attacks from the West.
Iraqis were devastated by the western sanctions, invasion and occupation and fled to Europe and to a lesser degree the US, the Gulf states, and Iran.
Libya prior to the US-EU invasion was a ‘receiver’ country accepting and employing millions of Africans, providing them with citizenship and a decent livelihood. After the US-EU air and sea attack and arming and financing of terrorist gangs, hundreds of thousands of Sub-Sahara immigrants were forced to flee to Europe. Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea to the west via Italy, Spain, and headed toward the affluent European countries which had savaged their lives in Libya.
The US-EU financed and armed client terrorist armies which assault the Syrian government and forced millions of Syrians to flee across the border to Lebanon, Turkey and beyond to Europe, causing the so-called ‘immigration crises’ and the rise of right-wing anti-immigrant parties. This led to divisions within the established social democratic and conservative parties,as sectors of the working class turned anti-immigrant.
Europe is reaping the consequences of its alliance with US militarized imperialism whereby the US uproots millions of people and the EU spends billions of euros to cover the cost of immigrants fleeing the western wars.
Most of the immigrants’ welfare payments fall far short of the losses incurred in their homeland. Their jobs homes, schools, and civic associations in the EU and US are far less valuable and accommodating then what they possessed in their original communities.
Economic Imperialism and Immigration: Latin America
US wars, military intervention and economic exploitation has forced millions of Latin Americans to immigrate to the US. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras engaged in popular struggle for socio-economic justice and political democracy between 1960-2000. On the verge of victory over the landed oligarchs and multinational corporations, Washington blocked popular insurgents by spending billions of dollars, arming, training, advising the military and paramilitary forces. Land reform was aborted; trade unionists were forced into exile and thousands of peasants fled the marauding terror campaigns.
The US-backed oligarchic regimes forced millions of displaced and uprooted pr unemployed and landless workers to flee to the US .
US supported coups and dictators resulted in 50,000 in Nicaragua, 80,000 in El Salvador and 200,000 in Guatemala. President Obama and Hillary Clinton supported a military coup in Honduras which overthrew Liberal President Zelaya — which led to the killing and wounding of thousands of peasant activists and human rights workers, and the return of death squads, resulting in a new wave of immigrants to the US.
The US promoted free trade agreement (NAFTA) drove hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and into low wage maquiladoras; others were recruited by drug cartels; but the largest group was forced to immigrate across the Rio Grande.
The US ‘Plan Colombia’ launched by President Clinton established seven US military bases in Colombia and provided 1 billion dollars in military aid between 2001-2010. Plan Colombia doubled the size of the military,
The US-backed President Alvaro Uribe, resulting in the assassination of over 200,000 peasants, trade union activists and human rights workers by Uribe directed narco-death squad. Over two million farmers fled the countryside and immigrated to the cities or across the border.
US business secured hundreds of thousands of Latin American low wages, agricultural and factory workers almost all without health insurance or benefits – though the paid taxes,
Immigration doubled profits, undermined collective bargains and lowered US wages. Unscrupulous US ‘entrepreneurs’ recruited immigrants into drugs, prostitution, the arms trade and money laundering.
Politicians exploited the immigration issue for political gain – blaming the immigrants for the decline of working class living standards distracting attention from the real source: wars, invasions, death squads and economic pillage.
Conclusion
Having destroyed the lives of working people overseas and overthrown progressive leaders like Libyan President Gaddafi and Honduran President Zelaya, millions were forced to become immigrants.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, and Mexico witnessed the flight of millions of immigrants — all victims of US and EU wars. Washington and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct.
The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and violations of international law.
To restrain immigration the first step is to end imperial wars, withdraw troops,and to cease financing paramilitary and client terrorists.
Secondly, the West should establish a long term multi-billion-dollar fund for reconstruction and recovery of the economies, markets and infrastructure they bombed
The demise of the peace movement allowed the US and EU to launch and prolong serial wars which led to massive immigration – the so-called refugee crises and the flight to Europe. There is a direct connection between the conversion of the liberal and social democrats to war-parties and the forced flight of immigrants to the EU.
The decline of the trade unions and worse, their loss of militancy has led to the loss of solidarity with people living in the midst of imperial wars. Many workers in the imperialist countries have directed their ire to those ‘below’ – the immigrants, — rather than to the imperialists who directed the wars which created the immigration problem.
Immigration, war, the demise of the peace and workers movements, and left parties has led to the rise of the militarists, and neo-liberals who have taken power throughout the West. Their anti-immigrant politics, however, has provoked new contradictions within regimes, between business elites and among popular movements in the EU and the US. The elite and popular struggles can go in at least two directions – toward fascism or radical social democracy.
Immigration: Western Wars and Imperial Exploitation Uproot Millions
“Immigration” has become the dominant issue dividing Europe and the US, yet the most important matter which is driving millions to emigrate is overlooked — wars.
In this paper we will discuss the reasons behind the massification of immigration, focusing on several issues, namely (1) imperial wars (2) multi-national corporate expansion (3) the decline of the anti-war movements in the US and Western Europe (4) the weakness of the trade union and solidarity movements.
We will proceed by identifying the major countries affected by US and EU wars leading to massive immigration, and then turn to the western powers forcing refugees to ‘follow’ the flows of profits.
Imperial Wars and Mass Immigration
The US invasions and wars in Afghanistan and Iraq uprooted several million people, destroying their lives, families, livelihood, housing and communities and undermining there security.
As a result, most victims faced the choice of resistance or flight. Millions chose to flee to the West since the NATO countries would not bomb their residence in the US or Europe.
Others who fled to neighboring countries in the Middle East or Latin America were persecuted, or resided in countries too poor to offer them employment or opportunities for a livelihood.
Some Afghans fled to Pakistan or the Middle East but discovered that these regions were also subject to armed attacks from the West.
Iraqis were devastated by the western sanctions, invasion and occupation and fled to Europe and to a lesser degree the US, the Gulf states, and Iran.
Libya prior to the US-EU invasion was a ‘receiver’ country accepting and employing millions of Africans, providing them with citizenship and a decent livelihood. After the US-EU air and sea attack and arming and financing of terrorist gangs, hundreds of thousands of Sub-Sahara immigrants were forced to flee to Europe. Most crossed the Mediterranean Sea to the west via Italy, Spain, and headed toward the affluent European countries which had savaged their lives in Libya.
The US-EU financed and armed client terrorist armies which assault the Syrian government and forced millions of Syrians to flee across the border to Lebanon, Turkey and beyond to Europe, causing the so-called ‘immigration crises’ and the rise of right-wing anti-immigrant parties. This led to divisions within the established social democratic and conservative parties,as sectors of the working class turned anti-immigrant.
Europe is reaping the consequences of its alliance with US militarized imperialism whereby the US uproots millions of people and the EU spends billions of euros to cover the cost of immigrants fleeing the western wars.
Most of the immigrants’ welfare payments fall far short of the losses incurred in their homeland. Their jobs homes, schools, and civic associations in the EU and US are far less valuable and accommodating then what they possessed in their original communities.
Economic Imperialism and Immigration: Latin America
US wars, military intervention and economic exploitation has forced millions of Latin Americans to immigrate to the US. Nicaragua, El Salvador, Guatemala, and Honduras engaged in popular struggle for socio-economic justice and political democracy between 1960-2000. On the verge of victory over the landed oligarchs and multinational corporations, Washington blocked popular insurgents by spending billions of dollars, arming, training, advising the military and paramilitary forces. Land reform was aborted; trade unionists were forced into exile and thousands of peasants fled the marauding terror campaigns.
The US-backed oligarchic regimes forced millions of displaced and uprooted pr unemployed and landless workers to flee to the US .
US supported coups and dictators resulted in 50,000 in Nicaragua, 80,000 in El Salvador and 200,000 in Guatemala. President Obama and Hillary Clinton supported a military coup in Honduras which overthrew Liberal President Zelaya — which led to the killing and wounding of thousands of peasant activists and human rights workers, and the return of death squads, resulting in a new wave of immigrants to the US.
The US promoted free trade agreement (NAFTA) drove hundreds of thousands of Mexican farmers into bankruptcy and into low wage maquiladoras; others were recruited by drug cartels; but the largest group was forced to immigrate across the Rio Grande.
The US ‘Plan Colombia’ launched by President Clinton established seven US military bases in Colombia and provided 1 billion dollars in military aid between 2001-2010. Plan Colombia doubled the size of the military,
The US-backed President Alvaro Uribe, resulting in the assassination of over 200,000 peasants, trade union activists and human rights workers by Uribe directed narco-death squad. Over two million farmers fled the countryside and immigrated to the cities or across the border.
US business secured hundreds of thousands of Latin American low wages, agricultural and factory workers almost all without health insurance or benefits – though the paid taxes,
Immigration doubled profits, undermined collective bargains and lowered US wages. Unscrupulous US ‘entrepreneurs’ recruited immigrants into drugs, prostitution, the arms trade and money laundering.
Politicians exploited the immigration issue for political gain – blaming the immigrants for the decline of working class living standards distracting attention from the real source: wars, invasions, death squads and economic pillage.
Conclusion
Having destroyed the lives of working people overseas and overthrown progressive leaders like Libyan President Gaddafi and Honduran President Zelaya, millions were forced to become immigrants.
Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Colombia, and Mexico witnessed the flight of millions of immigrants — all victims of US and EU wars. Washington and Brussels blamed the victims and accused the immigrants of illegality and criminal conduct.
The West debates expulsion, arrest and jail instead of reparations for crimes against humanity and violations of international law.
To restrain immigration the first step is to end imperial wars, withdraw troops,and to cease financing paramilitary and client terrorists.
Secondly, the West should establish a long term multi-billion-dollar fund for reconstruction and recovery of the economies, markets and infrastructure they bombed
The demise of the peace movement allowed the US and EU to launch and prolong serial wars which led to massive immigration – the so-called refugee crises and the flight to Europe. There is a direct connection between the conversion of the liberal and social democrats to war-parties and the forced flight of immigrants to the EU.
The decline of the trade unions and worse, their loss of militancy has led to the loss of solidarity with people living in the midst of imperial wars. Many workers in the imperialist countries have directed their ire to those ‘below’ – the immigrants, — rather than to the imperialists who directed the wars which created the immigration problem.
Immigration, war, the demise of the peace and workers movements, and left parties has led to the rise of the militarists, and neo-liberals who have taken power throughout the West. Their anti-immigrant politics, however, has provoked new contradictions within regimes, between business elites and among popular movements in the EU and the US. The elite and popular struggles can go in at least two directions – toward fascism or radical social democracy.
Tuesday, June 26, 2018
SC168-1
https://www.peakprosperity.com/blog/114131/end-growth
The End of Growth
Either it ends, or we do
More and more, I hear that folks are feeling frustrated and betrayed, combined with a sense of loss and despair. I feel this way, too.
As I've written recently, I observe this is due more than anything else to a widespread demoralization society is suffering from.
Certainly the statistics reflect this. Suicides in the US are up 30% since the turn of the millennium, obesity is at epidemic proportions, mortality rates are rising especially among white working-class Americans, and our national opioid addiction is now the “epidemic of epidemics.”
To these we can also add falling birthrates and the truly startling shift towards a younger age for the onset of depression; declining from age 30 now to age…14(!)
When an organism gives up on self-care, breeding, or its will to live, it's suffering from a tremendous amount of strain that is cutting it off from its own life force. A dispirited lion wasting away in a cage has a lot in common with the average American today.
At a deep level, what ails us is not a host of unrelated, intractable problems, but the fact that our model of pursuing eternal economic growth simply isn't working anymore. It doesn’t work for the planet’s increasingly strained ecosystems, nor does it work for the bottom 99% of folks in society (i.e., the non-elites).
The various health epidemics noted above are merely symptoms of a larger acute spiritual crisis.
But viewed at a certain angle, this may be a good sign.
Why? Because in order to shift from one model to another, the old one first has to become unbearable.
And, as the data cited earlier is making increasingly clear, our addiction to growth is killing us and the ecosystems we depend on.
Look, if you're a well-nourished human being -- physically, emotionally and spiritually -- then you have a heartfelt appreciation for the Earth. You can clearly see that it's achingly beautiful, perfect, and abundant. It is your home, your mother, the source of all your sustenance, and the one and only vessel for your children and grandchildren (born or as yet unborn) -- stretching as far into the future as you can imagine.
I'm completely in love with this world and with being alive in it. I love the beauty of Nature and all of its life forms, each beautiful and complete in its own way, just like this dragonfly:
Nature and our connection to it is about creation, flux, and regeneration -- it's deeply spiritual. To live in a world solely of materialism, devoid of deeper meaning and connection, is be the caged lion wasting away.
The loss of life on this planet, the diminishment of once complex ecosystems into barren, simplistic shadows of their former selves, is a source of very real and profound sadness. It is my belief that the existential dread many of us feel is our registering this loss of life -- consciously or not -- as Nature retracts her abundance.
Who hear still hears crickets at night? With the unfolding insect apocalypse, fewer and fewer can make that claim.
The point of all this is that the one and only way out of this box in which we find ourselves is by adopting a better model for living. And to do that, we first need to re-write the narrative that guides us.
