https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/the-g-7-blues/
The G-7 Blues
What’s at stake in all these international confabs like the G-7 are the tenuous supply lines that keep the global game going. The critical ones deliver oil around the world. China imports about 10 million barrels a day to keep its operations going. It produces less than 4 million barrels a day. Only about 15 percent of its imports come from next door in Russia. The rest comes from the Middle East, Africa, and South America. Think: long lines of tanker ships traveling vast distances across the seas, navigating through narrow straits. The Chinese formula is simple: oil in, exports out. It has worked nicely for them in recent decades. Things go on until they don’t.
That game is lubricated by a fabulous stream of debt generated by Chinese banks that ultimately answer to the Communist Party. The party is the Chinese buffer between banking and reality. If the party doesn’t like the distress signals that the banks give off, it just pretends the signals are not coming through, while it does the hokey-pokey with its digital accounting, and things appear sound a while longer.
The US produces just over 12 million barrels of oil a day. About 6.5 million of our production is shale oil. We use nearly 20 million a day. (We’re not “energy independent.”) The shale oil industry is wobbling under the onerous debt load that it has racked up since 2005. About 90 percent of the companies involved in shale oil lose money. The capital costs for drilling, hauling a gazillion truckloads of water and fracking sand to the rig pads, and sucking the oil out, exceed the profit from doing all that. It’s simply all we can do to keep the game going in our corner of the planet, but it’s not a good business model. After you’ve proved conclusively that you can’t make a buck at this using borrowed money, the lenders will quit lending you more money. That’s about where we are now.
Europe is near the end of its North Sea oil bonanza and there’s nothing in the on-deck circle for them. Germany tried to prove that they could run the country on “renewables” and that experiment has flopped. They have no idea what they’re going to do to keep the game going in their patch of nations. They must be freaking out in their charming capital cities.
The next economic bust is going to amount to the crack-up of the oil age, and the “global economy” that emerged in its late stage. It was all about moving fantastic quantities of things around the planet. The movements were exquisitely tuned, along with the money flows that circulated freely, like blood carrying oxygen to each organ. All of that is coming to an end. The nations of the world must be feeling desperate, despite the appearance of good manners at meetings like the G-7. What’s at stake for everybody in the dark background is the ability to maintain high standards of living only recently attained. And the fear behind that is not knowing just how far backward these high standards of living may have to slide.
A lot of people still alive in China must remember a daily existence on par with the 12th century. In the USA, where democracy is mostly represented by low-order thinking skills, the memory of life before electricity and running water is long gone. We’ve been living in Futurama since the end of the last world war. That war, by the way, is not entirely forgotten in Europe, despite all the charm currently on display and the tourists swarming with their selfie sticks. The place was a charnel house for centuries and the Euro folk will do about anything to suppress conflict. Lately, it looks like they’re willing to give up on Western Civilization itself to keep the peace.
Lord knows what Mr. Trump’s strategy is with these so-called “trade talks.” He has explicitly enough pushed for the re-industrialization of America, and that implies — among other things — decoupling from the China’s torrential merchandise supply lines, cutting off its revenues. Closing off China’s access to US markets itself might be enough to finally blow up China’s deeply fraudulent banking system. Maybe the aim is to just disable China, derail it from its seeming aim of becoming the next world hegemon. Does Mr. Trump think he can do that without blowing up the rest of the world’s financial arrangements? The stock markets haven’t been digesting that story very well lately. Could the US government be collectively dumb enough to think that shale oil will permit this country to re-industrialize while the rest of the world stumbles back into a dark age?
More likely, all the advanced nations will make that downward journey together. The US is well on its way, despite all the MAGA bravado. The country is reeling in bad faith, delusion, official corruption, porno-pharmaceutical vice, and ethnic rancor. The people who live in FlyoverLand style themselves like Visigoths, all tatted up and armed to the teeth, moiling angrily at the edge of the Rome-like coastal enclaves. The elites want to stuff themselves inside their phones and live there. Guess what: that won’t be a “safe space.”
Thursday, August 29, 2019
SC196-4
https://www.oftwominds.com/blogaug19/fantasy-imploding8-19.html
The Fantasy of Central Bank "Growth" Is Finally Imploding
It was such a wonderful fantasy: just give a handful of bankers, financiers and corporations trillions of dollars at near-zero rates of interest, and this flood of credit and cash into the apex of the wealth-power pyramid would magically generate a new round of investments in productivity-improving infrastructure and equipment, which would trickle down to the masses in the form of higher wages, enabling the masses to borrow and spend more on consumption, powering the Nirvana of modern economics: a self-sustaining, self-reinforcing expansion of growth.
But alas, there is no self-sustaining, self-reinforcing expansion of growth; there are only massive, increasingly fragile asset bubbles, stagnant wages and a New Gilded Age as the handful of bankers, financiers and corporations that were handed unlimited nearly free money enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Central banks' near-zero interest rates and trillions in new credit destroyed discipline and price discovery, the bedrock of any economy, capitalist or socialist.
When credit is nearly free to borrow in unlimited quantities, there's no need for discipline, and so a year of university costs $50,000 instead of $10,000, houses that should cost $200,000 now cost $1 million and a bridge that should have cost $100 million costs $500 million. Nobody can afford anything any more because the answer in the era of central bank "growth" is: just borrow more, it won't cost you much because interest rates are so low.
And with capital (i.e. saved earnings) getting essentially zero yield thanks to central bank ZIRP and NIRP (zero or negative interest rate policies), then all the credit has poured into speculative assets, inflating unprecedented asset bubbles that will destroy much of the financial system when they finally pop, as all asset bubbles eventually do.
Nobody knows what the price of anything is in the funny-money era of central banks. And since capital earns next to nothing, the only way to earn a return is join the mad frenzy chasing risk assets ever higher, with the plan being to sell at the top to a greater fool, a strategy few manage as it requires selling into a rally that seems destined to climb to the stars.
Having destroyed discipline--why scrimp and save when you can always borrow to buy or invest?-- central banks have no way out of the corner they've painted us into. If they "normalize" interest rates to historical averages (3% above real-world inflation), then all the zombie companies and households that are surviving only because rates are near-zero will go bankrupt, wiping out the "wealth" of all the loans that can no longer be paid.
"Normalized" rates would also bring down the global housing bubble, an implosion that would trigger trillions in losses, reversing the vaunted wealth effect into a realization that we're all getting poorer, not richer, and collapsing the risky mountain of mortgage debt that's been piled on absurdly overvalued properties globally.
In effect, central banks added a zero to "money" and anticipated that this trickery would generate ten times more of everything: ten times more productive investments, ten times more consumption, ten times more people borrowing ten times more money, and so on.
But the trickery failed, and all we have is $200,000 houses that cost $1 million, a year in college that costs $50,000 instead of $10,000, and so on. Having destroyed discipline and price discovery, central banks attempted to replace reality with fantasy, and now the absurd fantasy is imploding. The financial system and the real-world economy have both been destabilized by this fantasy, and now both are fragile in ways few understand.
The only "policies" central banks have is to issue more credit at negative interest rates, i.e. doing more of what's failed spectacularly, until the entire rickety travesty of a mockery of a sham collapses.
That collapse is currently underway in slow motion, but given the increasing instability of asset bubbles, it could accelerate at any time.
The Fantasy of Central Bank "Growth" Is Finally Imploding
It was such a wonderful fantasy: just give a handful of bankers, financiers and corporations trillions of dollars at near-zero rates of interest, and this flood of credit and cash into the apex of the wealth-power pyramid would magically generate a new round of investments in productivity-improving infrastructure and equipment, which would trickle down to the masses in the form of higher wages, enabling the masses to borrow and spend more on consumption, powering the Nirvana of modern economics: a self-sustaining, self-reinforcing expansion of growth.
But alas, there is no self-sustaining, self-reinforcing expansion of growth; there are only massive, increasingly fragile asset bubbles, stagnant wages and a New Gilded Age as the handful of bankers, financiers and corporations that were handed unlimited nearly free money enriched themselves at the expense of everyone else.
Central banks' near-zero interest rates and trillions in new credit destroyed discipline and price discovery, the bedrock of any economy, capitalist or socialist.
When credit is nearly free to borrow in unlimited quantities, there's no need for discipline, and so a year of university costs $50,000 instead of $10,000, houses that should cost $200,000 now cost $1 million and a bridge that should have cost $100 million costs $500 million. Nobody can afford anything any more because the answer in the era of central bank "growth" is: just borrow more, it won't cost you much because interest rates are so low.
And with capital (i.e. saved earnings) getting essentially zero yield thanks to central bank ZIRP and NIRP (zero or negative interest rate policies), then all the credit has poured into speculative assets, inflating unprecedented asset bubbles that will destroy much of the financial system when they finally pop, as all asset bubbles eventually do.
Nobody knows what the price of anything is in the funny-money era of central banks. And since capital earns next to nothing, the only way to earn a return is join the mad frenzy chasing risk assets ever higher, with the plan being to sell at the top to a greater fool, a strategy few manage as it requires selling into a rally that seems destined to climb to the stars.
Having destroyed discipline--why scrimp and save when you can always borrow to buy or invest?-- central banks have no way out of the corner they've painted us into. If they "normalize" interest rates to historical averages (3% above real-world inflation), then all the zombie companies and households that are surviving only because rates are near-zero will go bankrupt, wiping out the "wealth" of all the loans that can no longer be paid.
"Normalized" rates would also bring down the global housing bubble, an implosion that would trigger trillions in losses, reversing the vaunted wealth effect into a realization that we're all getting poorer, not richer, and collapsing the risky mountain of mortgage debt that's been piled on absurdly overvalued properties globally.
In effect, central banks added a zero to "money" and anticipated that this trickery would generate ten times more of everything: ten times more productive investments, ten times more consumption, ten times more people borrowing ten times more money, and so on.
But the trickery failed, and all we have is $200,000 houses that cost $1 million, a year in college that costs $50,000 instead of $10,000, and so on. Having destroyed discipline and price discovery, central banks attempted to replace reality with fantasy, and now the absurd fantasy is imploding. The financial system and the real-world economy have both been destabilized by this fantasy, and now both are fragile in ways few understand.
The only "policies" central banks have is to issue more credit at negative interest rates, i.e. doing more of what's failed spectacularly, until the entire rickety travesty of a mockery of a sham collapses.
That collapse is currently underway in slow motion, but given the increasing instability of asset bubbles, it could accelerate at any time.
SC196-3
https://www.globalresearch.ca/significance-amazon-siberian-fires/5687303
Tinderbox Earth: The Significance of the Amazon and Siberian Fires
As fires rage across tens of thousands square km the Amazon forest, dubbed the Planet’s lungs, producing some 20 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, with some 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, where fires on such a scale are uncommon, as well as through Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, southern Europe and elsewhere, they herald a world where increasing temperatures and droughts overwhelm original habitats, flora and fauna (Figure 1).
As the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets progressively melt, at more than 6 times faster than during the Seventies, the tropics expand and arid deserts encroach into temperate Mediterranean-type climate zones at a rate of 56 – 111 km per decade, the Earth’s fertile regions are progressively replaced by environments less suitable for farming.
According to reports
“climate change itself is making dry seasons longer and forests more flammable. Increased temperatures are also resulting in more frequent tropical forest fires in non-drought years. And climate change may also be driving the increasing frequency and intensity of climate anomalies, such as El Niño events that affect fire season intensity across Amazonia.”
The pace of global warming is astounding climate scientists. Within the last 70 years or so major shifts in climate zones and an accelerating spate of extreme weather events—cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves and fires (Figure 2)— is increasingly ravaging large tracts of Earth.