If we do this, anything is possible. We can create a future of abundance and prosperity.
But if we don’t, the end will certianly be bitter and full of regret.
Narrative #1: Growth is Always Good, More Growth Is Always Better
Literally every time you read anything about economic growth it's always, unerringly, framed in positive terms. This serves to reinforce the idea of growth being “good.” It’s virtually never questioned or famed differently.
Here’s an example:
China’s gross domestic product grew 6.9 per cent last year, Premier Li Keqiang told a regional meeting in Cambodia last week. “The overall situation was better than expected,” he said.
Mr Li’s estimate is higher than the 6.7 per cent growth reported for 2016 but the real recovery has been sharper. Corporate results are rosy, commodity imports are hitting new records and producer prices have shifted back to steady gains, signifying better industrial health.
So why will Thursday’s 2017 GDP figures not reflect the good news?
China’s economic growth was described as “better (than expected)” and in terms of “recovery” and “rosy” and “good news.” It doesn’t matter which news sources you read, you always find growth framed as "good", "rosy" and desirable.
But is it truly any of those things?
Using the 'Rule of 72' we can divide the reported 6.9% growth into 72 and discover that at that rate of growth, China’s economy will fully double in just 10.4 years.
It’s already the largest economy in the world in terms of oil imports, raw material usage, concrete poured, and food consumed. But in just 10.4 years it’s going to be twice all of those things.
And then what? Well, another doubling from there of course, all of it rosy, desirable and good. But how many more forests, fisheries, aquifers and fossil fuels will such doubling consume?
Of course, when you read about an economic slowdown you'll see framing words like “concern” “weakening” and “weighing down.” This subtle and continuous conditioning has most people firmly committed to the belief that economic growth is something we always want more of.
This is psychological programming, pure and simple. It's so pervasive that it’s thoroughly accepted without question or examination.
The problem, of course, comes in when that unquestioned narrative of growth begins to foul its own nest. When people’s inner guidance systems begin to crash into each other: one committed to the idea of endless growth, the other observing the damage it does. Self-preservation runs smack into self-harm.
Perhaps this explains the mass appeal of such movies as Avengers: Infinity War where the evil Thanos is an eight-foot-tall madman seeking to restore balance to a universe of overgrown worlds by killing half the living beings in it. The entire plot plays on these subconscious belief systems I’m describing. I do wonder if that's, in part, why the movie has been a hugely successful box office smash.
Narrative #2: Growth Is Now The Enemy
When I was a child, our family measured the growth of me and my siblings on a door frame in pencil. I so looked forward to being taller at each new measurement.
But I’m certainly glad I stopped growing by age 18. Otherwise I’d have grown over 9 feet tall, likely dying from a heart attack by age 26.
There’s nothing wrong with growth, in and of itself. But its context matters critically.
Endless growth that exceeds biological parameters? Well, that’s just bad -- whether we're talking about unchecked height, deer populations, or cancer cells.
There was nothing wrong at all with we humans expanding into our biosphere as it could support our population, as does any and every organism in existence. The problem was in failing to self-regulate our consumption to a sustainable level.
Heck, it’s worse than that because we didn’t just fail to regulate ourselves; we just ignored the math.
Here are some simple math problems we could have easily seen coming, but chose not to:
We've lost half the world’s topsoil in the past 150 years
There are 10 or maybe 12 calories of fossil fuels silently embedded in each food calorie we ingest
Fossil fuel supply will peak and slowly decline beginning around 2030
At the current pace, it will take 400 years to transform the energy system upon which we current depend
World population will continue to climb until 2100 reaching 11.2 billion
In the years immediately following the peak in fossil fuel energ,y the world will have to replace nearly 100% of all the concrete structures ever poured or built due to spalling and crumbling induced by the use of steel reinforcing rods
Pensions and entitlements are a simple math disaster that’s already beginning to unfold
Simple math says more people trying to eat dwindling fossil fuels is a predicament. Who’s actually doing anything serious about that on the world stage right now?
Even easier math says that our pension and entitlement promises to ourselves cannot ever be met. What’s realistically being done about any of that? Nothing as far as I can tell.
What’s the plan for replacing 100% of the concrete ever poured in the world? Where’s the energy for that going to come from?
Humans have never transitioned from a more- to a less-concentrated energy system before. And at current rates it will take 400 more years to get there. Where will the energy for that transition come from?
The above is just a very partial list of bad math functions we are facing along with some very obvious questions. The simplest way to resolve them all is to finally admit to ourselves that more growth is not the solution here, it’s actually the problem:
Which brings us back around to the idea of demoralization which is both running rampant and gaining ground. It’s what happens when your cognitive map no longer functions:
Rather than a depressive disorder, demoralization is a type of existential disorder associated with the breakdown of a person’s ‘cognitive map’. It is an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose or sources of need fulfilment.
The world loses its credibility, and former beliefs and convictions dissolve into doubt, uncertainty and loss of direction.
Frustration, anger and bitterness are usual accompaniments, as well as an underlying sense of being part of a lost cause or losing battle. The label ‘existential depression’ is not appropriate since, unlike most forms of depression, demoralization is a realistic response to the circumstances impinging on the person’s life.
(Source)
Did you get that? Demoralization is actually a realistic response under certain conditions.
Those conditions are manifesting themselves now, which means that the waves of dispiriting statistics we are seeing are not 'bad'; they are telling us something important. People are right to be deeply disturbed by the ways in which the main narrative of their culture no longer maps to reality. Worse, the endless growth narrative is killing life on this planet and therefore harming each of us in ways both overt and subtle. More and more people are detecting that, and that’s a good thing, because that’s the necessary first step in crafting a new narrative and adopting a different model that hopefully serves us better.
We often say here at Peak Prosperity that if you're feeling anxiety (or demoralization), it means that there’s a gap between what you know and what you're doing. Since you can’t unlearn something, your best course of action is to change your behavior.
Take action to align what you know with what you do.
I totally get the frustration, anger and bitterness on display in politics all across the West right now, but these are almost universally misdirected at the wrong targets. Whether by intent or accident, this is usually the case and heavily supported by a media system that actually promotes divisiveness over unity, and isolation over connection.
The deeper truth is that we're all experiencing painful shocks, and are therefore reacting like rats in a cage, fighting each other because we cannot properly detect the true source of our pain.
So, what to do?
Yes, the math just doesn’t work out. Yes, there’s no uber strategy in play of which you aren’t aware. Sadly, what you see is what you get. The one and only plan the central panners have is to redouble their efforts to drive more growth. And to do that by creating more and more artificial money to drive up stock and bond prices.
The only plan of any government is to grow its economy and secure more power for itself....
The End of Growth
Either it ends, or we do
More and more, I hear that folks are feeling frustrated and betrayed, combined with a sense of loss and despair. I feel this way, too.
As I've written recently, I observe this is due more than anything else to a widespread demoralization society is suffering from.
Certainly the statistics reflect this. Suicides in the US are up 30% since the turn of the millennium, obesity is at epidemic proportions, mortality rates are rising especially among white working-class Americans, and our national opioid addiction is now the “epidemic of epidemics.”
To these we can also add falling birthrates and the truly startling shift towards a younger age for the onset of depression; declining from age 30 now to age…14(!)
When an organism gives up on self-care, breeding, or its will to live, it's suffering from a tremendous amount of strain that is cutting it off from its own life force. A dispirited lion wasting away in a cage has a lot in common with the average American today.
At a deep level, what ails us is not a host of unrelated, intractable problems, but the fact that our model of pursuing eternal economic growth simply isn't working anymore. It doesn’t work for the planet’s increasingly strained ecosystems, nor does it work for the bottom 99% of folks in society (i.e., the non-elites).
The various health epidemics noted above are merely symptoms of a larger acute spiritual crisis.
But viewed at a certain angle, this may be a good sign.
Why? Because in order to shift from one model to another, the old one first has to become unbearable.
And, as the data cited earlier is making increasingly clear, our addiction to growth is killing us and the ecosystems we depend on.
Look, if you're a well-nourished human being -- physically, emotionally and spiritually -- then you have a heartfelt appreciation for the Earth. You can clearly see that it's achingly beautiful, perfect, and abundant. It is your home, your mother, the source of all your sustenance, and the one and only vessel for your children and grandchildren (born or as yet unborn) -- stretching as far into the future as you can imagine.
I'm completely in love with this world and with being alive in it. I love the beauty of Nature and all of its life forms, each beautiful and complete in its own way, just like this dragonfly:
Nature and our connection to it is about creation, flux, and regeneration -- it's deeply spiritual. To live in a world solely of materialism, devoid of deeper meaning and connection, is be the caged lion wasting away.
The loss of life on this planet, the diminishment of once complex ecosystems into barren, simplistic shadows of their former selves, is a source of very real and profound sadness. It is my belief that the existential dread many of us feel is our registering this loss of life -- consciously or not -- as Nature retracts her abundance.
Who hear still hears crickets at night? With the unfolding insect apocalypse, fewer and fewer can make that claim.
The point of all this is that the one and only way out of this box in which we find ourselves is by adopting a better model for living. And to do that, we first need to re-write the narrative that guides us.
If we do this, anything is possible. We can create a future of abundance and prosperity.
But if we don’t, the end will certianly be bitter and full of regret.
Narrative #1: Growth is Always Good, More Growth Is Always Better
Literally every time you read anything about economic growth it's always, unerringly, framed in positive terms. This serves to reinforce the idea of growth being “good.” It’s virtually never questioned or famed differently.
Here’s an example:
China’s gross domestic product grew 6.9 per cent last year, Premier Li Keqiang told a regional meeting in Cambodia last week. “The overall situation was better than expected,” he said.
Mr Li’s estimate is higher than the 6.7 per cent growth reported for 2016 but the real recovery has been sharper. Corporate results are rosy, commodity imports are hitting new records and producer prices have shifted back to steady gains, signifying better industrial health.
So why will Thursday’s 2017 GDP figures not reflect the good news?
China’s economic growth was described as “better (than expected)” and in terms of “recovery” and “rosy” and “good news.” It doesn’t matter which news sources you read, you always find growth framed as "good", "rosy" and desirable.
But is it truly any of those things?
Using the 'Rule of 72' we can divide the reported 6.9% growth into 72 and discover that at that rate of growth, China’s economy will fully double in just 10.4 years.
It’s already the largest economy in the world in terms of oil imports, raw material usage, concrete poured, and food consumed. But in just 10.4 years it’s going to be twice all of those things.
And then what? Well, another doubling from there of course, all of it rosy, desirable and good. But how many more forests, fisheries, aquifers and fossil fuels will such doubling consume?
Of course, when you read about an economic slowdown you'll see framing words like “concern” “weakening” and “weighing down.” This subtle and continuous conditioning has most people firmly committed to the belief that economic growth is something we always want more of.
This is psychological programming, pure and simple. It's so pervasive that it’s thoroughly accepted without question or examination.
The problem, of course, comes in when that unquestioned narrative of growth begins to foul its own nest. When people’s inner guidance systems begin to crash into each other: one committed to the idea of endless growth, the other observing the damage it does. Self-preservation runs smack into self-harm.
Perhaps this explains the mass appeal of such movies as Avengers: Infinity War where the evil Thanos is an eight-foot-tall madman seeking to restore balance to a universe of overgrown worlds by killing half the living beings in it. The entire plot plays on these subconscious belief systems I’m describing. I do wonder if that's, in part, why the movie has been a hugely successful box office smash.
Narrative #2: Growth Is Now The Enemy
When I was a child, our family measured the growth of me and my siblings on a door frame in pencil. I so looked forward to being taller at each new measurement.
But I’m certainly glad I stopped growing by age 18. Otherwise I’d have grown over 9 feet tall, likely dying from a heart attack by age 26.
There’s nothing wrong with growth, in and of itself. But its context matters critically.
Endless growth that exceeds biological parameters? Well, that’s just bad -- whether we're talking about unchecked height, deer populations, or cancer cells.
There was nothing wrong at all with we humans expanding into our biosphere as it could support our population, as does any and every organism in existence. The problem was in failing to self-regulate our consumption to a sustainable level.
Heck, it’s worse than that because we didn’t just fail to regulate ourselves; we just ignored the math.
Here are some simple math problems we could have easily seen coming, but chose not to:
We've lost half the world’s topsoil in the past 150 years
There are 10 or maybe 12 calories of fossil fuels silently embedded in each food calorie we ingest
Fossil fuel supply will peak and slowly decline beginning around 2030
At the current pace, it will take 400 years to transform the energy system upon which we current depend
World population will continue to climb until 2100 reaching 11.2 billion
In the years immediately following the peak in fossil fuel energ,y the world will have to replace nearly 100% of all the concrete structures ever poured or built due to spalling and crumbling induced by the use of steel reinforcing rods
Pensions and entitlements are a simple math disaster that’s already beginning to unfold
Simple math says more people trying to eat dwindling fossil fuels is a predicament. Who’s actually doing anything serious about that on the world stage right now?
Even easier math says that our pension and entitlement promises to ourselves cannot ever be met. What’s realistically being done about any of that? Nothing as far as I can tell.
What’s the plan for replacing 100% of the concrete ever poured in the world? Where’s the energy for that going to come from?