However, despite its foundation in the basic laws of physics (the black body radiation laws of Planck, Kirchhoff’ and Stefan Boltzmann), as well as empirical observations around the world by major climate research bodies (NOAA, NASA, NSIDC, IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, Hadley-Met, Tindale, Potsdam, BOM, CSIRO and others), the anthropogenic origin, scale and pace of climate change remain underestimated and the subject to extensively propagated denial and untruths. Extreme climate change remains counterintuitive to many, let alone where potential mitigation could affect vested economic interests.
Climate scientists find themselves in a quandary similar to medical doctors, committed to help the ill and facing situations where they need to communicate a grave diagnosis. How do they tell people that the current spate of cyclones, devastating islands from the Caribbean to the Philippine, or floods devastating coastal regions and river valleys from Mozambique to Kerala, Pakistan and Townsville, can only intensify in a rapidly warming world? How do scientists tell the people that children are growing into a world where survival under a mean temperatures higher than +2 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial temperatures) may be painful, and in some parts of the world impossible, let alone under +4 degrees Celsius projected by the IPCC?
The Cassandra syndrome is alive and well. Throughout history messengers of bad news have been rebuked or worse, nowadays facing reluctance on the part of the mainstream media to publish the dire climate change projections. Given the daunting scenarios climate scientists are looking at, many find it difficult to talk about the issue, even among friends and family.
As atmospheric levels of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide have reached a combined level of near 500 parts per million, intersecting the melting threshold of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets and heralding a fundamental shift in state of the terrestrial climate, fires consume large parts of the land.
It would appear parliaments preoccupied as they are with economics, legal issues and international conflicts, hardly regard the future of nature and civilization as a priority.
Tinderbox Earth: The Significance of the Amazon and Siberian Fires
As fires rage across tens of thousands square km the Amazon forest, dubbed the Planet’s lungs, producing some 20 percent of the oxygen in the atmosphere, with some 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, where fires on such a scale are uncommon, as well as through Siberia, Alaska, Greenland, southern Europe and elsewhere, they herald a world where increasing temperatures and droughts overwhelm original habitats, flora and fauna (Figure 1).
As the Antarctic and Greenland ice sheets progressively melt, at more than 6 times faster than during the Seventies, the tropics expand and arid deserts encroach into temperate Mediterranean-type climate zones at a rate of 56 – 111 km per decade, the Earth’s fertile regions are progressively replaced by environments less suitable for farming.
According to reports
“climate change itself is making dry seasons longer and forests more flammable. Increased temperatures are also resulting in more frequent tropical forest fires in non-drought years. And climate change may also be driving the increasing frequency and intensity of climate anomalies, such as El Niño events that affect fire season intensity across Amazonia.”
The pace of global warming is astounding climate scientists. Within the last 70 years or so major shifts in climate zones and an accelerating spate of extreme weather events—cyclones, floods, droughts, heat waves and fires (Figure 2)— is increasingly ravaging large tracts of Earth.
However, despite its foundation in the basic laws of physics (the black body radiation laws of Planck, Kirchhoff’ and Stefan Boltzmann), as well as empirical observations around the world by major climate research bodies (NOAA, NASA, NSIDC, IPCC, World Meteorological Organization, Hadley-Met, Tindale, Potsdam, BOM, CSIRO and others), the anthropogenic origin, scale and pace of climate change remain underestimated and the subject to extensively propagated denial and untruths. Extreme climate change remains counterintuitive to many, let alone where potential mitigation could affect vested economic interests.
Climate scientists find themselves in a quandary similar to medical doctors, committed to help the ill and facing situations where they need to communicate a grave diagnosis. How do they tell people that the current spate of cyclones, devastating islands from the Caribbean to the Philippine, or floods devastating coastal regions and river valleys from Mozambique to Kerala, Pakistan and Townsville, can only intensify in a rapidly warming world? How do scientists tell the people that children are growing into a world where survival under a mean temperatures higher than +2 degrees Celsius (above pre-industrial temperatures) may be painful, and in some parts of the world impossible, let alone under +4 degrees Celsius projected by the IPCC?
The Cassandra syndrome is alive and well. Throughout history messengers of bad news have been rebuked or worse, nowadays facing reluctance on the part of the mainstream media to publish the dire climate change projections. Given the daunting scenarios climate scientists are looking at, many find it difficult to talk about the issue, even among friends and family.
As atmospheric levels of CO2, methane and nitrous oxide have reached a combined level of near 500 parts per million, intersecting the melting threshold of the Greenland and west Antarctic ice sheets and heralding a fundamental shift in state of the terrestrial climate, fires consume large parts of the land.
It would appear parliaments preoccupied as they are with economics, legal issues and international conflicts, hardly regard the future of nature and civilization as a priority.
Wednesday, August 28, 2019
SC196-2
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-curse-of-moral-purity/
The Curse of Moral Purity
The continued inability of America’s liberal democratic establishment to address the ills besetting the country—climate change, unregulated global capitalism, mounting social inequality, a bloated military, endless foreign wars, out-of-control deficits and gun violence—means the inevitable snuffing out of our anemic democracy. Overwhelmed by the multiple crises, the liberal elites have jettisoned genuine political life and retreated into self-defeating moral crusades in a vain and futile attempt to deflect attention away from the looming social, political, economic and environmental catastrophes.
These faux moral crusades, now the language of the left and the right, have bifurcated the country into warring factions. Opponents are demonized as evil. Adherents to the cause are on the side of the angels. Nuance and ambiguity are banished. Facts are manipulated or discarded. Truth is replaced by slogans. Conspiracy theories, however bizarre, are incredulously embraced to expose the perfidiousness of the enemy. Politics is defined by antagonistic political personalities spewing vitriol. The intellectual and moral sterility, along with the inability to halt the forces of societal destruction, provides fertile soil for extremists, neofascists and demagogues who thrive in periods of paralysis and cultural degeneracy.
Liberals and the left have wasted the last two years attacking Donald Trump as a Russian asset and look set to waste the next two years attacking him as a racist. They desperately seek scapegoats to explain the election of Trump as president, no different from a right wing that tars its Democratic Party enemies as America-hating socialists and that blames Muslims, immigrants and poor people of color for our national debacle. These are competing cartoon visions of the world. They foster a self-created universe of villains and superheroes that exacerbates the mounting polarization and rage.
“Bourgeois society seems everywhere to have used up its store of constructive ideas,” Christopher Lasch wrote in 1979 in “The Culture of Narcissism.” “It has lost both the capacity and the will to confront the difficulties that threaten to overwhelm it. The political crisis of capitalism reflects a general crisis of western culture, which reveals itself in a pervasive despair of understanding the course of modern history or of subjecting it to rational direction. Liberalism, the political theory of the ascendant bourgeoisie, long ago lost the capacity to explain events in the world of the welfare state and the multinational corporation; nothing has taken its place. Politically bankrupt, liberalism is intellectually bankrupt as well.”
The online magazine Slate recently published a transcript of a town hall meeting between Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, and the Times staff. It was a fascinating window into the hubris and cluelessness of the paper, the ruling elites’ primary news organ, which has spent the last two years shredding its credibility by hyping the investigation by Robert Mueller and the conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian asset. Here is Baquet on the newspaper’s reporting on Trump:
Chapter 1 of the story of Donald Trump, not only for our newsroom but, frankly, for our readers, was: Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice? That was a really hard story, by the way, let’s not forget that. We set ourselves up to cover that story. I’m going to say it. We won two Pulitzer Prizes covering that story. And I think we covered that story better than anybody else.
The day Bob Mueller walked off that witness stand, two things happened. Our readers who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, “Holy shit, Bob Mueller is not going to do it.” And Donald Trump got a little emboldened politically, I think. Because, you know, for obvious reasons. And I think that the story changed. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about started to emerge like six or seven weeks ago. We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed. I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?
I think that we’ve got to change. I mean, the vision for coverage for the next two years is what I talked about earlier: How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks? How do we cover the world’s reaction to him? How do we do that while continuing to cover his policies? How do we cover America, that’s become so divided by Donald Trump? How do we grapple with all the stuff you all are talking about? How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven’t done in a large way in a long time? That, to me, is the vision for coverage. You all are going to have to help us shape that vision. But I think that’s what we’re going to have to do for the rest of the next two years.
Baquet asserts that the journalistic campaign to incriminate Trump as a Russian agent sputtered out and a new campaign—read moral crusade—arose six or seven weeks ago to focus on Trump’s racism. Trump’s racism, of course, did not begin six or seven weeks ago. It is the paper that switched narratives six or seven weeks ago, from one moral crusade to another.
This is not journalism. It is moral purity masquerading as journalism. And it will, like the “Russiagate” conspiracy, be useless to blunt Trump’s support, explain and cope with our innumerable crises or heal the growing divide.
The problem that the paper, along with the Democratic Party and its liberal allies, faces is that it is captive to its corporate sponsors who orchestrated our grotesque income inequality, deindustrialization, out-of-control military machine, neutered media and muzzled scholarship. The paper, therefore, rather than turn on its corporate advertisers and elitist readers, first blamed Russia and now blames white supremacists. The longer such demagoguery continues on the left and the right, the more the country will be torn asunder.
Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” pointed out that ideologies are attractive in times of crisis because they reduce and simplify reality to a single idea. While the right wing blames the decline on darker races, the liberal elites blame the decline on Russia or racists. It is the ideology, not experience or fact, that is used “to explain all historical happenings, [to provide] the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present, and the reliable prediction of the future,” she wrote.
All ideologies demand an impossible consistency. This is achieved by a constant mutation and distortion of reality until it becomes, as the Mueller investigation did, absurdist theater. The result for believers, Arendt wrote, is disorientation, heightened fear and paranoia.
These types of collective self-delusions have always existed in American society, as the historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out. Such self-delusions, he wrote, are “made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary.”
But these self-delusions have usually been confined to the fringes of society, such as, for example, a left wing that made political pilgrimages to the Soviet Union, blissfully ignoring its government’s slaughter of millions of its own citizens, the gulags and the famines, and a right wing that celebrated fascist dictatorships in Spain and later Latin America, overlooking the mass executions, state terror and death squads there.
Collective self-delusions, however, have now been mainstreamed. They are trumpeted by media platforms across the political spectrum and by the political establishment. They are the fodder of Fox News and Breitbart as well as MSNBC and CNN. Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow, as Matt Taibbi has pointed out, are “liberal” versions of Sean Hannity.
Richard Rorty, with uncanny prescience, wrote in his 1998 book “Achieving Our Country”:
Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book “The Endangered American Dream” is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodern professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel “It Can’t Happen Here” may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words “nigger” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
The rupture of social bonds, caused by the breakdown of society, income inequality, social stagnation and the disempowerment of the working class, is expressed in innumerable dark pathologies. A fractured public carries out self-destructive behaviors—out-of-control gun violence, opioid addiction and sexual sadism—in an attempt to cope with dislocation, impotence and pain. Moral crusades are an expression of this cultural sickness. They are emblematic of a society in deep distress, unable to cope rationally with the problems besetting it. These crusades always make things worse, for once they are exposed as ineffectual they invariably breed a frightening fanaticism.
The Curse of Moral Purity
The continued inability of America’s liberal democratic establishment to address the ills besetting the country—climate change, unregulated global capitalism, mounting social inequality, a bloated military, endless foreign wars, out-of-control deficits and gun violence—means the inevitable snuffing out of our anemic democracy. Overwhelmed by the multiple crises, the liberal elites have jettisoned genuine political life and retreated into self-defeating moral crusades in a vain and futile attempt to deflect attention away from the looming social, political, economic and environmental catastrophes.
These faux moral crusades, now the language of the left and the right, have bifurcated the country into warring factions. Opponents are demonized as evil. Adherents to the cause are on the side of the angels. Nuance and ambiguity are banished. Facts are manipulated or discarded. Truth is replaced by slogans. Conspiracy theories, however bizarre, are incredulously embraced to expose the perfidiousness of the enemy. Politics is defined by antagonistic political personalities spewing vitriol. The intellectual and moral sterility, along with the inability to halt the forces of societal destruction, provides fertile soil for extremists, neofascists and demagogues who thrive in periods of paralysis and cultural degeneracy.
Liberals and the left have wasted the last two years attacking Donald Trump as a Russian asset and look set to waste the next two years attacking him as a racist. They desperately seek scapegoats to explain the election of Trump as president, no different from a right wing that tars its Democratic Party enemies as America-hating socialists and that blames Muslims, immigrants and poor people of color for our national debacle. These are competing cartoon visions of the world. They foster a self-created universe of villains and superheroes that exacerbates the mounting polarization and rage.
“Bourgeois society seems everywhere to have used up its store of constructive ideas,” Christopher Lasch wrote in 1979 in “The Culture of Narcissism.” “It has lost both the capacity and the will to confront the difficulties that threaten to overwhelm it. The political crisis of capitalism reflects a general crisis of western culture, which reveals itself in a pervasive despair of understanding the course of modern history or of subjecting it to rational direction. Liberalism, the political theory of the ascendant bourgeoisie, long ago lost the capacity to explain events in the world of the welfare state and the multinational corporation; nothing has taken its place. Politically bankrupt, liberalism is intellectually bankrupt as well.”
The online magazine Slate recently published a transcript of a town hall meeting between Dean Baquet, the executive editor of the New York Times, and the Times staff. It was a fascinating window into the hubris and cluelessness of the paper, the ruling elites’ primary news organ, which has spent the last two years shredding its credibility by hyping the investigation by Robert Mueller and the conspiracy theory that Trump was a Russian asset. Here is Baquet on the newspaper’s reporting on Trump:
Chapter 1 of the story of Donald Trump, not only for our newsroom but, frankly, for our readers, was: Did Donald Trump have untoward relationships with the Russians, and was there obstruction of justice? That was a really hard story, by the way, let’s not forget that. We set ourselves up to cover that story. I’m going to say it. We won two Pulitzer Prizes covering that story. And I think we covered that story better than anybody else.
The day Bob Mueller walked off that witness stand, two things happened. Our readers who want Donald Trump to go away suddenly thought, “Holy shit, Bob Mueller is not going to do it.” And Donald Trump got a little emboldened politically, I think. Because, you know, for obvious reasons. And I think that the story changed. A lot of the stuff we’re talking about started to emerge like six or seven weeks ago. We’re a little tiny bit flat-footed. I mean, that’s what happens when a story looks a certain way for two years. Right?
I think that we’ve got to change. I mean, the vision for coverage for the next two years is what I talked about earlier: How do we cover a guy who makes these kinds of remarks? How do we cover the world’s reaction to him? How do we do that while continuing to cover his policies? How do we cover America, that’s become so divided by Donald Trump? How do we grapple with all the stuff you all are talking about? How do we write about race in a thoughtful way, something we haven’t done in a large way in a long time? That, to me, is the vision for coverage. You all are going to have to help us shape that vision. But I think that’s what we’re going to have to do for the rest of the next two years.
Baquet asserts that the journalistic campaign to incriminate Trump as a Russian agent sputtered out and a new campaign—read moral crusade—arose six or seven weeks ago to focus on Trump’s racism. Trump’s racism, of course, did not begin six or seven weeks ago. It is the paper that switched narratives six or seven weeks ago, from one moral crusade to another.
This is not journalism. It is moral purity masquerading as journalism. And it will, like the “Russiagate” conspiracy, be useless to blunt Trump’s support, explain and cope with our innumerable crises or heal the growing divide.
The problem that the paper, along with the Democratic Party and its liberal allies, faces is that it is captive to its corporate sponsors who orchestrated our grotesque income inequality, deindustrialization, out-of-control military machine, neutered media and muzzled scholarship. The paper, therefore, rather than turn on its corporate advertisers and elitist readers, first blamed Russia and now blames white supremacists. The longer such demagoguery continues on the left and the right, the more the country will be torn asunder.
Hannah Arendt in “The Origins of Totalitarianism” pointed out that ideologies are attractive in times of crisis because they reduce and simplify reality to a single idea. While the right wing blames the decline on darker races, the liberal elites blame the decline on Russia or racists. It is the ideology, not experience or fact, that is used “to explain all historical happenings, [to provide] the total explanation of the past, the total knowledge of the present, and the reliable prediction of the future,” she wrote.
All ideologies demand an impossible consistency. This is achieved by a constant mutation and distortion of reality until it becomes, as the Mueller investigation did, absurdist theater. The result for believers, Arendt wrote, is disorientation, heightened fear and paranoia.
These types of collective self-delusions have always existed in American society, as the historian Richard Hofstadter pointed out. Such self-delusions, he wrote, are “made up of certain preoccupations and fantasies: the megalomaniac view of oneself as the Elect, wholly good, abominably persecuted, yet assured of ultimate triumph; the attribution of gigantic and demonic powers to the adversary.”
But these self-delusions have usually been confined to the fringes of society, such as, for example, a left wing that made political pilgrimages to the Soviet Union, blissfully ignoring its government’s slaughter of millions of its own citizens, the gulags and the famines, and a right wing that celebrated fascist dictatorships in Spain and later Latin America, overlooking the mass executions, state terror and death squads there.
Collective self-delusions, however, have now been mainstreamed. They are trumpeted by media platforms across the political spectrum and by the political establishment. They are the fodder of Fox News and Breitbart as well as MSNBC and CNN. Jake Tapper and Rachel Maddow, as Matt Taibbi has pointed out, are “liberal” versions of Sean Hannity.
Richard Rorty, with uncanny prescience, wrote in his 1998 book “Achieving Our Country”:
Many writers on socioeconomic policy have warned that the old industrialized democracies are heading into a Weimar-like period, one in which populist movements are likely to overturn constitutional governments. Edward Luttwak, for example, has suggested that fascism may be the American future. The point of his book “The Endangered American Dream” is that members of labor unions, and unorganized unskilled workers, will sooner or later realize that their government is not even trying to prevent wages from sinking or to prevent jobs from being exported. Around the same time, they will realize that suburban white-collar workers—themselves desperately afraid of being downsized—are not going to let themselves be taxed to provide social benefits for anyone else.
At that point, something will crack. The nonsuburban electorate will decide that the system has failed and start looking for a strongman to vote for—someone willing to assure them that, once he is elected, the smug bureaucrats, tricky lawyers, overpaid bond salesmen, and postmodern professors will no longer be calling the shots. A scenario like that of Sinclair Lewis’ novel “It Can’t Happen Here” may then be played out. For once such a strongman takes office, nobody can predict what will happen. In 1932, most of the predictions made about what would happen if Hindenburg named Hitler chancellor were wildly overoptimistic.
One thing that is very likely to happen is that the gains made in the past forty years by black and brown Americans, by homosexuals, will be wiped out. Jocular contempt for women will come back into fashion. The words “nigger” and “kike” will once again be heard in the workplace. All the sadism which the academic Left has tried to make unacceptable to its students will come flooding back. All the resentment which badly educated Americans feel about having their manners dictated to them by college graduates will find an outlet.
The rupture of social bonds, caused by the breakdown of society, income inequality, social stagnation and the disempowerment of the working class, is expressed in innumerable dark pathologies. A fractured public carries out self-destructive behaviors—out-of-control gun violence, opioid addiction and sexual sadism—in an attempt to cope with dislocation, impotence and pain. Moral crusades are an expression of this cultural sickness. They are emblematic of a society in deep distress, unable to cope rationally with the problems besetting it. These crusades always make things worse, for once they are exposed as ineffectual they invariably breed a frightening fanaticism.
Tuesday, August 27, 2019
SC196-1
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52157.htm
The Irresponsibility of Small Nations
After falsely accusing Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Washington unilaterally repudiated the treaty. Thus did the US military/security complex rid itself of the landmark agreement achieved by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that defused the Cold War.
The INF Treaty was perhaps the most important of all of the arms control agreements achieved by American 20th century presidents and now abandoned in the 21st century by US neoconservative governments. The treaty removed the threat of Russian missiles against Europe and the threat of European-based US missiles to Russia. The importance of the treaty is due to its reduction of the chance of accidental nuclear war. Warning systems have a history of false alarms. The problem of US missiles on Russia’s border is that they leave no time for reflection or contact with Washington when Moscow receives a false alarm. Considering the extreme irresponsibility of US governments since the Clinton regime in elevating tensions with Russia, missiles on Russia’s border leaves Russia’s leadership with little choice but to push the button when an alarm sounds.
That Washington intends to put missiles on Russia’s border and pulled out of the INF Treaty for this sole purpose is now obvious. Only two weeks after Washington pulled out of the treaty, Washington tested a missile whose research and development, not merely deployment, were banned under the treaty. If you think Washington designed and produced a new missile in two weeks you are not intelligent enough to be reading this column. While Washington was accusing Russia, it was Washington who was violating the treaty. Perhaps this additional act of betrayal will teach the Russian leadership that it is stupid and self-destructive to trust Washington about anything. Every country must know by now that agreements with Washington are meaningless.
Surely the Russian government understands that there are only two reasons for Washington to put missiles on Russia’s border: (1) to enable Washington to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike that leaves Russia no response time, or (2) to enable Washington to threaten such a strike, thus coercing Russia to Washington’s will. Clearly, one or the other of these reasons is of sufficient importance to Washington for Washington to risk a false alarm setting off a nuclear war.
Military analysts can talk all they want about “rational players,” but if a demonized and threatened country with hostile missiles on its border receives a warning with near zero response time, counting on it to be a false alarm is no longer rational.
The 1988 treaty achieved by Reagan and Gorbachev eliminated this threat. What purpose is served by resurrecting such a threat? Why is Congress silent? Why is Europe silent? Why is the US and European media silent? Why do Romania and Poland enable this threat by permitting US missiles to be stationed on their territory?
Little doubt the Romanian and Polish governments have been given bagfulls of money by the US military/security complex, which wants the multi-billion dollar contracts to produce the new missiles. Here we see the extreme irresponsibility of small countries. Without the corrupt and idiotic governments of Romania and Poland, Washington could not resurrect a threat that was buried 31 years ago by Reagan and Gorbachev.
Even the American puppet state of occupied Germany has refused to host the missiles. But two insignificant states of no importance in the world are subjecting the entire world to the risk of nuclear war so that a few Romanian and Polish politicians can pocket a few million dollars.
Missiles on Russia’s borders that provide no response time are a serious problem for Russia. I keep waiting for Moscow to announce publicly that on the first sign of a missile launching from Romania or Poland, the countries will immediately cease to exist. That might wake up the Romanian and Polish populations to the danger that their corrupt governments are bringing to them.
Why aren’t the Romanian and Polish provocations sufficient justification for Russia to pre-emptively occupy both countries? Is it more provocative for Russia to occupy the two countries than it is for the two countries to host US missiles against Russia? Why only consider the former provocative and not the latter?
No one is capable of coming to Romania and Poland’s aid even if anyone was so inclined. NATO is a joke. It wouldn’t last one day in a battle with Russia. Does anyone think the United States is going to commit suicide for Romania and Poland?