Humans have never transitioned from a more- to a less-concentrated energy system before. And at current rates it will take 400 more years to get there. Where will the energy for that transition come from?
The above is just a very partial list of bad math functions we are facing along with some very obvious questions. The simplest way to resolve them all is to finally admit to ourselves that more growth is not the solution here, it’s actually the problem:
Which brings us back around to the idea of demoralization which is both running rampant and gaining ground. It’s what happens when your cognitive map no longer functions:
Rather than a depressive disorder, demoralization is a type of existential disorder associated with the breakdown of a person’s ‘cognitive map’. It is an overarching psycho-spiritual crisis in which victims feel generally disoriented and unable to locate meaning, purpose or sources of need fulfilment.
The world loses its credibility, and former beliefs and convictions dissolve into doubt, uncertainty and loss of direction.
Frustration, anger and bitterness are usual accompaniments, as well as an underlying sense of being part of a lost cause or losing battle. The label ‘existential depression’ is not appropriate since, unlike most forms of depression, demoralization is a realistic response to the circumstances impinging on the person’s life.
(Source)
Did you get that? Demoralization is actually a realistic response under certain conditions.
Those conditions are manifesting themselves now, which means that the waves of dispiriting statistics we are seeing are not 'bad'; they are telling us something important. People are right to be deeply disturbed by the ways in which the main narrative of their culture no longer maps to reality. Worse, the endless growth narrative is killing life on this planet and therefore harming each of us in ways both overt and subtle. More and more people are detecting that, and that’s a good thing, because that’s the necessary first step in crafting a new narrative and adopting a different model that hopefully serves us better.
We often say here at Peak Prosperity that if you're feeling anxiety (or demoralization), it means that there’s a gap between what you know and what you're doing. Since you can’t unlearn something, your best course of action is to change your behavior.
Take action to align what you know with what you do.
I totally get the frustration, anger and bitterness on display in politics all across the West right now, but these are almost universally misdirected at the wrong targets. Whether by intent or accident, this is usually the case and heavily supported by a media system that actually promotes divisiveness over unity, and isolation over connection.
The deeper truth is that we're all experiencing painful shocks, and are therefore reacting like rats in a cage, fighting each other because we cannot properly detect the true source of our pain.
So, what to do?
Yes, the math just doesn’t work out. Yes, there’s no uber strategy in play of which you aren’t aware. Sadly, what you see is what you get. The one and only plan the central panners have is to redouble their efforts to drive more growth. And to do that by creating more and more artificial money to drive up stock and bond prices.
The only plan of any government is to grow its economy and secure more power for itself....
SC167-15
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-soldiers-tale/
The Soldier’s Tale
The troops live under
The cannon’s thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar
Moving from place to place
When they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skins are black or yellow
They quick as winking chop him into
Beefsteak tartar
—“The Cannon Song” from “The Threepenny Opera”
The soldier’s tale is as old as war. It is told and then forgotten. There are always young men and women ardent for glory, seduced by the power to inflict violence and naive enough to die for the merchants of death. The soldier’s tale is the same, war after war, generation after generation. It is Spenser Rapone’s turn now. The second lieutenant was given an “other than honorable” discharge June 18 after an Army investigation determined that he “went online to promote a socialist revolution and disparage high-ranking officers” and thereby had engaged in “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Rapone laid bare the lie, although the lie often seems unassailable. We must honor those like him who have the moral courage to speak the truth about war, even if the tidal waves of patriotic propaganda that flood the culture overwhelm the voices of the just.
Rapone enlisted in the Army in 2010. He attended basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. He graduated from airborne school in February 2011 and became an Army Ranger. He watched as those around him swiftly fetishized their weapons.
“The rifle is the reification of what it means to be infantrymen,” he said when I reached him by phone in Watertown, N.Y. “You’re taught that the rifle is an extension of you. It is your life. You have to carry it at all times. The rifle made us warriors dedicated to destroying the enemy in close personal combat. At first, it was almost gleeful. We were a bunch of 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds. We had this instrument of death in our hands. We had power. We could do what 99 percent of our countrymen could not. The weapon changes you. You want to prove yourself. You want to be tested in combat. You want to deliver death. It draws you in, as much as life in the Army sucks. You start executing tactical maneuvers and battle drills. You get a certain high. It’s seductive. The military beats empathy out of you. It makes you callous.”
He was disturbed by what was happening around him and to him.
“When you get to RASP [the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program], you’re told you not only have to understand Ranger culture and history, you have to adopt what’s called an airborne Ranger in the sky,” he said. “They make you go online and look at Rangers who were killed in action. You have to learn about this person and print out a copy of their obituary. It’s really unsettling, the whole process. This was a class leader acting on behalf of the cadre, he said something to the effect of ‘I’ll give you a hint, don’t pick Pat Tillman.’ ”
Rapone began to read about Pat Tillman, the professional football player who joined the Rangers and was killed in 2004 in Afghanistan by friendly fire, a fact that senior military officials, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who at the time was the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, covered up and replaced with a fictitious Hollywood version of death in combat with the enemy. Rapone watched the 2010 documentary “The Tillman Story” and would later read the 2006 Truthdig essay “After Pat’s Birthday,” written by Pat’s brother Kevin, who was in the Rangers with Pat. Pat Tillman, who had been in contact with Noam Chomsky, had become a critic of the war. In addition to lying to the Tillman family about Pat’s death, the Army did not return, and probably destroyed, Pat’s papers and diary.
“Pat Tillman showed me I could resist the indoctrination,” he said. “I did not have to let the military dehumanize me and turn me into something monstrous. When I learned how his death was covered up to sell the war, it was shocking. The military wasn’t interested in preserving freedom or democracy. It was only interested in protecting the profits of those in power and expanding the U.S. hegemony. I was not a Hollywood freedom fighter. I was a cog in the imperialist machine. I preyed on the poorest, most exploited people on the planet.”
“We were told to ‘shoot, move, and communicate,’ ” he said of his Ranger training. “This became our entire existence. We did not need to understand why or the larger implications. These things did not concern us.”
By July 2011 he was in Khost province in Afghanistan. He was 19 years old. He was an assistant machine gunner on an Mk-48, an 18-pound weapon that is mounted on a tripod and has a fire rate of 500 to 625 rounds per minute. He carried the spare barrel, along with the ammunition, which he fed into the gun. When his fellow Rangers cleared dwellings at night he set up a blocking position. He watched as the Rangers separated terrified men, women and children, treating them “as if they were animals.” The Rangers spoke of the Afghans as subhumans, dismissing them as “hajjis” and “ragheads.”
“A lot of the guys would say, ‘I want to go out every night and kill people,’ ” he told me. “The Rangers are about hyper-masculinity, misogyny, racism, and a hatred of other cultures.”
His platoon sergeant had the hammer of Thor, a popular symbol among white supremacists, tattooed on his arm. The sergeant told new Rangers that if they saw something that upset them and wanted to speak out about it they were “in the wrong fucking place.”
Rapone left the Rangers to attend West Point in 2012. Maybe, as an officer, he could make a difference, infuse some humanity into his squads of killers. But he had his doubts.
“When I started West Point in July 2012 I encountered a lot of similar themes I noticed in the Ranger regiment,” he said. “Officers and NCOs relished the idea of being able to kill people with impunity. It’s Rudyard Kipling. It’s the young British soldier mentality we’ve seen for hundreds of years. Its hyper-masculine. Even female cadets have to assimilate themselves. Any display of femininity is considered weakness. This is combined with the structural racism. They still honor [Confederate Gen.] Robert E. Lee at West Point. There’s a barracks named after him. There’s a portrait of him in the library in his Confederate uniform. In the bottom right of the portrait, in the background, is a slave.”
Rapone watched with growing anger as black cadets were kicked out for infractions that did not lead to the expulsion of white cadets.
He majored in history. But he read outside of the curriculum, including authors such as Howard Zinn and Stan Goff, a former Special Forces master sergeant who had been in Vietnam, Haiti, Panama, Colombia and Somalia and who wrote “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti.”
“I realized we are the muscle for those with wealth and status,” Rapone said. “I also realized I was a socialist. It was jarring.”
His outspokenness and criticism saw him reprimanded.
“I almost got kicked out my senior year at West Point,” he said. “At that point, I was a socialist. When you study political economy, when you study critical theory, it informs your analysis and your work. It started off as an academic position. But I thought there has to be more to this. There has to be some kind of an action to back up my theories.”
He was derided as the “communist cadet.” He sought out those at the military academy who suffered from discrimination there, including people of color, women and Muslims. He joined the Muslim Cadet Association, although he is not Muslim.
“I wanted to help Muslim cadets find a platform,” he said. “I wanted them to know they were not forgotten. At West Point, there weren’t too many people who understood or appreciated Islam or how the U.S. has ripped Islamic countries to shreds.”
He helped organize an effort to provide Muslims at the academy with a proper prayer space, something that led him into heated arguments with senior administrative officials.
One professor confronted him: “I’ve been watching you for the past three, four years—you think you can do whatever you want.” “Yes, sir,” Rapone answered, a response that resulted in his being written up for speaking back to an officer.
The professor examined his social media accounts and found Rapone was posting articles from socialist publications and criticizing U.S. policy on Syrian refugees. The teacher sent a file on Rapone to the Criminal Investigations Division and G2, or military intelligence. Rapone was interrogated by senior officers. He was issued a “punishment tour” lasting 100 hours. He was forced to walk back and forth in the central square at West Point in his full dress uniform each week until the required hours were fulfilled. “It looked like something out of a Monty Python sketch,” he said.
He was stripped of his privileges for 60 days. His spring break was canceled. He spent spring break doing landscaping and other menial tasks to “pay off” his punishment debt. He was required to train cadets who had not passed a required event.
“At West Point, they’ll maintain that hazing doesn’t exist,” he said, “at least the kind that was around in the ’50s or ’60s. But it’s still hazing. You’re considered a plebe when you first get to West Point. You take out upper classmen’s trash every night. You’re not allowed to talk when you’re outside as a plebe. You have to keep your hands balled up and walk in position of attention. If you’re caught talking to a classmate, you’ll get in trouble. The worst part is that those who move on from their plebe year enforce the same dehumanizing behavior, which they despised, on the new plebes.”
He had experienced hazing in the Rangers, too. New Rangers were forced to fight each other and do numerous push-ups or were hogtied and their stomachs were smacked repeatedly.
“The hazing weeds out people who won’t embrace it,” he said. “To resist total assimilation, a lot of people create an ironic detachment. But this ironic detachment is really another form of assimilation. It runs pretty deep. There was a guy in a leadership position who tried to kill himself when I was overseas. There were cadets who committed suicide when I was at West Point and others who tried to commit suicide. I spent eight years in the Army. Suicide was a very tangible reality. A lot of suicides were the result of the combination of hazing and military culture, which in a sense is a form of hazing. Your drill instructor can’t beat the shit out of you the way he used to, but the military still has methods to torture you emotionally.”
When he graduated from West Point he was sent back to Fort Benning, where he had been a young recruit six years earlier.
“Every other Friday a basic training class graduates,” he said. “I would see these buzzed-cut teenaged boys, who had barely progressed out of puberty, being sent into the meat grinder. It was unsettling. I was being trained to lead these guys, to tell them the mission we were doing was just and right. I could not in good conscience do that. I searched for an opening. I looked for ways to leave or speak out. When the whole national anthem thing was starting up with Colin Kaepernick, putting his skin in the game, risking himself to fight against systemic racism, I thought I could at least do my part.”
He posted a picture of himself in uniform with the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick.
“Everything snowballed from there,” he said. “Colin Kaepernick, for me, was linked to Pat Tillman. He too was willing to risk himself and his status to speak truth to power.”
His public support of Kaepernick—along with his social media posts of photos of himself at his 2016 graduation at West Point wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt under his uniform and holding up his fist as he showed the words “Communism will win” on the inside of his cap—led to an investigation. Afterward, the Army’s 10th Mountain Division accept his resignation.
“The United States is almost religious about its patriotism,” he said. “Military personnel are seen as infallible. You have someone like [Secretary of Defense] James Mattis, who is a bona fide war criminal. He dropped bombs on a wedding ceremony in Iraq. He’s responsible for overseeing many different massacres in Iraq. Or [general and former national security adviser] H.R. McMaster. These people can’t do any wrong because they’ve served. This reverence for the military is priming the population to accept military rule and a form of fascism or protofascism. That’s why I felt even more compelled to get out.”
“The public doesn’t understand how regressive and toxic military culture is,” he went on. “The military’s inherent function is the abuse and degradation of other people. It is designed to be a vehicle of destruction. It’s fundamental to the system. Without that, it would collapse. You can’t convert the military into a humanitarian force even when you use the military in humanitarian ways, such as in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The military trains soldiers to see other human beings, particularly brown and black human beings, as an imminent threat.”
“Of course, the military prides itself on being apolitical, which is oxymoronic,” he said. “The military is the political muscle of the state. There are few things more dangerous than a soldier who thinks he or she doesn’t have a political function.”
“I want to implore other soldiers and military personnel, there’s more to being a soldier than knowing how to fire a weapon,” Rapone said. “You can take a lot of what you’ve learned into society and actually help. At West Point, they say they teach you to be a leader of character. They talk to you about moral fortitude. But what do we see in the military? I was blindly following orders. I was inflicting violence on the poorest people on earth. How is there any morality in that?”
The Soldier’s Tale
The troops live under
The cannon’s thunder
From Sind to Cooch Behar
Moving from place to place
When they come face to face
With a different breed of fellow
Whose skins are black or yellow
They quick as winking chop him into
Beefsteak tartar
—“The Cannon Song” from “The Threepenny Opera”
The soldier’s tale is as old as war. It is told and then forgotten. There are always young men and women ardent for glory, seduced by the power to inflict violence and naive enough to die for the merchants of death. The soldier’s tale is the same, war after war, generation after generation. It is Spenser Rapone’s turn now. The second lieutenant was given an “other than honorable” discharge June 18 after an Army investigation determined that he “went online to promote a socialist revolution and disparage high-ranking officers” and thereby had engaged in “conduct unbecoming an officer.” Rapone laid bare the lie, although the lie often seems unassailable. We must honor those like him who have the moral courage to speak the truth about war, even if the tidal waves of patriotic propaganda that flood the culture overwhelm the voices of the just.
Rapone enlisted in the Army in 2010. He attended basic training at Fort Benning, Ga. He graduated from airborne school in February 2011 and became an Army Ranger. He watched as those around him swiftly fetishized their weapons.
“The rifle is the reification of what it means to be infantrymen,” he said when I reached him by phone in Watertown, N.Y. “You’re taught that the rifle is an extension of you. It is your life. You have to carry it at all times. The rifle made us warriors dedicated to destroying the enemy in close personal combat. At first, it was almost gleeful. We were a bunch of 18-year-olds, 19-year-olds. We had this instrument of death in our hands. We had power. We could do what 99 percent of our countrymen could not. The weapon changes you. You want to prove yourself. You want to be tested in combat. You want to deliver death. It draws you in, as much as life in the Army sucks. You start executing tactical maneuvers and battle drills. You get a certain high. It’s seductive. The military beats empathy out of you. It makes you callous.”
He was disturbed by what was happening around him and to him.
“When you get to RASP [the Ranger Assessment and Selection Program], you’re told you not only have to understand Ranger culture and history, you have to adopt what’s called an airborne Ranger in the sky,” he said. “They make you go online and look at Rangers who were killed in action. You have to learn about this person and print out a copy of their obituary. It’s really unsettling, the whole process. This was a class leader acting on behalf of the cadre, he said something to the effect of ‘I’ll give you a hint, don’t pick Pat Tillman.’ ”
Rapone began to read about Pat Tillman, the professional football player who joined the Rangers and was killed in 2004 in Afghanistan by friendly fire, a fact that senior military officials, including Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal, who at the time was the U.S. commander in Afghanistan, covered up and replaced with a fictitious Hollywood version of death in combat with the enemy. Rapone watched the 2010 documentary “The Tillman Story” and would later read the 2006 Truthdig essay “After Pat’s Birthday,” written by Pat’s brother Kevin, who was in the Rangers with Pat. Pat Tillman, who had been in contact with Noam Chomsky, had become a critic of the war. In addition to lying to the Tillman family about Pat’s death, the Army did not return, and probably destroyed, Pat’s papers and diary.
“Pat Tillman showed me I could resist the indoctrination,” he said. “I did not have to let the military dehumanize me and turn me into something monstrous. When I learned how his death was covered up to sell the war, it was shocking. The military wasn’t interested in preserving freedom or democracy. It was only interested in protecting the profits of those in power and expanding the U.S. hegemony. I was not a Hollywood freedom fighter. I was a cog in the imperialist machine. I preyed on the poorest, most exploited people on the planet.”
“We were told to ‘shoot, move, and communicate,’ ” he said of his Ranger training. “This became our entire existence. We did not need to understand why or the larger implications. These things did not concern us.”
By July 2011 he was in Khost province in Afghanistan. He was 19 years old. He was an assistant machine gunner on an Mk-48, an 18-pound weapon that is mounted on a tripod and has a fire rate of 500 to 625 rounds per minute. He carried the spare barrel, along with the ammunition, which he fed into the gun. When his fellow Rangers cleared dwellings at night he set up a blocking position. He watched as the Rangers separated terrified men, women and children, treating them “as if they were animals.” The Rangers spoke of the Afghans as subhumans, dismissing them as “hajjis” and “ragheads.”
“A lot of the guys would say, ‘I want to go out every night and kill people,’ ” he told me. “The Rangers are about hyper-masculinity, misogyny, racism, and a hatred of other cultures.”
His platoon sergeant had the hammer of Thor, a popular symbol among white supremacists, tattooed on his arm. The sergeant told new Rangers that if they saw something that upset them and wanted to speak out about it they were “in the wrong fucking place.”
Rapone left the Rangers to attend West Point in 2012. Maybe, as an officer, he could make a difference, infuse some humanity into his squads of killers. But he had his doubts.
“When I started West Point in July 2012 I encountered a lot of similar themes I noticed in the Ranger regiment,” he said. “Officers and NCOs relished the idea of being able to kill people with impunity. It’s Rudyard Kipling. It’s the young British soldier mentality we’ve seen for hundreds of years. Its hyper-masculine. Even female cadets have to assimilate themselves. Any display of femininity is considered weakness. This is combined with the structural racism. They still honor [Confederate Gen.] Robert E. Lee at West Point. There’s a barracks named after him. There’s a portrait of him in the library in his Confederate uniform. In the bottom right of the portrait, in the background, is a slave.”
Rapone watched with growing anger as black cadets were kicked out for infractions that did not lead to the expulsion of white cadets.
He majored in history. But he read outside of the curriculum, including authors such as Howard Zinn and Stan Goff, a former Special Forces master sergeant who had been in Vietnam, Haiti, Panama, Colombia and Somalia and who wrote “Hideous Dream: A Soldier’s Memoir of the U.S. Invasion of Haiti.”
“I realized we are the muscle for those with wealth and status,” Rapone said. “I also realized I was a socialist. It was jarring.”
His outspokenness and criticism saw him reprimanded.
“I almost got kicked out my senior year at West Point,” he said. “At that point, I was a socialist. When you study political economy, when you study critical theory, it informs your analysis and your work. It started off as an academic position. But I thought there has to be more to this. There has to be some kind of an action to back up my theories.”
He was derided as the “communist cadet.” He sought out those at the military academy who suffered from discrimination there, including people of color, women and Muslims. He joined the Muslim Cadet Association, although he is not Muslim.
“I wanted to help Muslim cadets find a platform,” he said. “I wanted them to know they were not forgotten. At West Point, there weren’t too many people who understood or appreciated Islam or how the U.S. has ripped Islamic countries to shreds.”
He helped organize an effort to provide Muslims at the academy with a proper prayer space, something that led him into heated arguments with senior administrative officials.
One professor confronted him: “I’ve been watching you for the past three, four years—you think you can do whatever you want.” “Yes, sir,” Rapone answered, a response that resulted in his being written up for speaking back to an officer.
The professor examined his social media accounts and found Rapone was posting articles from socialist publications and criticizing U.S. policy on Syrian refugees. The teacher sent a file on Rapone to the Criminal Investigations Division and G2, or military intelligence. Rapone was interrogated by senior officers. He was issued a “punishment tour” lasting 100 hours. He was forced to walk back and forth in the central square at West Point in his full dress uniform each week until the required hours were fulfilled. “It looked like something out of a Monty Python sketch,” he said.
He was stripped of his privileges for 60 days. His spring break was canceled. He spent spring break doing landscaping and other menial tasks to “pay off” his punishment debt. He was required to train cadets who had not passed a required event.
“At West Point, they’ll maintain that hazing doesn’t exist,” he said, “at least the kind that was around in the ’50s or ’60s. But it’s still hazing. You’re considered a plebe when you first get to West Point. You take out upper classmen’s trash every night. You’re not allowed to talk when you’re outside as a plebe. You have to keep your hands balled up and walk in position of attention. If you’re caught talking to a classmate, you’ll get in trouble. The worst part is that those who move on from their plebe year enforce the same dehumanizing behavior, which they despised, on the new plebes.”
He had experienced hazing in the Rangers, too. New Rangers were forced to fight each other and do numerous push-ups or were hogtied and their stomachs were smacked repeatedly.
“The hazing weeds out people who won’t embrace it,” he said. “To resist total assimilation, a lot of people create an ironic detachment. But this ironic detachment is really another form of assimilation. It runs pretty deep. There was a guy in a leadership position who tried to kill himself when I was overseas. There were cadets who committed suicide when I was at West Point and others who tried to commit suicide. I spent eight years in the Army. Suicide was a very tangible reality. A lot of suicides were the result of the combination of hazing and military culture, which in a sense is a form of hazing. Your drill instructor can’t beat the shit out of you the way he used to, but the military still has methods to torture you emotionally.”
When he graduated from West Point he was sent back to Fort Benning, where he had been a young recruit six years earlier.
“Every other Friday a basic training class graduates,” he said. “I would see these buzzed-cut teenaged boys, who had barely progressed out of puberty, being sent into the meat grinder. It was unsettling. I was being trained to lead these guys, to tell them the mission we were doing was just and right. I could not in good conscience do that. I searched for an opening. I looked for ways to leave or speak out. When the whole national anthem thing was starting up with Colin Kaepernick, putting his skin in the game, risking himself to fight against systemic racism, I thought I could at least do my part.”
He posted a picture of himself in uniform with the hashtag #VeteransForKaepernick.
“Everything snowballed from there,” he said. “Colin Kaepernick, for me, was linked to Pat Tillman. He too was willing to risk himself and his status to speak truth to power.”
His public support of Kaepernick—along with his social media posts of photos of himself at his 2016 graduation at West Point wearing a Che Guevara T-shirt under his uniform and holding up his fist as he showed the words “Communism will win” on the inside of his cap—led to an investigation. Afterward, the Army’s 10th Mountain Division accept his resignation.
“The United States is almost religious about its patriotism,” he said. “Military personnel are seen as infallible. You have someone like [Secretary of Defense] James Mattis, who is a bona fide war criminal. He dropped bombs on a wedding ceremony in Iraq. He’s responsible for overseeing many different massacres in Iraq. Or [general and former national security adviser] H.R. McMaster. These people can’t do any wrong because they’ve served. This reverence for the military is priming the population to accept military rule and a form of fascism or protofascism. That’s why I felt even more compelled to get out.”
“The public doesn’t understand how regressive and toxic military culture is,” he went on. “The military’s inherent function is the abuse and degradation of other people. It is designed to be a vehicle of destruction. It’s fundamental to the system. Without that, it would collapse. You can’t convert the military into a humanitarian force even when you use the military in humanitarian ways, such as in New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. The military trains soldiers to see other human beings, particularly brown and black human beings, as an imminent threat.”
“Of course, the military prides itself on being apolitical, which is oxymoronic,” he said. “The military is the political muscle of the state. There are few things more dangerous than a soldier who thinks he or she doesn’t have a political function.”
“I want to implore other soldiers and military personnel, there’s more to being a soldier than knowing how to fire a weapon,” Rapone said. “You can take a lot of what you’ve learned into society and actually help. At West Point, they say they teach you to be a leader of character. They talk to you about moral fortitude. But what do we see in the military? I was blindly following orders. I was inflicting violence on the poorest people on earth. How is there any morality in that?”
SC167-14
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49704.htm
Government Eyes Are Watching You: We Are All Prisoners of the Surveillance State
“We’re run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people's Villages, but we are all prisoners.”— Patrick McGoohan
June 22, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - First broadcast in America 50 years ago, The Prisoner—a dystopian television series described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.
Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly tranquil retirement community known only as the Village. The Village is an idyllic setting with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.
While luxurious and resort-like, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.
The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan, is Number Six.
Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.
“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by McGoohan.
In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”
Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.
Number Six refuses to comply.
In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”
Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.
Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s getaways are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”
Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unsettling, reoccurring nightmare that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.
As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man's body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”
The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and so-called democracy.
As Thill noted when McGoohan died in 2009, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”
The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.
The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.
Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be and funding its existence.
Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the police state and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, YouTube, Instagram, etc.).
Government eyes are watching you.
They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.
When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.
However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.
Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984—where “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”—has now become our reality.
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.
Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.
As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, “Visibility is a trap.”
This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.
It is a prison from which there will be no escape if the government gets it way.
As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
Unfortunately, we seem to be trapped in the Village with no hope of escape.
That we are prisoners—and, in fact, never stopped being prisoners—should come as no surprise to those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, and who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior.
So how do we break out?
For starters, wake up. Resist the urge to comply.
The struggle to remain “oneself in a society increasingly obsessed with conformity to mass consumerism,” writes Steven Paul Davies, means that superficiality and image trump truth and the individual. The result is the group mind and the tyranny of mob-think—especially in a day and age when most people are addicted to screen devices controlled and administered by the government and its corporate allies.
Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that's the great thing. It's when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that's tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”
In a media-dominated age in which the lines between entertainment, politics and news reporting are blurred, it is extremely difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. We are so bombarded with images, dictates, rules and punishments and stamped with numbers from the day we are born that it is a wonder we ever ponder a concept such as freedom. As McGoohan declared, “Freedom is a myth.”