Where are the UN resolutions condemning Romania and Poland for resurrecting the specter of nuclear war by hosting the deployment of US missiles on their borders with Russia? Is the entire world so insouciant that the likely consequences of this act of insanity are not comprehended?
It does seem that human intelligence is not up to the requirements of human survival.
The Irresponsibility of Small Nations
After falsely accusing Russia of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty (INF), Washington unilaterally repudiated the treaty. Thus did the US military/security complex rid itself of the landmark agreement achieved by Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev that defused the Cold War.
The INF Treaty was perhaps the most important of all of the arms control agreements achieved by American 20th century presidents and now abandoned in the 21st century by US neoconservative governments. The treaty removed the threat of Russian missiles against Europe and the threat of European-based US missiles to Russia. The importance of the treaty is due to its reduction of the chance of accidental nuclear war. Warning systems have a history of false alarms. The problem of US missiles on Russia’s border is that they leave no time for reflection or contact with Washington when Moscow receives a false alarm. Considering the extreme irresponsibility of US governments since the Clinton regime in elevating tensions with Russia, missiles on Russia’s border leaves Russia’s leadership with little choice but to push the button when an alarm sounds.
That Washington intends to put missiles on Russia’s border and pulled out of the INF Treaty for this sole purpose is now obvious. Only two weeks after Washington pulled out of the treaty, Washington tested a missile whose research and development, not merely deployment, were banned under the treaty. If you think Washington designed and produced a new missile in two weeks you are not intelligent enough to be reading this column. While Washington was accusing Russia, it was Washington who was violating the treaty. Perhaps this additional act of betrayal will teach the Russian leadership that it is stupid and self-destructive to trust Washington about anything. Every country must know by now that agreements with Washington are meaningless.
Surely the Russian government understands that there are only two reasons for Washington to put missiles on Russia’s border: (1) to enable Washington to launch a pre-emptive nuclear strike that leaves Russia no response time, or (2) to enable Washington to threaten such a strike, thus coercing Russia to Washington’s will. Clearly, one or the other of these reasons is of sufficient importance to Washington for Washington to risk a false alarm setting off a nuclear war.
Military analysts can talk all they want about “rational players,” but if a demonized and threatened country with hostile missiles on its border receives a warning with near zero response time, counting on it to be a false alarm is no longer rational.
The 1988 treaty achieved by Reagan and Gorbachev eliminated this threat. What purpose is served by resurrecting such a threat? Why is Congress silent? Why is Europe silent? Why is the US and European media silent? Why do Romania and Poland enable this threat by permitting US missiles to be stationed on their territory?
Little doubt the Romanian and Polish governments have been given bagfulls of money by the US military/security complex, which wants the multi-billion dollar contracts to produce the new missiles. Here we see the extreme irresponsibility of small countries. Without the corrupt and idiotic governments of Romania and Poland, Washington could not resurrect a threat that was buried 31 years ago by Reagan and Gorbachev.
Even the American puppet state of occupied Germany has refused to host the missiles. But two insignificant states of no importance in the world are subjecting the entire world to the risk of nuclear war so that a few Romanian and Polish politicians can pocket a few million dollars.
Missiles on Russia’s borders that provide no response time are a serious problem for Russia. I keep waiting for Moscow to announce publicly that on the first sign of a missile launching from Romania or Poland, the countries will immediately cease to exist. That might wake up the Romanian and Polish populations to the danger that their corrupt governments are bringing to them.
Why aren’t the Romanian and Polish provocations sufficient justification for Russia to pre-emptively occupy both countries? Is it more provocative for Russia to occupy the two countries than it is for the two countries to host US missiles against Russia? Why only consider the former provocative and not the latter?
No one is capable of coming to Romania and Poland’s aid even if anyone was so inclined. NATO is a joke. It wouldn’t last one day in a battle with Russia. Does anyone think the United States is going to commit suicide for Romania and Poland?
Where are the UN resolutions condemning Romania and Poland for resurrecting the specter of nuclear war by hosting the deployment of US missiles on their borders with Russia? Is the entire world so insouciant that the likely consequences of this act of insanity are not comprehended?
It does seem that human intelligence is not up to the requirements of human survival.
Monday, August 26, 2019
SC195-15
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52168.htm
US Craves Insecurity & War
It surely is the greatest Orwellian paradox that the United States is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. For the US is a behemoth that craves insecurity and war for its very existence.
This week Washington took the reprehensible step towards inciting a new global arms race when it test-fired a new ground-based cruise missile off its west coast. The range of the nuclear-capable weapon was over 500 kilometers. It would have been banned under the recently discarded Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
Conveniently for the US, it had pulled out of the INF less than three weeks before the latest missile test. That nails the lie espoused by the Americans that they were collapsing the 1987 treaty “because” of alleged Russian violations. The brutal truth is that the US simply wanted to trash the arms control treaty in order to expand its arsenal of short and medium-range ballistic weapons.
Disturbingly, Pentagon chief Mark Esper has also announced in recent weeks that the US intends to install INF-busting-type missiles on Asian land bases. He says the US needs to confront the “bad behavior of China”.
There is no reason to believe that the US will not move ahead to install short and medium-range missiles in Asia and also in Europe. In both scenarios, the balance of nuclear power is dangerously shifted to threaten China and Russia.
Beijing and Moscow said this week that they do not want to be drawn into an arms race with the US. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his defense chiefs to formulate a reciprocal response to the new US threats without dragging the country into an economically sapping arms race, as was the case in past years of the Cold War.
It is deplorable how the US is incorrigible in its pursuit of confrontation. No other nation in modern history has such a nefarious record of relentless war-making and destruction.
The US, more precisely its ruling class, just cannot conceive of the world in any way other than one of adversity, aggression, dominance, belligerence. The Cold War with the Soviet Union never stopped. The American mindset of zero-sum nihilism is inveterate.
The pernicious premise for the latest missile development and further plans to revamp the US’ already obscene nuclear arsenal is that of a psychopath. In this mindset, Russia, China, and other nations, are “out to get us”, to “destroy us”. It is nuclear-armed paranoia.
Russia and China have never expressed any animosity towards the US or its people. Indeed both countries have repeatedly appealed to Washington to simply behave as a normal nation and engage with others through mutual dialogue and respect.
The US under its existing political economic system and power structure is incapable of being normal. Its oligarchic system (masquerading as democracy) and its corporate capitalist racket (masquerading as economy) need global insecurity and conflict in order to sustain them.
The American political economy is a war machine. With an annual spend of $700 billion-plus on military (multiples of what China, Russia and other nations spend), the US system of oligarchic corporate control would simply collapse in failure if the so-called military-industrial complex were to not receive its voracious fix of tax-payer money every year.
That’s why the US political class – regardless of Republican or Democratic labels – must serve to propagate the war-machine economy.
The US has to always perceive and portray the world as a mortal threat. It needs to create insecurity and tensions in order to “justify” the unjustifiable, hideous waste of resources on new and more weapons.
American politicians, military leaders and corporate media puppets have to indulge in the myth of “enemy states” and “bad actors out there” in order to keep the militarism-addiction fix going. They need to set up the vicious cycle of threats and insecurity, arms race, conflict and ultimately war because that its the life-blood for the vampire system of American capitalism.
It is especially notable that the new missile tested this week could be deployed in Europe or Asia, and the US MK-41 launcher could be used for this purpose. That launcher already deployed in Romania, and soon in Poland, is officially, according to the US, only for launching interceptor missiles. But as the test-fire in California this week demonstrated, the same launcher can be used to fire off ballistic nuclear-capable weapons.
Russia and China are thus being put into a position of intense uncertainty – deliberately no doubt – by the US as to what they may potentially be facing in terms of missile system.
Potentially, the US is reducing the time warning of a pre-emptive nuclear strike down to minutes. The provocative belligerence is monstrous. But that’s the United States of Warmongering for you.
How does the world address this monster-rogue regime? Russia and China need to have the best missile weapons through efficient development – without making the grave mistake of succumbing to an economically destructive arms race.
More long-term for the peace of the world, the people of the United States need to abolish their oligarchy and create a truly people-centered economic system.
US Craves Insecurity & War
It surely is the greatest Orwellian paradox that the United States is a permanent member of the UN Security Council. For the US is a behemoth that craves insecurity and war for its very existence.
This week Washington took the reprehensible step towards inciting a new global arms race when it test-fired a new ground-based cruise missile off its west coast. The range of the nuclear-capable weapon was over 500 kilometers. It would have been banned under the recently discarded Intermediate-range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.
Conveniently for the US, it had pulled out of the INF less than three weeks before the latest missile test. That nails the lie espoused by the Americans that they were collapsing the 1987 treaty “because” of alleged Russian violations. The brutal truth is that the US simply wanted to trash the arms control treaty in order to expand its arsenal of short and medium-range ballistic weapons.
Disturbingly, Pentagon chief Mark Esper has also announced in recent weeks that the US intends to install INF-busting-type missiles on Asian land bases. He says the US needs to confront the “bad behavior of China”.
There is no reason to believe that the US will not move ahead to install short and medium-range missiles in Asia and also in Europe. In both scenarios, the balance of nuclear power is dangerously shifted to threaten China and Russia.
Beijing and Moscow said this week that they do not want to be drawn into an arms race with the US. Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered his defense chiefs to formulate a reciprocal response to the new US threats without dragging the country into an economically sapping arms race, as was the case in past years of the Cold War.
It is deplorable how the US is incorrigible in its pursuit of confrontation. No other nation in modern history has such a nefarious record of relentless war-making and destruction.
The US, more precisely its ruling class, just cannot conceive of the world in any way other than one of adversity, aggression, dominance, belligerence. The Cold War with the Soviet Union never stopped. The American mindset of zero-sum nihilism is inveterate.
The pernicious premise for the latest missile development and further plans to revamp the US’ already obscene nuclear arsenal is that of a psychopath. In this mindset, Russia, China, and other nations, are “out to get us”, to “destroy us”. It is nuclear-armed paranoia.
Russia and China have never expressed any animosity towards the US or its people. Indeed both countries have repeatedly appealed to Washington to simply behave as a normal nation and engage with others through mutual dialogue and respect.
The US under its existing political economic system and power structure is incapable of being normal. Its oligarchic system (masquerading as democracy) and its corporate capitalist racket (masquerading as economy) need global insecurity and conflict in order to sustain them.
The American political economy is a war machine. With an annual spend of $700 billion-plus on military (multiples of what China, Russia and other nations spend), the US system of oligarchic corporate control would simply collapse in failure if the so-called military-industrial complex were to not receive its voracious fix of tax-payer money every year.
That’s why the US political class – regardless of Republican or Democratic labels – must serve to propagate the war-machine economy.
The US has to always perceive and portray the world as a mortal threat. It needs to create insecurity and tensions in order to “justify” the unjustifiable, hideous waste of resources on new and more weapons.
American politicians, military leaders and corporate media puppets have to indulge in the myth of “enemy states” and “bad actors out there” in order to keep the militarism-addiction fix going. They need to set up the vicious cycle of threats and insecurity, arms race, conflict and ultimately war because that its the life-blood for the vampire system of American capitalism.
It is especially notable that the new missile tested this week could be deployed in Europe or Asia, and the US MK-41 launcher could be used for this purpose. That launcher already deployed in Romania, and soon in Poland, is officially, according to the US, only for launching interceptor missiles. But as the test-fire in California this week demonstrated, the same launcher can be used to fire off ballistic nuclear-capable weapons.
Russia and China are thus being put into a position of intense uncertainty – deliberately no doubt – by the US as to what they may potentially be facing in terms of missile system.
Potentially, the US is reducing the time warning of a pre-emptive nuclear strike down to minutes. The provocative belligerence is monstrous. But that’s the United States of Warmongering for you.