In the end, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are all prisoners of our own mind.
In fact, it is in the mind that prisons are created for us. And in the lockdown of political correctness, it becomes extremely difficult to speak or act individually without being ostracized. Thus, so often we are forced to retreat inwardly into our minds, a prison without bars from which we cannot escape, and into the world of video games and television and the Internet.
We have come full circle from Bentham’s Panopticon to McGoohan’s Village to Huxley’s Brave New World.
As cultural theorist Neil Postman observed:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared we would become a captive audience. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
You want to be free? Break out of the circle.
Government Eyes Are Watching You: We Are All Prisoners of the Surveillance State
“We’re run by the Pentagon, we're run by Madison Avenue, we're run by television, and as long as we accept those things and don't revolt we'll have to go along with the stream to the eventual avalanche.... As long as we go out and buy stuff, we're at their mercy… We all live in a little Village. Your Village may be different from other people's Villages, but we are all prisoners.”— Patrick McGoohan
June 22, 2018 "Information Clearing House" - First broadcast in America 50 years ago, The Prisoner—a dystopian television series described as “James Bond meets George Orwell filtered through Franz Kafka”—confronted societal themes that are still relevant today: the rise of a police state, the freedom of the individual, round-the-clock surveillance, the corruption of government, totalitarianism, weaponization, group think, mass marketing, and the tendency of humankind to meekly accept their lot in life as a prisoner in a prison of their own making.
Perhaps the best visual debate ever on individuality and freedom, The Prisoner (17 episodes in all) centers around a British secret agent who abruptly resigns only to find himself imprisoned and interrogated in a mysterious, self-contained, cosmopolitan, seemingly tranquil retirement community known only as the Village. The Village is an idyllic setting with parks and green fields, recreational activities and even a butler.
While luxurious and resort-like, the Village is a virtual prison disguised as a seaside paradise: its inhabitants have no true freedom, they cannot leave the Village, they are under constant surveillance, their movements are tracked by surveillance drones, and they are stripped of their individuality and identified only by numbers.
The series’ protagonist, played by Patrick McGoohan, is Number Six.
Number Two, the Village administrator, acts as an agent for the unseen and all-powerful Number One, whose identity is not revealed until the final episode.
“I am not a number. I am a free man,” was the mantra chanted on each episode of The Prisoner, which was largely written and directed by McGoohan.
In the opening episode (“The Arrival”), Number Six meets Number Two, who explains to him that he is in The Village because information stored “inside” his head has made him too valuable to be allowed to roam free “outside.”
Throughout the series, Number Six is subjected to interrogation tactics, torture, hallucinogenic drugs, identity theft, mind control, dream manipulation, and various forms of social indoctrination and physical coercion in order to “persuade” him to comply, give up, give in and subjugate himself to the will of the powers-that-be.
Number Six refuses to comply.
In every episode, Number Six resists the Village’s indoctrination methods, struggles to maintain his own identity, and attempts to escape his captors. “I will not make any deals with you,” he pointedly remarks to Number Two. “I’ve resigned. I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, debriefed or numbered. My life is my own.”
Yet no matter how far Number Six manages to get in his efforts to escape, it’s never far enough.
Watched by surveillance cameras and other devices, Number Six’s getaways are continuously thwarted by ominous white balloon-like spheres known as “rovers.” Still, he refuses to give up. “Unlike me,” he says to his fellow prisoners, “many of you have accepted the situation of your imprisonment, and will die here like rotten cabbages.”
Number Six’s escapes become a surreal exercise in futility, each episode an unsettling, reoccurring nightmare that builds to the same frustrating denouement: there is no escape.
As journalist Scott Thill concludes for Wired, “Rebellion always comes at a price. During the acclaimed run of The Prisoner, Number Six is tortured, battered and even body-snatched: In the episode ‘Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling,’ his mind is transplanted to another man's body. Number Six repeatedly escapes The Village only to be returned to it in the end, trapped like an animal, overcome by a restless energy he cannot expend, and betrayed by nearly everyone around him.”
The series is a chilling lesson about how difficult it is to gain one’s freedom in a society in which prison walls are disguised within the trappings of technological and scientific progress, national security and so-called democracy.
As Thill noted when McGoohan died in 2009, “The Prisoner was an allegory of the individual, aiming to find peace and freedom in a dystopia masquerading as a utopia.”
The Prisoner’s Village is also an apt allegory for the American Police State: it gives the illusion of freedom while functioning all the while like a prison: controlled, watchful, inflexible, punitive, deadly and inescapable.
The American Police State, much like The Prisoner’s Village, is a metaphorical panopticon, a circular prison in which the inmates are monitored by a single watchman situated in a central tower. Because the inmates cannot see the watchman, they are unable to tell whether or not they are being watched at any given time and must proceed under the assumption that they are always being watched.
Eighteenth century social theorist Jeremy Bentham envisioned the panopticon prison to be a cheaper and more effective means of “obtaining power of mind over mind, in a quantity hitherto without example.”
Bentham’s panopticon, in which the prisoners are used as a source of cheap, menial labor, has become a model for the modern surveillance state in which the populace is constantly being watched, controlled and managed by the powers-that-be and funding its existence.
Nowhere to run and nowhere to hide: this is the new mantra of the architects of the police state and their corporate collaborators (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, Google, YouTube, Instagram, etc.).
Government eyes are watching you.
They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.
Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to form a picture of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.
When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.
Apart from the obvious dangers posed by a government that feels justified and empowered to spy on its people and use its ever-expanding arsenal of weapons and technology to monitor and control them, we’re approaching a time in which we will be forced to choose between obeying the dictates of the government—i.e., the law, or whatever a government official deems the law to be—and maintaining our individuality, integrity and independence.
When people talk about privacy, they mistakenly assume it protects only that which is hidden behind a wall or under one’s clothing. The courts have fostered this misunderstanding with their constantly shifting delineation of what constitutes an “expectation of privacy.” And technology has furthered muddied the waters.
However, privacy is so much more than what you do or say behind locked doors. It is a way of living one’s life firm in the belief that you are the master of your life, and barring any immediate danger to another person (which is far different from the carefully crafted threats to national security the government uses to justify its actions), it’s no one’s business what you read, what you say, where you go, whom you spend your time with, and how you spend your money.
Unfortunately, George Orwell’s 1984—where “you had to live—did live, from habit that became instinct—in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized”—has now become our reality.
We now find ourselves in the unenviable position of being monitored, managed and controlled by our technology, which answers not to us but to our government and corporate rulers.
Consider that on any given day, the average American going about his daily business will be monitored, surveilled, spied on and tracked in more than 20 different ways, by both government and corporate eyes and ears.
A byproduct of this new age in which we live, whether you’re walking through a store, driving your car, checking email, or talking to friends and family on the phone, you can be sure that some government agency, whether the NSA or some other entity, is listening in and tracking your behavior.
This doesn’t even begin to touch on the corporate trackers that monitor your purchases, web browsing, Facebook posts and other activities taking place in the cyber sphere.
Stingray devices mounted on police cars to warrantlessly track cell phones, Doppler radar devices that can detect human breathing and movement within in a home, license plate readers that can record up to 1800 license plates per minute, sidewalk and “public space” cameras coupled with facial recognition and behavior-sensing technology that lay the groundwork for police “pre-crime” programs, police body cameras that turn police officers into roving surveillance cameras, the internet of things: all of these technologies add up to a society in which there’s little room for indiscretions, imperfections, or acts of independence—especially not when the government can listen in on your phone calls, monitor your driving habits, track your movements, scrutinize your purchases and peer through the walls of your home.
As French philosopher Michel Foucault concluded in his 1975 book Discipline and Punish, “Visibility is a trap.”
This is the electronic concentration camp—the panopticon prison—the Village—in which we are now caged.
It is a prison from which there will be no escape if the government gets it way.
As Glenn Greenwald notes:
“The way things are supposed to work is that we’re supposed to know virtually everything about what [government officials] do: that’s why they’re called public servants. They’re supposed to know virtually nothing about what we do: that’s why we’re called private individuals. This dynamic - the hallmark of a healthy and free society - has been radically reversed. Now, they know everything about what we do, and are constantly building systems to know more. Meanwhile, we know less and less about what they do, as they build walls of secrecy behind which they function. That’s the imbalance that needs to come to an end. No democracy can be healthy and functional if the most consequential acts of those who wield political power are completely unknown to those to whom they are supposed to be accountable.”
Unfortunately, we seem to be trapped in the Village with no hope of escape.
That we are prisoners—and, in fact, never stopped being prisoners—should come as no surprise to those who haven’t been taking the escapist blue pill, who haven’t fallen for the Deep State’s phony rhetoric, and who haven’t been lured in by the promise of a political savior.
So how do we break out?
For starters, wake up. Resist the urge to comply.
The struggle to remain “oneself in a society increasingly obsessed with conformity to mass consumerism,” writes Steven Paul Davies, means that superficiality and image trump truth and the individual. The result is the group mind and the tyranny of mob-think—especially in a day and age when most people are addicted to screen devices controlled and administered by the government and its corporate allies.
Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that's the great thing. It's when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that's tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”
In a media-dominated age in which the lines between entertainment, politics and news reporting are blurred, it is extremely difficult to distinguish fact from fiction. We are so bombarded with images, dictates, rules and punishments and stamped with numbers from the day we are born that it is a wonder we ever ponder a concept such as freedom. As McGoohan declared, “Freedom is a myth.”
In the end, as I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we are all prisoners of our own mind.
In fact, it is in the mind that prisons are created for us. And in the lockdown of political correctness, it becomes extremely difficult to speak or act individually without being ostracized. Thus, so often we are forced to retreat inwardly into our minds, a prison without bars from which we cannot escape, and into the world of video games and television and the Internet.
We have come full circle from Bentham’s Panopticon to McGoohan’s Village to Huxley’s Brave New World.
As cultural theorist Neil Postman observed:
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared we would become a captive audience. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared that we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny “failed to take into account man’s almost infinite appetite for distractions.” In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we hate would ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.
You want to be free? Break out of the circle.
Sunday, June 24, 2018
SC167-13
https://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Dear High School Graduates: the Status Quo "Solutions" Enrich the Few at Your Expense
Dear high school graduates: please glance at these charts before buying into the conventional life-course being promoted by the status quo.
Here's the summary: the status quo is pressuring you to accept its "solutions": borrow mega-bucks to attend college, then buy a decaying bungalow or hastily constructed stucco box for $800,000 in a "desirable" city, pay sky-high income and property taxes on your earnings, and when the stress of all these crushing financial burdens ruins your health, well, we've got meds to "help" you--lots of meds at insane price points paid for by insurance-- if you have "real" insurance without high deductibles, of course.
Here's the truth the status quo marketers don't dare acknowledge: every one of these conventional "solutions" only makes the problem worse. Student loan debt only makes your life harder, not easier, as the claimed "value" of a college degree is based on the distant past, not the present. The economy is changing fast and the conventional "solutions" no longer match the new realities. But don't expect anyone profiting from the predatory profiteering higher-education cartel to admit this.
The high cost of housing isn't "solved" by buying in at the top of an unprecedented bubble. Buying into bubbles only makes the problem worse, for all bubbles eventually pop.
The "solution" to crushing levels of debt is not to borrow more just to prop up a rotten, corrupt, dysfunctional and self-serving status quo. In effect, the young generations are being groomed to be the hosts for the parasitic classes that feed on young taxpayers, student loan debt-serfs, young buyers of bubble-priced housing, unaffordable sickcare "insurance" and all the rest of the status quo "solutions."
As writer Peter Turchin has explained, societies in decline overproduce elites. Those promised an elite slot who are left out become the engine of social unrest.
The status quo claims that getting a college diploma more or less guarantees you a slot in the elite class of folks with secure incomes and opportunities to get ahead and build real wealth.
The reality is only the top 5% of the work force are doing well. So of the 33% of the work force with university diplomas, the system only creates slots for the top 15% of that educational elite. The next 15% (the rest of the top 10% of the entire work force) can pick up the 2nd tier technocrat positions and everyone else gets the scraps: insecure jobs, mediocre pay, limited opportunities.
Before you accept that becoming a debt-serf to get a college diploma is a "solution," check out the other side of that trade: the mostly older, wealthier folks profiting from your debt-serfdom:
This parasitic predation is guaranteed by your federal government: you know, the institution everyone looks to for "solutions."
How did millions of students earn college diplomas before the hyper-financialization of the economy and before assistant deans made $350,000 a year in "competitive" salaries? It's a mystery lacking any mainstream explanation.
Speaking of debt--here's the nation's total debt level: note that the amount of debt required to push GDP higher keeps increasing far faster than GDP:
As for plunking down hundreds of thousands of dollars for that little cheaply constructed stucco/particle board/plastic box: housing prices in hot markets such as Dallas and Seattle have far exceeded the previous hyper-financialized housing bubble top in the mid-2000s:
Don't worry about soul-crushing commutes, homeless encampments or rapidly rising taxes: asset bubbles make everything bearable, until they pop.
You deserve a realistic account of the economy you're joining. Here's reality: the vast majority of the gains reaped since your birth have flowed to the very top of the hyper-financialized wealth-power pyramid.
As Bucky Fuller noted in his famous dictum, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Rather than fight a system designed to stripmine you for life, seek a model for your life that obsoletes all the perverse conventional "solutions."....
Dear High School Graduates: the Status Quo "Solutions" Enrich the Few at Your Expense
Dear high school graduates: please glance at these charts before buying into the conventional life-course being promoted by the status quo.
Here's the summary: the status quo is pressuring you to accept its "solutions": borrow mega-bucks to attend college, then buy a decaying bungalow or hastily constructed stucco box for $800,000 in a "desirable" city, pay sky-high income and property taxes on your earnings, and when the stress of all these crushing financial burdens ruins your health, well, we've got meds to "help" you--lots of meds at insane price points paid for by insurance-- if you have "real" insurance without high deductibles, of course.
Here's the truth the status quo marketers don't dare acknowledge: every one of these conventional "solutions" only makes the problem worse. Student loan debt only makes your life harder, not easier, as the claimed "value" of a college degree is based on the distant past, not the present. The economy is changing fast and the conventional "solutions" no longer match the new realities. But don't expect anyone profiting from the predatory profiteering higher-education cartel to admit this.
The high cost of housing isn't "solved" by buying in at the top of an unprecedented bubble. Buying into bubbles only makes the problem worse, for all bubbles eventually pop.
The "solution" to crushing levels of debt is not to borrow more just to prop up a rotten, corrupt, dysfunctional and self-serving status quo. In effect, the young generations are being groomed to be the hosts for the parasitic classes that feed on young taxpayers, student loan debt-serfs, young buyers of bubble-priced housing, unaffordable sickcare "insurance" and all the rest of the status quo "solutions."
As writer Peter Turchin has explained, societies in decline overproduce elites. Those promised an elite slot who are left out become the engine of social unrest.
The status quo claims that getting a college diploma more or less guarantees you a slot in the elite class of folks with secure incomes and opportunities to get ahead and build real wealth.
The reality is only the top 5% of the work force are doing well. So of the 33% of the work force with university diplomas, the system only creates slots for the top 15% of that educational elite. The next 15% (the rest of the top 10% of the entire work force) can pick up the 2nd tier technocrat positions and everyone else gets the scraps: insecure jobs, mediocre pay, limited opportunities.
Before you accept that becoming a debt-serf to get a college diploma is a "solution," check out the other side of that trade: the mostly older, wealthier folks profiting from your debt-serfdom:
This parasitic predation is guaranteed by your federal government: you know, the institution everyone looks to for "solutions."
How did millions of students earn college diplomas before the hyper-financialization of the economy and before assistant deans made $350,000 a year in "competitive" salaries? It's a mystery lacking any mainstream explanation.
Speaking of debt--here's the nation's total debt level: note that the amount of debt required to push GDP higher keeps increasing far faster than GDP:
As for plunking down hundreds of thousands of dollars for that little cheaply constructed stucco/particle board/plastic box: housing prices in hot markets such as Dallas and Seattle have far exceeded the previous hyper-financialized housing bubble top in the mid-2000s:
Don't worry about soul-crushing commutes, homeless encampments or rapidly rising taxes: asset bubbles make everything bearable, until they pop.
You deserve a realistic account of the economy you're joining. Here's reality: the vast majority of the gains reaped since your birth have flowed to the very top of the hyper-financialized wealth-power pyramid.
As Bucky Fuller noted in his famous dictum, “You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete."
Rather than fight a system designed to stripmine you for life, seek a model for your life that obsoletes all the perverse conventional "solutions."....
Friday, June 22, 2018
SC167-12
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49701.htm
All Disquiet on Western Front
The US-led NATO military alliance earlier this month committed to a major escalation in force buildup on Russia's western flank. The development underscores Russia's long-held concern that the 29-member alliance is inevitably moving dangerously on a war footing.
At a summit in Brussels, June 7, defense ministers from NATO countries gave the go-ahead for a new, vast mobilization of troops, navy and air forces which would spearhead through eastern Europe up to Russia's western borders. The initiative encompasses two new NATO command centers, one based in Norfolk, Virginia, on the US eastern seaboard, and the other at Ulm, in Germany.
The stated purpose is to expedite transatlantic coordination of NATO forces of up to 30,000 troops, 30 aircraft squadrons and 30 large warships, deployable within 30 days.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the plan was about "boosting readiness" for a major intervention. That "intervention" is undoubtedly referring to Russia, which NATO officials have continually accused of having aggressive designs on eastern Europe, in particular, the Baltic states and Poland.
Recently, US Pentagon chief James Mattis accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of trying to undermine America's alliance with Europe. The war mobilization plans would, therefore, seem to be a way of trying to galvanize the alliance against a common enemy — Russia. Not that Russia is actually an enemy. It's just a handy bogeyman for NATO to use as a unifying purpose.
Russia has consistently refuted claims that it has any offensive interest towards European neighbors. Moscow says such claims are absurd fantasies.
Even former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who is ardently pro-NATO, recently admitted that the Baltic region was not under any military threat.
But, as they say, don't let facts get in the way of a good story. And this "good story" (actually lame story) told over and over by NATO and its defense industry think-tanks is that the Russian bear is honing its claws to devour Europe. That is why the Ukraine conflict, and earlier in Georgia, has been willfully distorted to such a degree — in order to demonize Russia and to give some badly needed substance to the otherwise ludicrous NATO scaremongering.
It seems more than a coincidence that two weeks after NATO's newly announced buildup, Western media reported satellite images allegedly showing Russia upgrading nuclear weapons sites in its territory of Kaliningrad "near Poland and Lithuania".
That non-story was meant to give a refresher wind-up to Western public fears that "evil Putin" and his "Soviet dreams" are alive and well in menacing the security of Europe.
Of course, rabidly anti-Russian politicians in Poland and the Baltic states are all too willing to indulge the charade of casting Russia as a villain. Earlier this year, in March, Poland signed a $5 billion deal with the Pentagon for Patriot anti-missile systems, advertised as "protecting" the country from Russian aggression.
So, what can be easily discerned here is that the NATO expansion in eastern Europe is a risible racket for boosting American and European arms sales. And lickspittle European politicians who play the game with gusto will end up getting future cushy jobs at NATO or its think-tanks, just like former Norwegian premier Jens Stoltenberg.
But there also seems to be something more sinister to the relentless NATO expansion on Russia's western flank. Something more than racketeering for the military-industrial complex. This expansion has been going on since the end of the Cold War in 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Canadian-based war crimes lawyer Christopher Black believes that the years-long pattern shows that the US-led NATO alliance is operating on a systematic, ideologically-driven war plan against Russia. In his view, the latest announced NATO mobilization force is a serious step towards trying to antagonize Moscow into a conflict.
With regard to the 30,000 NATO troop plan, Black said: "I don't think this is just taking the boys on a walk through the woods to exercise their legs, nor is it to spend money for the sake of it. The setting up of these new command structures is a major step in the preparation for the mass and rapid movement of men and material — a preparation for war against Russia."
The lawyer goes as far as comparing the NATO buildup on Russia's western front with the infamous offensive launched on the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in June 1941, called Operation Barbarossa.
He points out that right now, 12,000 German troops are leading NATO war exercises in Lithuania as part of the alliance's ongoing Atlantic Resolve maneuvers in eastern Europe. American, British and Canadian combat soldiers and armored divisions are now stationed permanently in countries on Russia's border. The only precedent, says Black, to the present military buildup by NATO, is the notorious Nazi Operation Barbarossa, which was launched this very week 77 years ago.
"Hyping up claims about Russian nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and, more generally, allegations of aggression towards Baltic countries appears to be part of a Western media propaganda campaign for false-flag provocations against Moscow," says Black. "We have seen countless such provocations, including the Skripal poisoning affair in England and claims about chemical-weapons atrocities in Syria."
The question is: why now? Why is the NATO machine apparently cranking up in war mode against Russia?
Christopher Black posits: "It is not necessarily connected directly to other conflicts but is indirectly part of the overall pressure being applied against Russia along the line from the Baltic, through Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and so on. That the NATO failures in Syria and Ukraine may have accelerated this I cannot deny, but I think this was in the planning in any event, unless Russia rolls over and plays dead."
It does seem significant, however, that cardinal setbacks for covert wars by NATO members in Syria and Ukraine are a factor in why the alliance appears to be upping offensiveness elsewhere against Russia — on Russia's western doorstep.
The intervention by Russia in Syria was a decisive event in stopping the US-led regime-change war against President Assad. Given that scheme was a pivotal gambit by the US and its allies in the geo-strategically vital Middle East, one can deduce that Russia's military success was not taken pleasantly by imperial planners.
It should be added too that it's conceivable some Western political leaders are unaware of the dangers NATO is pushing towards Russia. Some politicians might even declaim such notions as nonsense.
For example, US President Trump is planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the coming weeks. The American leader may genuinely want to hold a meeting with Putin in order to normalize relations between the US and Russia. Trump may well be uninformed about NATO's increasingly aggressive poise towards Russia. In short, the belligerent dynamic is out of his control.
NATO is a machine, a system of war, impelled by war profits and a deep-seated ideology of conflict and in particular Russophobia. It should be disbanded.
Indeed, Trump holding a friendly meeting with Putin could be just the sort of incident that incites the NATO warmongers further.
All Disquiet on Western Front
The US-led NATO military alliance earlier this month committed to a major escalation in force buildup on Russia's western flank. The development underscores Russia's long-held concern that the 29-member alliance is inevitably moving dangerously on a war footing.
At a summit in Brussels, June 7, defense ministers from NATO countries gave the go-ahead for a new, vast mobilization of troops, navy and air forces which would spearhead through eastern Europe up to Russia's western borders. The initiative encompasses two new NATO command centers, one based in Norfolk, Virginia, on the US eastern seaboard, and the other at Ulm, in Germany.
The stated purpose is to expedite transatlantic coordination of NATO forces of up to 30,000 troops, 30 aircraft squadrons and 30 large warships, deployable within 30 days.
NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg said the plan was about "boosting readiness" for a major intervention. That "intervention" is undoubtedly referring to Russia, which NATO officials have continually accused of having aggressive designs on eastern Europe, in particular, the Baltic states and Poland.
Recently, US Pentagon chief James Mattis accused Russian leader Vladimir Putin of trying to undermine America's alliance with Europe. The war mobilization plans would, therefore, seem to be a way of trying to galvanize the alliance against a common enemy — Russia. Not that Russia is actually an enemy. It's just a handy bogeyman for NATO to use as a unifying purpose.
Russia has consistently refuted claims that it has any offensive interest towards European neighbors. Moscow says such claims are absurd fantasies.
Even former Estonian President Toomas Hendrik Ilves, who is ardently pro-NATO, recently admitted that the Baltic region was not under any military threat.
But, as they say, don't let facts get in the way of a good story. And this "good story" (actually lame story) told over and over by NATO and its defense industry think-tanks is that the Russian bear is honing its claws to devour Europe. That is why the Ukraine conflict, and earlier in Georgia, has been willfully distorted to such a degree — in order to demonize Russia and to give some badly needed substance to the otherwise ludicrous NATO scaremongering.
It seems more than a coincidence that two weeks after NATO's newly announced buildup, Western media reported satellite images allegedly showing Russia upgrading nuclear weapons sites in its territory of Kaliningrad "near Poland and Lithuania".
That non-story was meant to give a refresher wind-up to Western public fears that "evil Putin" and his "Soviet dreams" are alive and well in menacing the security of Europe.
Of course, rabidly anti-Russian politicians in Poland and the Baltic states are all too willing to indulge the charade of casting Russia as a villain. Earlier this year, in March, Poland signed a $5 billion deal with the Pentagon for Patriot anti-missile systems, advertised as "protecting" the country from Russian aggression.
So, what can be easily discerned here is that the NATO expansion in eastern Europe is a risible racket for boosting American and European arms sales. And lickspittle European politicians who play the game with gusto will end up getting future cushy jobs at NATO or its think-tanks, just like former Norwegian premier Jens Stoltenberg.
But there also seems to be something more sinister to the relentless NATO expansion on Russia's western flank. Something more than racketeering for the military-industrial complex. This expansion has been going on since the end of the Cold War in 1991 when the Soviet Union ceased to exist.
Canadian-based war crimes lawyer Christopher Black believes that the years-long pattern shows that the US-led NATO alliance is operating on a systematic, ideologically-driven war plan against Russia. In his view, the latest announced NATO mobilization force is a serious step towards trying to antagonize Moscow into a conflict.
With regard to the 30,000 NATO troop plan, Black said: "I don't think this is just taking the boys on a walk through the woods to exercise their legs, nor is it to spend money for the sake of it. The setting up of these new command structures is a major step in the preparation for the mass and rapid movement of men and material — a preparation for war against Russia."
The lawyer goes as far as comparing the NATO buildup on Russia's western front with the infamous offensive launched on the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany in June 1941, called Operation Barbarossa.