How does the world address this monster-rogue regime? Russia and China need to have the best missile weapons through efficient development – without making the grave mistake of succumbing to an economically destructive arms race.
More long-term for the peace of the world, the people of the United States need to abolish their oligarchy and create a truly people-centered economic system.
Sunday, August 25, 2019
SC195-14
https://www.globalresearch.ca/unprecedented-wildfires-absolutely-ravage-planet/5687028
The “Lungs of the Earth” Are Literally Being Burned Away as Unprecedented Wildfires Absolutely Ravage Our Planet
We have never seen anything quite like this. This week the skies above Brazil’s largest city turned black in the middle of the afternoon due to the massive wildfires that are currently raging in that country. But the wildfires aren’t actually happening anywhere near São Paulo. In fact, the smoke that turned the skies black actually came from fires that were happening more than 1,000 miles away. Can you imagine how powerful the fires have to be in order to do that? And it isn’t just Brazil – right now horrific fires are scorching vast stretches of our planet from South America all the way up to the Arctic. Some of the fires are producing so much smoke that you can actually see it from space. And in the process, irreversible damage is being done to our ecosystems.
I know that this number is hard to believe, but there have been more than 72,000 wildfires in Brazil so far in 2019, and most of those fires are happening in the Amazon rainforest. I understand that many of you may not care what happens in Brazil, but you should. Approximately 60 percent of the entire Amazon rainforest is in Brazilian territory, and that rainforest produces approximately 20 percent of all the oxygen in our atmosphere. So essentially the “lungs of the Earth” are being burned away right in front of our eyes…
The fires are burning at the highest rate since the country’s space research center, the National Institute for Space Research (known by the abbreviation INPE), began tracking them in 2013, the center said Tuesday.
There have been 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, with more than half in the Amazon region, INPE said. That’s more than an 80% increase compared with the same period last year.
The Amazon is often referred to as the planet’s lungs, producing 20% of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Every minute of every single day, an average of 1½ soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being wiped out. This is an ongoing crisis that hasn’t been getting nearly the attention that it deserves in the United States.
But when the skies above Sao Paulo suddenly turned completely black at three in the afternoon on Monday, that set off a social media frenzy…
São Paulo’s skies were blackened for roughly an hour at around 3 p.m. Monday due to raging fires throughout the region and weather conditions that pushed particulate matter over the city, setting off intense speculation on social networks about the reason why the day was seemingly transformed into night.
Videos and images posted by local residents depicted disturbing scenes of pedestrians walking under black skies and cars driving in the mid-afternoon with their headlights on as the continued fires throughout the Amazon rainforest drove the hashtags #PrayforAmazonia and #PrayforAmazonas to worldwide viral status.
Sadly, these fires are not going to end any time soon. It is being reported that more than 9,000 fires are raging at the moment, and it is being estimated that 640 million acres have been affected by those fires.
Yes, you read that number correctly.
640 million acres.
Meanwhile, 50 large wildfires are burning in a dozen U.S. states right now. The worst fires are happening in Alaska, where “more than 400,000 acres are currently burning”…
Multiple fires are burning near the state’s biggest city, and firefighters have called in assistance from the Lower 48. More than 400,000 acres are currently burning, and one of the biggest concerns is the McKinley Fire, which has destroyed at least 50 structures about 100 miles north of Anchorage. Officials with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough declared a state of emergency, and firefighters hoped that calmer weather predicted for Wednesday could permit evacuees to return.
When I think of Alaska, I think of a place that is bitterly cold. But apparently it is hot enough this year for wildfires to sweep across hundreds of thousands of acres.
And we are also witnessing highly unusual wildfires in the Arctic in 2019…
The Arctic as a whole has seen unusually high wildfire activity this summer, Parrington said, including areas such as Greenland that typically don’t see fires. One estimate found that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from fires burning within the Arctic Circle in in June 2019 was greater than all of the CO2 released in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together.
To me, it is very strange to be talking about “wildfires in the Arctic”, but we have entered a period of time when our entire definition of “normal” is going to change. Last winter we experienced one of the coldest winters in ages, during the first half of this year the middle of the U.S. experienced unprecedented rainfall and flooding, and now we are being told that last month was the hottest July ever recorded…
The average global temperature in July was 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees, making it the hottest July in the 140-year record, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
The previous hottest month on record was July 2016. Nine of the 10 hottest recorded Julys have occurred since 2005; the last five years have ranked as the five hottest. Last month was also the 43rd consecutive July and 415th consecutive month with above-average global temperatures.
Unfortunately, many believe that this is just the beginning. Global weather patterns are going haywire, and so the extremes that we have seen so far may just be the tip of the iceberg.
The environment that we depend upon for life every moment of every day is being shaken, and many are deeply alarmed about what is happening to the Earth. Each day it is being destroyed a little bit more, and the clock is ticking…
The “Lungs of the Earth” Are Literally Being Burned Away as Unprecedented Wildfires Absolutely Ravage Our Planet
We have never seen anything quite like this. This week the skies above Brazil’s largest city turned black in the middle of the afternoon due to the massive wildfires that are currently raging in that country. But the wildfires aren’t actually happening anywhere near São Paulo. In fact, the smoke that turned the skies black actually came from fires that were happening more than 1,000 miles away. Can you imagine how powerful the fires have to be in order to do that? And it isn’t just Brazil – right now horrific fires are scorching vast stretches of our planet from South America all the way up to the Arctic. Some of the fires are producing so much smoke that you can actually see it from space. And in the process, irreversible damage is being done to our ecosystems.
I know that this number is hard to believe, but there have been more than 72,000 wildfires in Brazil so far in 2019, and most of those fires are happening in the Amazon rainforest. I understand that many of you may not care what happens in Brazil, but you should. Approximately 60 percent of the entire Amazon rainforest is in Brazilian territory, and that rainforest produces approximately 20 percent of all the oxygen in our atmosphere. So essentially the “lungs of the Earth” are being burned away right in front of our eyes…
The fires are burning at the highest rate since the country’s space research center, the National Institute for Space Research (known by the abbreviation INPE), began tracking them in 2013, the center said Tuesday.
There have been 72,843 fires in Brazil this year, with more than half in the Amazon region, INPE said. That’s more than an 80% increase compared with the same period last year.
The Amazon is often referred to as the planet’s lungs, producing 20% of the oxygen in the Earth’s atmosphere.
Every minute of every single day, an average of 1½ soccer fields of Amazon rainforest are being wiped out. This is an ongoing crisis that hasn’t been getting nearly the attention that it deserves in the United States.
But when the skies above Sao Paulo suddenly turned completely black at three in the afternoon on Monday, that set off a social media frenzy…
São Paulo’s skies were blackened for roughly an hour at around 3 p.m. Monday due to raging fires throughout the region and weather conditions that pushed particulate matter over the city, setting off intense speculation on social networks about the reason why the day was seemingly transformed into night.
Videos and images posted by local residents depicted disturbing scenes of pedestrians walking under black skies and cars driving in the mid-afternoon with their headlights on as the continued fires throughout the Amazon rainforest drove the hashtags #PrayforAmazonia and #PrayforAmazonas to worldwide viral status.
Sadly, these fires are not going to end any time soon. It is being reported that more than 9,000 fires are raging at the moment, and it is being estimated that 640 million acres have been affected by those fires.
Yes, you read that number correctly.
640 million acres.
Meanwhile, 50 large wildfires are burning in a dozen U.S. states right now. The worst fires are happening in Alaska, where “more than 400,000 acres are currently burning”…
Multiple fires are burning near the state’s biggest city, and firefighters have called in assistance from the Lower 48. More than 400,000 acres are currently burning, and one of the biggest concerns is the McKinley Fire, which has destroyed at least 50 structures about 100 miles north of Anchorage. Officials with the Matanuska-Susitna Borough declared a state of emergency, and firefighters hoped that calmer weather predicted for Wednesday could permit evacuees to return.
When I think of Alaska, I think of a place that is bitterly cold. But apparently it is hot enough this year for wildfires to sweep across hundreds of thousands of acres.
And we are also witnessing highly unusual wildfires in the Arctic in 2019…
The Arctic as a whole has seen unusually high wildfire activity this summer, Parrington said, including areas such as Greenland that typically don’t see fires. One estimate found that the amount of carbon dioxide emitted from fires burning within the Arctic Circle in in June 2019 was greater than all of the CO2 released in the same month from 2010 through to 2018 put together.
To me, it is very strange to be talking about “wildfires in the Arctic”, but we have entered a period of time when our entire definition of “normal” is going to change. Last winter we experienced one of the coldest winters in ages, during the first half of this year the middle of the U.S. experienced unprecedented rainfall and flooding, and now we are being told that last month was the hottest July ever recorded…
The average global temperature in July was 1.71 degrees F above the 20th-century average of 60.4 degrees, making it the hottest July in the 140-year record, according to scientists at NOAA’s National Centers for Environmental Information.
The previous hottest month on record was July 2016. Nine of the 10 hottest recorded Julys have occurred since 2005; the last five years have ranked as the five hottest. Last month was also the 43rd consecutive July and 415th consecutive month with above-average global temperatures.
Unfortunately, many believe that this is just the beginning. Global weather patterns are going haywire, and so the extremes that we have seen so far may just be the tip of the iceberg.
The environment that we depend upon for life every moment of every day is being shaken, and many are deeply alarmed about what is happening to the Earth. Each day it is being destroyed a little bit more, and the clock is ticking…
Saturday, August 24, 2019
SC195-13
https://xrblog.org/2019/07/24/why-i-say-that-this-civilisation-is-finished/
Why I say that this civilisation is finished
It has been a huge privilege to be involved with Extinction Rebellion, for nearly a year now. For the first time in years I feel a growing glimmer of hope for humanity. Finally, we are seeing a mass mobilisation of people who are not willing to die quietly. An upwelling of people unafraid to call for the radical initiatives that we need to limit the scope of global overheating. As a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, I have been among those privileged to put the case for the action of our rebels to those in the media and in Government.
We need to be clear that there is no ‘safe’ level of warming. ‘Even’ 2 degrees (which is now almost unachievable) means the death of over 99% of the world’s coral reefs – permanently defacing the ecology of our planet, and probably means the end of ice in the northern hemisphere. The International Panel on Climate Change — which is still, contra popular belief, a relatively conservative body — is unambiguous in its latest report (1.5 degree) that 2-degrees means the displacement of millions of people through desertification and flooding. It means a much greater frequency and a higher magnitude of the extreme weather events that are increasingly blighting the world. It means an increase in violence and war globally because of resource scarcity and hotter temperatures. It is violence: 2 degrees is violence from the rich and stupid against the global masses. It means increased frequency of pandemic and pestilence, with greater threats to our health and the food supply we rely upon to nourish us. And because of the inherent unpredictability of the effects of 2-degrees warming, it could expose us to a myriad of other threats that we cannot predict and that could be far worse than our models suggest.
This is why Extinction Rebellion’s actions are so important, and in particular why the call for net zero UK emissions by 2025 is vital. Our movement has been courageous by communicating with brutal honesty exactly what is at stake over the climate emergency. There needs to be far more of this communication within the public sphere.
In my new book, This Civilisation is Finished, co-authored with Samuel Alexander, we attempt exactly this. We reject the ‘soft denialism’ so often present in the mainstream discourse about the climate emergency. A discourse that seems cherry-picked to present what is actually ecological apocalypse in as palatable and unthreatening a way as possible. Instead, we have found that minds and hearts are only truly concentrated when the scale and enormity of the threat to human and non-human life is exposed in its unveiled magnitude. When this occurs, people stare the threat in the face, the fight-or-flight response is activated and – as there is nowhere to run – they become energised by the necessity to battle for the survival of themselves and their children.