He points out that right now, 12,000 German troops are leading NATO war exercises in Lithuania as part of the alliance's ongoing Atlantic Resolve maneuvers in eastern Europe. American, British and Canadian combat soldiers and armored divisions are now stationed permanently in countries on Russia's border. The only precedent, says Black, to the present military buildup by NATO, is the notorious Nazi Operation Barbarossa, which was launched this very week 77 years ago.
"Hyping up claims about Russian nuclear weapons in Kaliningrad and, more generally, allegations of aggression towards Baltic countries appears to be part of a Western media propaganda campaign for false-flag provocations against Moscow," says Black. "We have seen countless such provocations, including the Skripal poisoning affair in England and claims about chemical-weapons atrocities in Syria."
The question is: why now? Why is the NATO machine apparently cranking up in war mode against Russia?
Christopher Black posits: "It is not necessarily connected directly to other conflicts but is indirectly part of the overall pressure being applied against Russia along the line from the Baltic, through Ukraine, Georgia, Armenia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, and so on. That the NATO failures in Syria and Ukraine may have accelerated this I cannot deny, but I think this was in the planning in any event, unless Russia rolls over and plays dead."
It does seem significant, however, that cardinal setbacks for covert wars by NATO members in Syria and Ukraine are a factor in why the alliance appears to be upping offensiveness elsewhere against Russia — on Russia's western doorstep.
The intervention by Russia in Syria was a decisive event in stopping the US-led regime-change war against President Assad. Given that scheme was a pivotal gambit by the US and its allies in the geo-strategically vital Middle East, one can deduce that Russia's military success was not taken pleasantly by imperial planners.
It should be added too that it's conceivable some Western political leaders are unaware of the dangers NATO is pushing towards Russia. Some politicians might even declaim such notions as nonsense.
For example, US President Trump is planning to meet Vladimir Putin in the coming weeks. The American leader may genuinely want to hold a meeting with Putin in order to normalize relations between the US and Russia. Trump may well be uninformed about NATO's increasingly aggressive poise towards Russia. In short, the belligerent dynamic is out of his control.
NATO is a machine, a system of war, impelled by war profits and a deep-seated ideology of conflict and in particular Russophobia. It should be disbanded.
Indeed, Trump holding a friendly meeting with Putin could be just the sort of incident that incites the NATO warmongers further.
Thursday, June 21, 2018
SC167-11
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49688.htm
The Entire Western World Lives In Cognitive Dissonance
In this column I am going to use three of the current top news stories to illustrate the disconnect that is everywhere in the Western mind.
Let us begin with the family separation issue. The separation of children from immigrant/refugee/asylum parents has caused such public outcry that President Trump has backed off his policy and signed an executive order terminating family separation.
The horror of children locked up in warehouses operated by private businesses making a profit off of US taxpayers, while parents are prosecuted for illegal entry, woke even self-safisfied “exceptional and indispensable” Americans out of their stupor. It is a mystery that the Trump regime chose to discredit its border enforcement policy by separating families. Perhaps the policy was intended to deter illegal immigration by sending the message that if you come to America your children will be taken from you.
The question is: How is it that Americans can see and reject the inhumane border control policy and not see the inhumanity of family destruction that has been the over-riding result of Washington’s destruction in whole or part of seven or eight countries in the 21st century?
Millions of people have been separated from families by death inflicted by Washington, and for almost two decades protests have been almost nonexistent. No public outcry stopped George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump from clear and indisputable illegal acts defined in international law established by the US itself as war crimes against the inhabitants of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. We can add to this an eighth example: The military attacks by the US armed and supported neo-Nazi puppet state of Ukraine against the breakaway Russian provinces.
The massive deaths, destruction of towns, cities, infrastructure, the maiming, physical and mental, the dislocation that has sent millions of refugees fleeing Washington’s wars to overrun Europe, where governments consist of a collection of idiot stooges who supported Washington’s massive war crimes in the Middle East and North Africa, produced no outcry comparable to Trump’s immigration policy.
How can it be that Americans can see inhumanity in the separation of families in immigration enforcement but not in the massive war crimes committed against peoples in eight countries? Are we experiencing a mass psychosis form of cognitive dissonance?
We now move to the second example: Washington’s withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
On November 2, 1917, two decades prior to the holocaust attributed to National Socialist Germany, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild that Great Britain supported Palestine becoming a Jewish homeland. In other words, the corrupt Balfour dismissed the rights and lives of the millons of Palestinians who had occupied Palestine for two millennia or more. What were these people compared to Rothschild’s money? They were nothing to the British Foreign Secretary.
Balfour’s attitude toward the rightful inhabitants of Palestine is the same as the British attitude toward the peoples in every colony or territority over which British power prevailed. Washington learned this habit and has consistently repeated it.
Just the other day Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the crazed and insane lapdog of Israel, announced that Washington had withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, because it is “a cesspool of political bias” against Israel.
What did the UN Human Rights Council do to warrent this rebuke from Israel’s agent, Nikki Haley? The Human Rights Council denounced Israel’s policy of murdering Palestinians—medics, young children, mothers, old women and old men, fathers, teenagers.
To critize Israel, no matter how great and obvious is Israel’s crime, means that you are an anti-semite and a “holocaust denier.” For Nikki Haley and Israel, this places the UN Human Rights Council in the Hitler-worshipping Nazi ranks.
The absurdity of this is obvious, but few, if any, can detect it. Yes, the rest of the world, with the exception of Israel, has denounced Washington’s decision, not only Washington’s foes and the Palestinians, but also Washington’s puppets and vassals as well.
To see the disconnect, it is necessary to pay attention to the wording of the denunciations of Washington.
A spokesperson for the European Union said that Washington’s withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council “risks undermining the role of the US as a champion and supporter of democracy on the world stage.” Can anyone image a more idiotic statement? Washington is known as a supporter of dictatorships that adhere to Washington’s will. Washington is known as a destroyer of every Latin American democracy that elected a president who represented the people of the country and not the New York banks, US commerical interests, and US foreign policy.
Name one place where Washington has been a supporter of democracy. Just to speak of the most recent years, the Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras and imposed its puppet. The Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine and imposed a neo-Nazi regime. Washington overthrew the governments in Argentina and Brazil, is trying to overthrow the government in Venezuela, and has Bolivia in its crosshairs along with Russia and Iran.
Margot Wallstrom, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, said: “It saddens me that the US has decided to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council. It comes at a time when the world needs more human rights and a stronger UN – not the opposite.” Why in the world does Wallstrom think that the presence of Washington, a known destroyer of human rights—just ask the millions of refugees from Washington’s war crimes overrunning Europe and Sweden—on the Human Rights Council would strengthen rather than undermine the Council? Wallstrom’s disconnect is awesome. It is so extreme as to be unbelievable.
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, spoke for the most fawning of all of Washington’s vassals when she said that she was concerned by the UN Human Rights Council’s “anti-Israel bias.” Here you have a person so utterly brainwashed that she is unable to connect to anything real.
The third example is the “trade war” Trump has launched against China. The Trump regime’s claim is that due to unfair practices China has a trade surplus with the US of nearly $400 billion. This vast sum is supposed to be due to “unfair practices” on China’s part. In actual fact, the trade deficit with China is due to Apple, Nike, Levi, and to the large number of US corporations who produce offshore in China the products that they sell to Americans. When the offshored production of US corporations enter the US, they are counted as imports.
I have been pointing this out for many years going back to my testimony before the US Congress China Commission. I have written numerous articles published almost everywhere. They are summarized in my 2013 book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
The presstitute financial media, the corporate lobbyists, which includes many “name” academic economists, and the hapless American politicians whose intellect is almost non-existent are unable to recognize that the massive US trade deficit is the result of jobs offshoring. This is the level of utter stupidity that rules America.
In The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I exposed the extraordinary error made by Matthew J. Slaughter, a member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, who incompetently claimed that for every US job offshored two US jobs were created. I also exposed as a hoax a “study” by Harvard University professor Michael Porter for the so-called Council on Competitiveness, a lobby group for offshoring, that made the extraordinary claim that the US work force was benefitting from the offshoring of their high productivity, high value-added jobs.
The idiot American economists, the idiot American financial media, and the idiot American policymakers still have not comprehended that jobs offshoring destroyed America’s economic prospects and pushed China to the forefront 45 years ahead of Washington’s expectations.
To sum this up, the Western mind, and the minds of the Atlanticist Integrationist Russians and pro-American Chinese youth, are so full of propagandistic nonsense that there is no connection to reality.
There is the real world and there is the propagandistic made-up world that covers over the real world and serves special interests....
The Entire Western World Lives In Cognitive Dissonance
In this column I am going to use three of the current top news stories to illustrate the disconnect that is everywhere in the Western mind.
Let us begin with the family separation issue. The separation of children from immigrant/refugee/asylum parents has caused such public outcry that President Trump has backed off his policy and signed an executive order terminating family separation.
The horror of children locked up in warehouses operated by private businesses making a profit off of US taxpayers, while parents are prosecuted for illegal entry, woke even self-safisfied “exceptional and indispensable” Americans out of their stupor. It is a mystery that the Trump regime chose to discredit its border enforcement policy by separating families. Perhaps the policy was intended to deter illegal immigration by sending the message that if you come to America your children will be taken from you.
The question is: How is it that Americans can see and reject the inhumane border control policy and not see the inhumanity of family destruction that has been the over-riding result of Washington’s destruction in whole or part of seven or eight countries in the 21st century?
Millions of people have been separated from families by death inflicted by Washington, and for almost two decades protests have been almost nonexistent. No public outcry stopped George W. Bush, Obama, and Trump from clear and indisputable illegal acts defined in international law established by the US itself as war crimes against the inhabitants of Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen, and Somalia. We can add to this an eighth example: The military attacks by the US armed and supported neo-Nazi puppet state of Ukraine against the breakaway Russian provinces.
The massive deaths, destruction of towns, cities, infrastructure, the maiming, physical and mental, the dislocation that has sent millions of refugees fleeing Washington’s wars to overrun Europe, where governments consist of a collection of idiot stooges who supported Washington’s massive war crimes in the Middle East and North Africa, produced no outcry comparable to Trump’s immigration policy.
How can it be that Americans can see inhumanity in the separation of families in immigration enforcement but not in the massive war crimes committed against peoples in eight countries? Are we experiencing a mass psychosis form of cognitive dissonance?
We now move to the second example: Washington’s withdrawal from the United Nations Human Rights Council.
On November 2, 1917, two decades prior to the holocaust attributed to National Socialist Germany, British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour wrote to Lord Rothschild that Great Britain supported Palestine becoming a Jewish homeland. In other words, the corrupt Balfour dismissed the rights and lives of the millons of Palestinians who had occupied Palestine for two millennia or more. What were these people compared to Rothschild’s money? They were nothing to the British Foreign Secretary.
Balfour’s attitude toward the rightful inhabitants of Palestine is the same as the British attitude toward the peoples in every colony or territority over which British power prevailed. Washington learned this habit and has consistently repeated it.
Just the other day Trump’s UN ambassador Nikki Haley, the crazed and insane lapdog of Israel, announced that Washington had withdrawn from the UN Human Rights Council, because it is “a cesspool of political bias” against Israel.
What did the UN Human Rights Council do to warrent this rebuke from Israel’s agent, Nikki Haley? The Human Rights Council denounced Israel’s policy of murdering Palestinians—medics, young children, mothers, old women and old men, fathers, teenagers.
To critize Israel, no matter how great and obvious is Israel’s crime, means that you are an anti-semite and a “holocaust denier.” For Nikki Haley and Israel, this places the UN Human Rights Council in the Hitler-worshipping Nazi ranks.
The absurdity of this is obvious, but few, if any, can detect it. Yes, the rest of the world, with the exception of Israel, has denounced Washington’s decision, not only Washington’s foes and the Palestinians, but also Washington’s puppets and vassals as well.
To see the disconnect, it is necessary to pay attention to the wording of the denunciations of Washington.
A spokesperson for the European Union said that Washington’s withdrawal from the UN Human Rights Council “risks undermining the role of the US as a champion and supporter of democracy on the world stage.” Can anyone image a more idiotic statement? Washington is known as a supporter of dictatorships that adhere to Washington’s will. Washington is known as a destroyer of every Latin American democracy that elected a president who represented the people of the country and not the New York banks, US commerical interests, and US foreign policy.
Name one place where Washington has been a supporter of democracy. Just to speak of the most recent years, the Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government of Honduras and imposed its puppet. The Obama regime overthrew the democratically elected government in Ukraine and imposed a neo-Nazi regime. Washington overthrew the governments in Argentina and Brazil, is trying to overthrow the government in Venezuela, and has Bolivia in its crosshairs along with Russia and Iran.
Margot Wallstrom, Sweden’s Foreign Minister, said: “It saddens me that the US has decided to withdraw from the UN Human Rights Council. It comes at a time when the world needs more human rights and a stronger UN – not the opposite.” Why in the world does Wallstrom think that the presence of Washington, a known destroyer of human rights—just ask the millions of refugees from Washington’s war crimes overrunning Europe and Sweden—on the Human Rights Council would strengthen rather than undermine the Council? Wallstrom’s disconnect is awesome. It is so extreme as to be unbelievable.