This is no exaggeration. The stakes of course are very, very high, here, because the climate crisis and the broader ecological emergency of which it is only the most urgent part puts the whole of what we know as civilisation at risk. By ‘this civilisation’ I mean the hegemonic civilisation of globalised industrial growth capitalism— sometimes called ‘Empire’—which today governs the vast majority of human life on Earth.
As I see things, there are three broad possible futures that lie ahead:
This civilisation could collapse utterly and terminally, as a result of climatic instability (leading for instance to catastrophic food shortages as a probable mechanism of collapse), or possibly sooner than that, through nuclear war, pandemic, or financial collapse leading to mass civil breakdown. Any of these are likely to be precipitated in part by ecological/climate instability, as Darfur and Syria were.
Or
This civilisation (we) will manage to seed a future successor-civilisation(s), as this one collapses.
Or
This civilisation will somehow manage to transform itself deliberately, radically and rapidly, in an unprecedented manner, in time to avert collapse.
The third option, at which XR aims, is by far the least likely, though the most desirable, simply because either of the other options will involve vast suffering and death on an unprecedented scale. In the case of (1), we are talking the extinction or near-extinction of humanity. In the case of (2) we are talking at minimum multiple megadeaths. But (2) would obviously be hugely preferable to (1), and thus the ultimate importance for us of getting our societies not only to mitigate but also to adapt, deeply.
The second option is very difficult to envisage clearly, but is, I now believe, very likely. Unless we are incredibly lucky or incredibly determined and brilliant (or almost certainly both) then we are facing, almost certainly, changes around the world which are going to bring an end to this civilisation. So we need to think about what comes after it. We need to think about it now, and we need to start to work toward it; because there are many sub-possibilities within possibility two, and some of them are very ugly.
One of the reasons I wrote the book with Sam is so that we can talk about how we can prepare the way for (2). I think that there has been criminally little of that preparation, to date. Virtually everyone in the broader environmental movement has been fixated on the third option, unwilling to consider anything less. I strongly believe now that that stance is no longer viable. And, encouragingly, I am not quite alone in that belief.
The first option might soon be as likely as the second. It leaves little to talk about.
Any of these three options will involve a transformation of such extreme magnitude that what emerges will no longer in any meaningful sense be this civilisation: the change will be the kind of extreme conceptual and existential magnitude that Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of ‘paradigm-shifts’, calls ‘revolutionary’. Thus, one way or another, this civilisation is finished. It may well run in the air, suspended over the edge of a cliff, for a while longer. But it will then either crash to complete chaos and catastrophe (Option 1); or seed something radically different from itself from within its dying body (Option 2); or somehow get back to safety on the cliff-edge (Option 3). Managing to do that miraculous thing would involve such extraordinary and utterly unprecedented change, that what came back to safety would still no longer in any meaningful sense be this civilisation.
That, in short, is what I mean by saying that this civilisation is finished.
Extinction Rebellion is key to transforming the civilisation we have into something that will allow us to maintain human life either in the third option or in arming our global consciousness with the understanding of the need for deep adaptation in the face of the second option.
If not, we are left only with terminal collapse.
I hope that this book, in which I discuss XR at some length, will help us in these difficult and necessary thought-and-feeling—processes.
Why I say that this civilisation is finished
It has been a huge privilege to be involved with Extinction Rebellion, for nearly a year now. For the first time in years I feel a growing glimmer of hope for humanity. Finally, we are seeing a mass mobilisation of people who are not willing to die quietly. An upwelling of people unafraid to call for the radical initiatives that we need to limit the scope of global overheating. As a spokesperson for Extinction Rebellion, I have been among those privileged to put the case for the action of our rebels to those in the media and in Government.
We need to be clear that there is no ‘safe’ level of warming. ‘Even’ 2 degrees (which is now almost unachievable) means the death of over 99% of the world’s coral reefs – permanently defacing the ecology of our planet, and probably means the end of ice in the northern hemisphere. The International Panel on Climate Change — which is still, contra popular belief, a relatively conservative body — is unambiguous in its latest report (1.5 degree) that 2-degrees means the displacement of millions of people through desertification and flooding. It means a much greater frequency and a higher magnitude of the extreme weather events that are increasingly blighting the world. It means an increase in violence and war globally because of resource scarcity and hotter temperatures. It is violence: 2 degrees is violence from the rich and stupid against the global masses. It means increased frequency of pandemic and pestilence, with greater threats to our health and the food supply we rely upon to nourish us. And because of the inherent unpredictability of the effects of 2-degrees warming, it could expose us to a myriad of other threats that we cannot predict and that could be far worse than our models suggest.
This is why Extinction Rebellion’s actions are so important, and in particular why the call for net zero UK emissions by 2025 is vital. Our movement has been courageous by communicating with brutal honesty exactly what is at stake over the climate emergency. There needs to be far more of this communication within the public sphere.
In my new book, This Civilisation is Finished, co-authored with Samuel Alexander, we attempt exactly this. We reject the ‘soft denialism’ so often present in the mainstream discourse about the climate emergency. A discourse that seems cherry-picked to present what is actually ecological apocalypse in as palatable and unthreatening a way as possible. Instead, we have found that minds and hearts are only truly concentrated when the scale and enormity of the threat to human and non-human life is exposed in its unveiled magnitude. When this occurs, people stare the threat in the face, the fight-or-flight response is activated and – as there is nowhere to run – they become energised by the necessity to battle for the survival of themselves and their children.
This is no exaggeration. The stakes of course are very, very high, here, because the climate crisis and the broader ecological emergency of which it is only the most urgent part puts the whole of what we know as civilisation at risk. By ‘this civilisation’ I mean the hegemonic civilisation of globalised industrial growth capitalism— sometimes called ‘Empire’—which today governs the vast majority of human life on Earth.
As I see things, there are three broad possible futures that lie ahead:
This civilisation could collapse utterly and terminally, as a result of climatic instability (leading for instance to catastrophic food shortages as a probable mechanism of collapse), or possibly sooner than that, through nuclear war, pandemic, or financial collapse leading to mass civil breakdown. Any of these are likely to be precipitated in part by ecological/climate instability, as Darfur and Syria were.
Or
This civilisation (we) will manage to seed a future successor-civilisation(s), as this one collapses.
Or
This civilisation will somehow manage to transform itself deliberately, radically and rapidly, in an unprecedented manner, in time to avert collapse.
The third option, at which XR aims, is by far the least likely, though the most desirable, simply because either of the other options will involve vast suffering and death on an unprecedented scale. In the case of (1), we are talking the extinction or near-extinction of humanity. In the case of (2) we are talking at minimum multiple megadeaths. But (2) would obviously be hugely preferable to (1), and thus the ultimate importance for us of getting our societies not only to mitigate but also to adapt, deeply.
The second option is very difficult to envisage clearly, but is, I now believe, very likely. Unless we are incredibly lucky or incredibly determined and brilliant (or almost certainly both) then we are facing, almost certainly, changes around the world which are going to bring an end to this civilisation. So we need to think about what comes after it. We need to think about it now, and we need to start to work toward it; because there are many sub-possibilities within possibility two, and some of them are very ugly.
One of the reasons I wrote the book with Sam is so that we can talk about how we can prepare the way for (2). I think that there has been criminally little of that preparation, to date. Virtually everyone in the broader environmental movement has been fixated on the third option, unwilling to consider anything less. I strongly believe now that that stance is no longer viable. And, encouragingly, I am not quite alone in that belief.
The first option might soon be as likely as the second. It leaves little to talk about.
Any of these three options will involve a transformation of such extreme magnitude that what emerges will no longer in any meaningful sense be this civilisation: the change will be the kind of extreme conceptual and existential magnitude that Thomas Kuhn, the philosopher of ‘paradigm-shifts’, calls ‘revolutionary’. Thus, one way or another, this civilisation is finished. It may well run in the air, suspended over the edge of a cliff, for a while longer. But it will then either crash to complete chaos and catastrophe (Option 1); or seed something radically different from itself from within its dying body (Option 2); or somehow get back to safety on the cliff-edge (Option 3). Managing to do that miraculous thing would involve such extraordinary and utterly unprecedented change, that what came back to safety would still no longer in any meaningful sense be this civilisation.
That, in short, is what I mean by saying that this civilisation is finished.
Extinction Rebellion is key to transforming the civilisation we have into something that will allow us to maintain human life either in the third option or in arming our global consciousness with the understanding of the need for deep adaptation in the face of the second option.
If not, we are left only with terminal collapse.
I hope that this book, in which I discuss XR at some length, will help us in these difficult and necessary thought-and-feeling—processes.
Friday, August 23, 2019
SC195-12
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52145.htm
American Apocalypse: The Government’s Plot to Destabilize the Nation Is Working
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out ... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” — H. L. Mencken
The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation.
No, this is not another conspiracy theory.
Although it is certainly not far-fetched to suggest that the government might be engaged in nefarious activities that run counter to the best interests of the American people, doing so will likely brand me a domestic terrorist under the FBI’s new classification system.
Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.
Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.
The seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.
Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.
Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,”
The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.
Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.
The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely ten short years away—but the future is here ahead of schedule.
We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.
By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence is becoming almost inevitable.
The danger signs are screaming out a message
The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.
According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.
What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.
The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.
And then comes the kicker.
Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”
Drain the swamps.
Surely, we’ve heard that phrase before?
Ah yes.
Emblazoned on t-shirts and signs, shouted at rallies, and used as a rallying cry among Trump supporters, “drain the swamp” became one of Donald Trump’s most-used campaign slogans.
Far from draining the politically corrupt swamps of Washington DC of lobbyists and special interest groups, however, the Trump Administration has further mired us in a sweltering bog of corruption and self-serving tactics.
Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now the government has adopted its own plans for swamp-draining, only it wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.”
And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting?
They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.”
They are “threats.”
They are the “enemy.”
They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).
In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.
In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.
If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.
Suddenly it all begins to make sense.
The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.
The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.
This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.
You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls.
Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.
Before long, no one will even notice the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, the police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns.
It’s happening already.
The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.
Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback.
The Deep State’s tactics are working.
We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.
Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned about the government’s nefarious schemes to lock down the nation.
Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”
In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.
Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.
All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.
And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats.
Seriously, think about it.
The government claims to be protecting us from cyberterrorism, but who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from weapons of mass destruction, but what country has one of the deadliest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and has a history of using them on the rest of the world? The U.S. government. Indeed, which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from foreign armed threats, but who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government. For that matter, where did ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons, including assault rifles and tanks to anti-missile defenses? From the U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting the world from the menace of foreign strongmen, but how did Saddam Hussein build Iraq’s massive arsenal of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical weapons during the 1980s? With help from the U.S. government. And who gave Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry”? The U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from terrorist plots, but what country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.
For that matter, the government claims to be protecting us from nuclear threats, but which is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in wartime? The United States.
Are you getting the picture yet?
The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.
The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.
Just think about it for a minute: Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars.
Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.
Did I say Machiavellian? This is downright evil.
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.
It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.
Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.
I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.
For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.
What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.
As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re already enemies of the state.
You want to change things? Start by rejecting the political labels and the polarizing rhetoric and the “us vs. them” tactics that reduce the mass power of the populace to puny, powerless factions.
Find common ground with your fellow citizens and push back against the government’s brutality, inhumanity, greed, corruption and power grabs.
Be dangerous in the best way possible: by thinking for yourself, by refusing to be silenced, by choosing sensible solutions over political expediency and bureaucracy.