Australia’s Foreign Minister, Julie Bishop, spoke for the most fawning of all of Washington’s vassals when she said that she was concerned by the UN Human Rights Council’s “anti-Israel bias.” Here you have a person so utterly brainwashed that she is unable to connect to anything real.
The third example is the “trade war” Trump has launched against China. The Trump regime’s claim is that due to unfair practices China has a trade surplus with the US of nearly $400 billion. This vast sum is supposed to be due to “unfair practices” on China’s part. In actual fact, the trade deficit with China is due to Apple, Nike, Levi, and to the large number of US corporations who produce offshore in China the products that they sell to Americans. When the offshored production of US corporations enter the US, they are counted as imports.
I have been pointing this out for many years going back to my testimony before the US Congress China Commission. I have written numerous articles published almost everywhere. They are summarized in my 2013 book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism.
The presstitute financial media, the corporate lobbyists, which includes many “name” academic economists, and the hapless American politicians whose intellect is almost non-existent are unable to recognize that the massive US trade deficit is the result of jobs offshoring. This is the level of utter stupidity that rules America.
In The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, I exposed the extraordinary error made by Matthew J. Slaughter, a member of President George W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisers, who incompetently claimed that for every US job offshored two US jobs were created. I also exposed as a hoax a “study” by Harvard University professor Michael Porter for the so-called Council on Competitiveness, a lobby group for offshoring, that made the extraordinary claim that the US work force was benefitting from the offshoring of their high productivity, high value-added jobs.
The idiot American economists, the idiot American financial media, and the idiot American policymakers still have not comprehended that jobs offshoring destroyed America’s economic prospects and pushed China to the forefront 45 years ahead of Washington’s expectations.
To sum this up, the Western mind, and the minds of the Atlanticist Integrationist Russians and pro-American Chinese youth, are so full of propagandistic nonsense that there is no connection to reality.
There is the real world and there is the propagandistic made-up world that covers over the real world and serves special interests....
SC167-10
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/49689.htm
USA... Its Own Worst Enemy
It is an epic paradox that President Donald Trump, like previous US presidents, boasts of America’s military supremacy and its vital role as defender of the nation.
The Trump administration in its first year in office boosted the annual military budget to $700 billion, up from an already gargantuan average figure of some $600 billion a year. Trump said the colossal military spend was a vital necessity to maintain America's national security and global leadership.
The paradox is that this monstrous misallocation of economic resources on an institution supposedly keeping the nation safe from foreign threats is actually posing the biggest national security threat to America.
Forget purported foreign enemies, such as Russia and China, Iran or North Korea. It is the American defense industry and its grotesque warping of national priorities which are undermining US society and its global power.
Trump has taken to citing alleged unfair trading relations with China, Canada and European allies as a "national security threat". The same depiction of national security is used to frame Washington's controversial zero-tolerance towards immigrant families crossing the Mexican border.
These issues of alleged national security pale into insignificance when compared with the disastrous impact of America's militarized economy on US society.
American Professor of Politics Colin Cavell says the cumulative extravagance of the US military decade after decade is a major factor in why the country's total debt has now exceeded $20 trillion. The bitter irony is that the indebted nation — by far the world's biggest debtor — is then a cause for fiscal hawks in Trump's Republican party to demand brutal cuts to public spending and investment.
In an interview for this column, Cavell commented: "This military debt is crushing the American worker, as it provides fodder for Republican lawmakers to cut back on healthcare, housing, education, roads, bridges, and other infrastructural projects, thus undermining job creation, reducing wages, and increasing taxes to pay off the debt."
Official figures show that social inequality and poverty in the US has hit record levels, with some 40 million households, or nearly half the entire population, now rated as poor.
America's pandemic poverty is integral with the retrenchment in federal public spending and social investment. That in turn is correlated with the titanic allocation of economic resources to the defense industry. Ultimately, ordinary Americans are paying for their own immiseration by bearing in countless indirect ways the onerous costs of military largesse.
How is such a self-defeating policy possible? As Professor Cavell notes, there is a vicious cycle at work. That cycle can only be broken by a thorough democratization of the economy and by American citizens waking up from propaganda myths about the supposed virtues of US militarism and the supposed evil of foreign enemies.
He says there is a very powerful cabal of vested interests benefiting from what he calls a "military racket", echoing the classic anti-war book by American Major General Smedley Butler published in the 1930s, decrying "War is a Racket".
Cavell remarked: "The military spending bodes well for American capitalists, especially those who supply arms, weaponry, uniforms, guns, planes, drones, rations, mercenaries, logistics, and so on, as well as those who loan money to the US government and receive usurious interest payments on the $20 trillion national debt."
This military-industrial-financial complex is well-serviced by countless think-tanks, media pundits, lobbyists and members of Congress who are on the payroll, or euphemistically "political donations", from giant Pentagon weapons firms, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon.
The media environment is then disproportionately biased towards the interests of the Pentagon industry. Those interests invariably seek militarism and conflict rather than diplomacy when it comes to foreign relations because lucrative profits and dividends on Wall Street incentivize their self-interested bias.
Cavell points out that the vicious cycle also operates in other ways too. A vastly outsized military with seven overseas naval fleets and 800 bases around the globe requires a form of justification for its existence. That inevitably means American military planners and think-tanks searching for enemies and portraying other nations as "threats". The Trump administration has ramped up the antagonism towards Russia and China in several policy documents, referring to these two nations as "global rivals" in a return of "great power competition". It is no coincidence that as the Trump administration spends ever-more record levels on military it has also escalated the rhetoric of hostility towards Russia and China.
Another fiendish impetus for the vicious cycle, according to Professor Cavell, is that because of the millions more impoverished and unemployed Americans there is a ready recruitment pool to supply the ranks of the US military machine.
"Because this racket is such a lucrative business that has insulated a well-heeled constituency that likes receiving annual high-profit dividends, these leeches on society are the foremost advocates for needless and endless war abroad, which they say can be fought by the unemployed American workers who will jump at the chance of the promise of free healthcare, a clothing allowance, and military rations," says Cavell.
What we have then is a military behemoth serving the profit interests of a powerful corporate elite, not the real interests of the nation's security.
"From Syria to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Libya to Somalia, from Iran to Niger to Venezuela, the US is increasingly wired for war," argues Cavell. He also contends this is why Trump's surprise detente with North Korea has provoked much consternation in Washington, because such a potentially peaceful development conflicts with the fundamental militarist nature of the US economy.
Official figures show that the US military budget, if calculated in constant dollar terms, is now at its highest level compared with any decade since the Second World War. Even during the height of the Cold War against the Soviet Union and Communist China when the US waged massive wars in Korea and Vietnam, today's military expenditure far exceeds past decades.
The US spends more money on its military than the combined total of the next 10 biggest spending nations, including China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain and France, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia's military budget is about a tenth of America's, yet Russia is supposed to represent a top national security threat to the US.
"The American government and society are indeed highly wired for provocation and war," says Professor Cavell. "But all excess has its eventual limits, and that is increasingly witnessed every day with the internal erosion of American society."
The explosion in American poverty and the evident deterioration of social conditions has far-reaching detrimental impacts. American youth can no longer afford higher education because of crippling student debts owing to federal cutbacks. Families are breaking up under the weight of poverty and unemployment. Communities are in disrepair from decimated public services and crumbling infrastructure. The nation's morale is sapped by pathological escapism from abusing opioids and other drugs.
America is undergoing an historic defeat. The bitter irony is this defeat is being inflicted by its military and its grotesque corporate capitalism. US militarism is the country's most pressing national security threat. Because America is its own worst enemy.
USA... Its Own Worst Enemy
It is an epic paradox that President Donald Trump, like previous US presidents, boasts of America’s military supremacy and its vital role as defender of the nation.
The Trump administration in its first year in office boosted the annual military budget to $700 billion, up from an already gargantuan average figure of some $600 billion a year. Trump said the colossal military spend was a vital necessity to maintain America's national security and global leadership.
The paradox is that this monstrous misallocation of economic resources on an institution supposedly keeping the nation safe from foreign threats is actually posing the biggest national security threat to America.
Forget purported foreign enemies, such as Russia and China, Iran or North Korea. It is the American defense industry and its grotesque warping of national priorities which are undermining US society and its global power.
Trump has taken to citing alleged unfair trading relations with China, Canada and European allies as a "national security threat". The same depiction of national security is used to frame Washington's controversial zero-tolerance towards immigrant families crossing the Mexican border.
These issues of alleged national security pale into insignificance when compared with the disastrous impact of America's militarized economy on US society.
American Professor of Politics Colin Cavell says the cumulative extravagance of the US military decade after decade is a major factor in why the country's total debt has now exceeded $20 trillion. The bitter irony is that the indebted nation — by far the world's biggest debtor — is then a cause for fiscal hawks in Trump's Republican party to demand brutal cuts to public spending and investment.
In an interview for this column, Cavell commented: "This military debt is crushing the American worker, as it provides fodder for Republican lawmakers to cut back on healthcare, housing, education, roads, bridges, and other infrastructural projects, thus undermining job creation, reducing wages, and increasing taxes to pay off the debt."
Official figures show that social inequality and poverty in the US has hit record levels, with some 40 million households, or nearly half the entire population, now rated as poor.
America's pandemic poverty is integral with the retrenchment in federal public spending and social investment. That in turn is correlated with the titanic allocation of economic resources to the defense industry. Ultimately, ordinary Americans are paying for their own immiseration by bearing in countless indirect ways the onerous costs of military largesse.
How is such a self-defeating policy possible? As Professor Cavell notes, there is a vicious cycle at work. That cycle can only be broken by a thorough democratization of the economy and by American citizens waking up from propaganda myths about the supposed virtues of US militarism and the supposed evil of foreign enemies.
He says there is a very powerful cabal of vested interests benefiting from what he calls a "military racket", echoing the classic anti-war book by American Major General Smedley Butler published in the 1930s, decrying "War is a Racket".
Cavell remarked: "The military spending bodes well for American capitalists, especially those who supply arms, weaponry, uniforms, guns, planes, drones, rations, mercenaries, logistics, and so on, as well as those who loan money to the US government and receive usurious interest payments on the $20 trillion national debt."
This military-industrial-financial complex is well-serviced by countless think-tanks, media pundits, lobbyists and members of Congress who are on the payroll, or euphemistically "political donations", from giant Pentagon weapons firms, like Lockheed Martin, Boeing and Raytheon.
The media environment is then disproportionately biased towards the interests of the Pentagon industry. Those interests invariably seek militarism and conflict rather than diplomacy when it comes to foreign relations because lucrative profits and dividends on Wall Street incentivize their self-interested bias.
Cavell points out that the vicious cycle also operates in other ways too. A vastly outsized military with seven overseas naval fleets and 800 bases around the globe requires a form of justification for its existence. That inevitably means American military planners and think-tanks searching for enemies and portraying other nations as "threats". The Trump administration has ramped up the antagonism towards Russia and China in several policy documents, referring to these two nations as "global rivals" in a return of "great power competition". It is no coincidence that as the Trump administration spends ever-more record levels on military it has also escalated the rhetoric of hostility towards Russia and China.
Another fiendish impetus for the vicious cycle, according to Professor Cavell, is that because of the millions more impoverished and unemployed Americans there is a ready recruitment pool to supply the ranks of the US military machine.
"Because this racket is such a lucrative business that has insulated a well-heeled constituency that likes receiving annual high-profit dividends, these leeches on society are the foremost advocates for needless and endless war abroad, which they say can be fought by the unemployed American workers who will jump at the chance of the promise of free healthcare, a clothing allowance, and military rations," says Cavell.
What we have then is a military behemoth serving the profit interests of a powerful corporate elite, not the real interests of the nation's security.
"From Syria to Afghanistan, from Iraq to Libya to Somalia, from Iran to Niger to Venezuela, the US is increasingly wired for war," argues Cavell. He also contends this is why Trump's surprise detente with North Korea has provoked much consternation in Washington, because such a potentially peaceful development conflicts with the fundamental militarist nature of the US economy.
Official figures show that the US military budget, if calculated in constant dollar terms, is now at its highest level compared with any decade since the Second World War. Even during the height of the Cold War against the Soviet Union and Communist China when the US waged massive wars in Korea and Vietnam, today's military expenditure far exceeds past decades.
The US spends more money on its military than the combined total of the next 10 biggest spending nations, including China, Russia, India, Saudi Arabia, Britain and France, according to the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute. Russia's military budget is about a tenth of America's, yet Russia is supposed to represent a top national security threat to the US.
"The American government and society are indeed highly wired for provocation and war," says Professor Cavell. "But all excess has its eventual limits, and that is increasingly witnessed every day with the internal erosion of American society."
The explosion in American poverty and the evident deterioration of social conditions has far-reaching detrimental impacts. American youth can no longer afford higher education because of crippling student debts owing to federal cutbacks. Families are breaking up under the weight of poverty and unemployment. Communities are in disrepair from decimated public services and crumbling infrastructure. The nation's morale is sapped by pathological escapism from abusing opioids and other drugs.
America is undergoing an historic defeat. The bitter irony is this defeat is being inflicted by its military and its grotesque corporate capitalism. US militarism is the country's most pressing national security threat. Because America is its own worst enemy.
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