When all is said and done, the solution to what ails this country is really not that complicated: decency, compassion, common sense, generosity balanced by fiscal responsibility, fairness, a commitment to freedom principles, and a firm rejection of the craven, partisan politics of the Beltway elites who have laid the groundwork for the government’s authoritarian coup d’etat....
American Apocalypse: The Government’s Plot to Destabilize the Nation Is Working
“The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out ... without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, intolerable.” — H. L. Mencken
The U.S. government is working hard to destabilize the nation.
No, this is not another conspiracy theory.
Although it is certainly not far-fetched to suggest that the government might be engaged in nefarious activities that run counter to the best interests of the American people, doing so will likely brand me a domestic terrorist under the FBI’s new classification system.
Observe for yourself what is happening right before our eyes.
Domestic terrorism fueled by government entrapment schemes. Civil unrest stoked to dangerous levels by polarizing political rhetoric. A growing intolerance for dissent that challenges the government’s power grabs. Police brutality tacitly encouraged by the executive branch, conveniently overlooked by the legislatures, and granted qualified immunity by the courts. A weakening economy exacerbated by government schemes that favor none but a select few. An overt embrace of domestic surveillance tactics if Congress goes along with the Trump Administration’s request to permanently re-authorize the NSA’s de-activated call records program. Heightened foreign tensions and blowback due to the military industrial complex’s profit-driven quest to police and occupy the globe.
The seeds of chaos are being sown, and it’s the U.S. government that will reap the harvest.
Mark my words, there’s trouble brewing.
Better yet, take a look at “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,”
The training video is only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the government must be prepared to address in the near future through the use of martial law.
Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of locking down the nation and using the military to address political and social problems.
The training video anticipates that all hell will break loose by 2030—that’s barely ten short years away—but the future is here ahead of schedule.
We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.
By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence is becoming almost inevitable.
The danger signs are screaming out a message
The government is anticipating trouble (read: civil unrest), which is code for anything that challenges the government’s authority, wealth and power.
According to the Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. government is grooming its armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.
What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.
The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.
And then comes the kicker.
Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”
Drain the swamps.
Surely, we’ve heard that phrase before?
Ah yes.
Emblazoned on t-shirts and signs, shouted at rallies, and used as a rallying cry among Trump supporters, “drain the swamp” became one of Donald Trump’s most-used campaign slogans.
Far from draining the politically corrupt swamps of Washington DC of lobbyists and special interest groups, however, the Trump Administration has further mired us in a sweltering bog of corruption and self-serving tactics.
Funny how the more things change, the more they stay the same.
Now the government has adopted its own plans for swamp-draining, only it wants to use the military to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.”
And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting?
They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.”
They are “threats.”
They are the “enemy.”
They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).
In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.
In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.
If you haven’t figured it out already, we the people are the have-nots.
Suddenly it all begins to make sense.
The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.
The government is systematically locking down the nation and shifting us into martial law.
This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.
You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls.
Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out. Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities, and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.
Before long, no one will even notice the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, the police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns.
It’s happening already.
The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.
Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback.
The Deep State’s tactics are working.
We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.
Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned about the government’s nefarious schemes to lock down the nation.
Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”
In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.
Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.
Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.
All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.
And then you have the government’s Machiavellian schemes for unleashing all manner of dangers on an unsuspecting populace, then demanding additional powers in order to protect “we the people” from the threats.
Seriously, think about it.
The government claims to be protecting us from cyberterrorism, but who is the biggest black market buyer and stockpiler of cyberweapons (weaponized malware that can be used to hack into computer systems, spy on citizens, and destabilize vast computer networks)? The U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from weapons of mass destruction, but what country has one of the deadliest arsenals of weapons of mass destruction and has a history of using them on the rest of the world? The U.S. government. Indeed, which country has a history of secretly testing out dangerous weapons and technologies on its own citizens? The U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from foreign armed threats, but who is the largest weapons manufacturer and exporter in the world, such that they are literally arming the world? The U.S. government. For that matter, where did ISIS get many of their deadliest weapons, including assault rifles and tanks to anti-missile defenses? From the U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting the world from the menace of foreign strongmen, but how did Saddam Hussein build Iraq’s massive arsenal of tanks, planes, missiles, and chemical weapons during the 1980s? With help from the U.S. government. And who gave Osama bin Laden and al-Qaida “access to a fortune in covert funding and top-level combat weaponry”? The U.S. government.
The government claims to be protecting us from terrorist plots, but what country has a pattern and practice of entrapment that involves targeting vulnerable individuals, feeding them with the propaganda, know-how and weapons intended to turn them into terrorists, and then arresting them as part of an elaborately orchestrated counterterrorism sting? The U.S. government.
For that matter, the government claims to be protecting us from nuclear threats, but which is the only country to ever use a nuclear weapon in wartime? The United States.
Are you getting the picture yet?
The U.S. government isn’t protecting us from terrorism.
The U.S. government is creating the terror. It is, in fact, the source of the terror.
Just think about it for a minute: Cyberwarfare. Terrorism. Bio-chemical attacks. The nuclear arms race. Surveillance. The drug wars.
Almost every national security threat that the government has claimed greater powers in order to fight—all the while undermining the liberties of the American citizenry—has been manufactured in one way or another by the government.
Did I say Machiavellian? This is downright evil.
We’re not dealing with a government that exists to serve its people, protect their liberties and ensure their happiness. Rather, these are the diabolical machinations of a make-works program carried out on an epic scale whose only purpose is to keep the powers-that-be permanently (and profitably) employed.
It’s time to wake up and stop being deceived by government propaganda.
Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.
I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.
I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.
Be warned: in the future envisioned by the government, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.
For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist.
What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, and that “we the people” would become enemy #1.
As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re already enemies of the state.
You want to change things? Start by rejecting the political labels and the polarizing rhetoric and the “us vs. them” tactics that reduce the mass power of the populace to puny, powerless factions.
Find common ground with your fellow citizens and push back against the government’s brutality, inhumanity, greed, corruption and power grabs.
Be dangerous in the best way possible: by thinking for yourself, by refusing to be silenced, by choosing sensible solutions over political expediency and bureaucracy.
When all is said and done, the solution to what ails this country is really not that complicated: decency, compassion, common sense, generosity balanced by fiscal responsibility, fairness, a commitment to freedom principles, and a firm rejection of the craven, partisan politics of the Beltway elites who have laid the groundwork for the government’s authoritarian coup d’etat....
Thursday, August 22, 2019
SC195-11
https://www.globalresearch.ca/saints-sinners-and-hypocrites/5686669
Saints, Sinners and Hypocrites
In today’s climate of increasing Neo Nazi thought and behavior in Europe and here at home, a must see film is director Marc Rotthemund’s Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005).
Sophie Scholl was a member of the White Rose, an anti Nazi resistance group within Germany during the Third Reich.
To see she and her brother, students who cared more about that Nazi plague than just getting good grades, having their heads cut off, unleashed a ‘monsoon of tears’ onto my face. I don’t think I had even cried that intensely after my loving Mom and Dad had passed on. The immense bravery of those Germans in the White Rose is something that every middle or high school civics class should cover along with the story of Chelsea Manning.
During the height of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan she, as PFC first class Bradley Manning, leaked documents revealing horrific and underhanded actions by our government. Manning sent over to Wiki Leaks the (now) famous ‘Apache Helicopter’ massacre of 20 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007. In the audio of the event, one can hear the crew acting as if it was some surreal video game that kids play. This was only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ to what the Bush/Cheney Cabal was orchestrating in one of the most horrific, illegal and immoral actions by our country. The damage continues today with the advent of what is labeled ISIS, a fanatical Islamic group that would never had taken root but for our pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq. Ms Manning, who then had to spend years in jail and suffer continued harassment… to this day, is to this writer a Saint!! Why? Because, like Sophie Scholl, she cared!
We need not go into the depths of Dante’s Inferno to find sinners like our very own presidents. From Eisenhower signing off on assassinations during the Cold War, to Nixon and later on to Reagan and then Bush Sr. doing the same, with Clinton following suit with his NATO war on Serbia, and then of course the three presidents who followed them… it never ceases! The objective study of world history will one day reveal how Bush Jr., Obama and now Trump all carry the water for the infamous Military Industrial Empire, parent of the Deep State.
The Bush/Cheney Cabal kicked over that ‘hornet’s nest’ in the Middle East, and then Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama increased drone missile murders by ten times, and finally Trump continued the feeding frenzy by giving our nation’s teat to the MIE to suck on…
‘And the hits just keep on coming!’ What is a sin if not what all those presidents have done… or should I say authorized? By now, many of us should finally know who they really work for. All the presidential libraries and all the foundations they stick their names on mean jack shit at the end of the day. Ike could have stood on his head and spit out wooden nickels in January, 1961, and it would not alter what he allowed those two Dulles brothers to do in his name for eight years! Of course, off all of those sinners, he at least finally showed some true remorse. The rest of them… nothing! Big Money & Big Power have always influenced our political system and our leaders. The sin of it all is the overwhelming number of my fellow citizens who , unlike Sophie Scholl and Chelsea Manning… do not care!
Finally, to be a hypocrite is right up there with being a sinner. Webster’s dictionary has it as ‘The false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion’. I guess the dictionary creators had in mind politicians and religious leaders. How ‘right on’ can one get? Imagine all those mostly Republican politicos who can rail on and on about ‘Family values’ and then sanction the murder of families through phony wars?
The minions who follow these pied pipers are keen to hang the flag on their garages and lapels, not caring in whose name that flag destroys overseas. How about those evangelical hypocrites who call abortion doctors murderers and women who have one as ‘Going to hell for killing babies’? Then they don’t give a rat’s ass about the missiles and bombs that our military uses to kill pregnant mothers and little babies under the banner of Collateral Damage. As if Jesus is right there pressing the bomb button! How about the myriad of elected officials, who have the best health care that WE TAXPAYERS subsidize, standing there shoveling out the BS as to why we ALL cannot have what they have?
Like with ‘Smirking Chimp’ Bill Clinton they all ‘Feel our pain’, regardless of which of these two corrupt parties they belong to. Yes, there are but a few on the Democratic side, like those they call ‘The Squad’, who see through the crap and want things to change for the better. Alas, the empire will just not allow it… Unless enough of us stand out there and be even a bit like Miss Scholl and Ms. Manning.
Saints, Sinners and Hypocrites
In today’s climate of increasing Neo Nazi thought and behavior in Europe and here at home, a must see film is director Marc Rotthemund’s Sophie Scholl: The Final Days (2005).
Sophie Scholl was a member of the White Rose, an anti Nazi resistance group within Germany during the Third Reich.
To see she and her brother, students who cared more about that Nazi plague than just getting good grades, having their heads cut off, unleashed a ‘monsoon of tears’ onto my face. I don’t think I had even cried that intensely after my loving Mom and Dad had passed on. The immense bravery of those Germans in the White Rose is something that every middle or high school civics class should cover along with the story of Chelsea Manning.
During the height of the occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan she, as PFC first class Bradley Manning, leaked documents revealing horrific and underhanded actions by our government. Manning sent over to Wiki Leaks the (now) famous ‘Apache Helicopter’ massacre of 20 unarmed civilians in Baghdad in 2007. In the audio of the event, one can hear the crew acting as if it was some surreal video game that kids play. This was only the ‘tip of the iceberg’ to what the Bush/Cheney Cabal was orchestrating in one of the most horrific, illegal and immoral actions by our country. The damage continues today with the advent of what is labeled ISIS, a fanatical Islamic group that would never had taken root but for our pre-emptive attack and occupation of Iraq. Ms Manning, who then had to spend years in jail and suffer continued harassment… to this day, is to this writer a Saint!! Why? Because, like Sophie Scholl, she cared!
We need not go into the depths of Dante’s Inferno to find sinners like our very own presidents. From Eisenhower signing off on assassinations during the Cold War, to Nixon and later on to Reagan and then Bush Sr. doing the same, with Clinton following suit with his NATO war on Serbia, and then of course the three presidents who followed them… it never ceases! The objective study of world history will one day reveal how Bush Jr., Obama and now Trump all carry the water for the infamous Military Industrial Empire, parent of the Deep State.
The Bush/Cheney Cabal kicked over that ‘hornet’s nest’ in the Middle East, and then Nobel Peace Prize winner Obama increased drone missile murders by ten times, and finally Trump continued the feeding frenzy by giving our nation’s teat to the MIE to suck on…
‘And the hits just keep on coming!’ What is a sin if not what all those presidents have done… or should I say authorized? By now, many of us should finally know who they really work for. All the presidential libraries and all the foundations they stick their names on mean jack shit at the end of the day. Ike could have stood on his head and spit out wooden nickels in January, 1961, and it would not alter what he allowed those two Dulles brothers to do in his name for eight years! Of course, off all of those sinners, he at least finally showed some true remorse. The rest of them… nothing! Big Money & Big Power have always influenced our political system and our leaders. The sin of it all is the overwhelming number of my fellow citizens who , unlike Sophie Scholl and Chelsea Manning… do not care!
Finally, to be a hypocrite is right up there with being a sinner. Webster’s dictionary has it as ‘The false assumption of an appearance of virtue or religion’. I guess the dictionary creators had in mind politicians and religious leaders. How ‘right on’ can one get? Imagine all those mostly Republican politicos who can rail on and on about ‘Family values’ and then sanction the murder of families through phony wars?
The minions who follow these pied pipers are keen to hang the flag on their garages and lapels, not caring in whose name that flag destroys overseas. How about those evangelical hypocrites who call abortion doctors murderers and women who have one as ‘Going to hell for killing babies’? Then they don’t give a rat’s ass about the missiles and bombs that our military uses to kill pregnant mothers and little babies under the banner of Collateral Damage. As if Jesus is right there pressing the bomb button! How about the myriad of elected officials, who have the best health care that WE TAXPAYERS subsidize, standing there shoveling out the BS as to why we ALL cannot have what they have?
Like with ‘Smirking Chimp’ Bill Clinton they all ‘Feel our pain’, regardless of which of these two corrupt parties they belong to. Yes, there are but a few on the Democratic side, like those they call ‘The Squad’, who see through the crap and want things to change for the better. Alas, the empire will just not allow it… Unless enough of us stand out there and be even a bit like Miss Scholl and Ms. Manning.
Wednesday, August 21, 2019
SC195-10
https://www.globalresearch.ca/all-along-watchtower-follies-history/5686713
All Along the Watchtower: The Follies of History
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word
-Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower (immortalized by Jimi Hendrix)
Nothing beats the beguiling, stony smiles at the Bayon temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap to plunge us back into history’s vortex, re-imagining how empires, in their endless pursuit of power, rise and fall, usually because they eventually get the very war they had sought to avoid.
The Bayon was built as a state temple at the end of the 12th century by the undisputed superstar of Khmer empires, Jayavarman VII. Its magical narrative reliefs convey a mix of history and mythology while depicting daily life in Khmer society.
We still don’t know today the identity of the faces shown on the temple’s giant stone carvings. They could be a representation of Brahma, or of Jayavarman himself – a practicing Buddhist. What we do know is that the glorious Khmer empire – incomparable in art and architecture, and even benign in the sense that the mandate for power was based on the king’s relationship with the gods, started to fade after the 15th century, dismembered by war against the Thai and later the Vietnamese.
Stony smiles “all along the watchtower”, displayed as a living commentary on the rise and fall of empires, could easily connect, geopolitically, with a touch of Buddhist impermanence, to our turbulent times of Hybrid War. And to the current American empire.
It’s always amusing to observe how US think tanks, such as CIA outlet Stratfor, constantly celebrate success in undermining Russia via this strategy.
Hybrid War on Russia was engineered in 2014 on two fronts: ordering the Persian Gulf petro-poodles to crash the oil price while imposing sanctions after Russia opposed the coup – actually a color revolution – in Kiev. Hybrid War was engineered at a Deep State level as a tool to try to smash Russia’s outstanding recovery since Vladimir Putin was elected to the presidency in 2000. The undisguised Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski-style goal with the Kiev coup was to draw Russia into an Afghan-style partisan war.
Of course, Russia suffered economically – but then slowly recovered, diversifying production and boosting its agricultural capacity. Yet hybrid warfare always ensures that once economic hardship is engineered, a government necessarily becomes unpopular. Then fakes and traitors are unleashed: Alexei Navalny in Russia, or “protests” in Hong Kong that the Deep State dreams would lead to an uprising in Beijing.
A small, radical nucleus of agents provocateurs in Hong Kong, using copycat methods from the Maidan in Kiev, sticks to a single-minded road map: force Beijing to commit a Tiananmen 2.0, thus elevating the all-out demonization of China to the next level.
The inevitable consequence, according to the privileged scenario, would be the “West”, as well as vast sectors of the Global South, boycotting the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, a complex, multi-layered strategy of economic integration that has expanded well beyond Eurasia.
Hong Kong, an irrelevant asset
In Hong Kong, everything is about money and then, on a secondary level, about China.
China’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of $9,700. Hong Kong’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of nearly $49,000 – higher than Germany and Japan. It is no wonder that no one in Hong Kong wants to be “like China.” So money is a key factor for Hong Kongers to fear “Chinese domination.” Only a few outsiders, such as Thai economist Chartchai Parasuk, highlight this.
Hong Kong is becoming increasingly irrelevant for China. At the time of the World Bank-lauded “Asian tigers,” in the early to mid-1990s, Hong Kong’s share of China’s GDP was a hefty 27%. Today it’s a paltry 2.7%.
Hong Kong has been losing importance to China. File pic: Creative Commons/ Brian H.Y.
Capital has been steadily moving to Singapore, whose annual GDP per capita is now even higher than Hong Kong’s. Real wages are now lower than at the start of the decade. And wealthy Chinese mainlanders are buying everything in sight, thus excluding the average Hong Konger from an upwardly mobile trajectory.
Up to now, Hong Kong’s allure, for China, was its unique position as a free-trade mega-port, the proverbial gateway to the mainland, and one of the world’s top financial markets. But that’s increasingly in the past. Shenzhen, across the border, is already China’s top tech hub, and Shanghai is being slowly but surely configured as the top financial center.
China is also being hit, hybrid war-style, with a rolling trade war plus sanctions. The ultimate American imperial “dream” is to engineer a Chinese vassal. This has nothing to do with trade. There’s no logic of avoiding a trade deficit with China only to see the same products produced in Thailand or India. What’s goin’ on is rather hybrid war all over the spectrum: attempts to destabilize and possibly defeat Russia, China and Iran, the three key hubs of Eurasia integration.
New hybrid politics
The Hybrid War strategy has created our current state of financial warfare. And that inevitably implies blowback. The weaponization of the US dollar is leading Russia, China and Iran as well as Turkey, Syria and Venezuela to seriously turbo-charge their drive towards alternatives. They could be anchored to a basket of commodities, or it could be all about gold. Wily investor Jim Rickards defines Russia, China, Iran and Turkey as the “New Axis of Gold.”
Everything that happens geopolitically and geoeconomically in our turbulent times has to do with the US’ do-or-die imperial struggle against the Russia-China strategic partnership. Only total “victory,” by any means necessary, would assure the continuation of what could be defined as the New American Century.
And that brings us to the necessity of reconstructing Clausewitz’s axiom, according to which, originally, war is a continuation of politics by other means.
Clausewitz argued that war is a real political instrument. Now, Clausewitz remixed should read: Hybrid War is Politics by Other Means.
The means now go way beyond conventional war, as in Khmer empire times. They mix irregular and cyber war; fake news; lawfare (as in Brazil); electoral intervention; and even “diplomacy” (of the gunboat or economic blockade variety, as applied against Iran and Venezuela).
All Along the Watchtower, the song, as written by Dylan and delivered by Hendrix as a hurricane approached, is an ominous portent of Apocalypse Now. Hummed along the stones of the Bayon smiling cryptically at us out of centuries of impermanence-defying history, it seems so fitting for our times of Hybrid War.
Watch out: Pale riders are approaching, as the wind begins to howl.
All Along the Watchtower: The Follies of History
There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There’s too much confusion
I can’t get no relief
Business men, they drink my wine
Plowmen dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word
-Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower (immortalized by Jimi Hendrix)
Nothing beats the beguiling, stony smiles at the Bayon temple near Angkor Wat in Cambodia’s Siem Reap to plunge us back into history’s vortex, re-imagining how empires, in their endless pursuit of power, rise and fall, usually because they eventually get the very war they had sought to avoid.
The Bayon was built as a state temple at the end of the 12th century by the undisputed superstar of Khmer empires, Jayavarman VII. Its magical narrative reliefs convey a mix of history and mythology while depicting daily life in Khmer society.
We still don’t know today the identity of the faces shown on the temple’s giant stone carvings. They could be a representation of Brahma, or of Jayavarman himself – a practicing Buddhist. What we do know is that the glorious Khmer empire – incomparable in art and architecture, and even benign in the sense that the mandate for power was based on the king’s relationship with the gods, started to fade after the 15th century, dismembered by war against the Thai and later the Vietnamese.
Stony smiles “all along the watchtower”, displayed as a living commentary on the rise and fall of empires, could easily connect, geopolitically, with a touch of Buddhist impermanence, to our turbulent times of Hybrid War. And to the current American empire.
It’s always amusing to observe how US think tanks, such as CIA outlet Stratfor, constantly celebrate success in undermining Russia via this strategy.
Hybrid War on Russia was engineered in 2014 on two fronts: ordering the Persian Gulf petro-poodles to crash the oil price while imposing sanctions after Russia opposed the coup – actually a color revolution – in Kiev. Hybrid War was engineered at a Deep State level as a tool to try to smash Russia’s outstanding recovery since Vladimir Putin was elected to the presidency in 2000. The undisguised Zbigniew “Grand Chessboard” Brzezinski-style goal with the Kiev coup was to draw Russia into an Afghan-style partisan war.
Of course, Russia suffered economically – but then slowly recovered, diversifying production and boosting its agricultural capacity. Yet hybrid warfare always ensures that once economic hardship is engineered, a government necessarily becomes unpopular. Then fakes and traitors are unleashed: Alexei Navalny in Russia, or “protests” in Hong Kong that the Deep State dreams would lead to an uprising in Beijing.
A small, radical nucleus of agents provocateurs in Hong Kong, using copycat methods from the Maidan in Kiev, sticks to a single-minded road map: force Beijing to commit a Tiananmen 2.0, thus elevating the all-out demonization of China to the next level.
The inevitable consequence, according to the privileged scenario, would be the “West”, as well as vast sectors of the Global South, boycotting the New Silk Roads, or Belt and Road Initiative, a complex, multi-layered strategy of economic integration that has expanded well beyond Eurasia.
Hong Kong, an irrelevant asset
In Hong Kong, everything is about money and then, on a secondary level, about China.
China’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of $9,700. Hong Kong’s annual GDP per capita is in the range of nearly $49,000 – higher than Germany and Japan. It is no wonder that no one in Hong Kong wants to be “like China.” So money is a key factor for Hong Kongers to fear “Chinese domination.” Only a few outsiders, such as Thai economist Chartchai Parasuk, highlight this.
Hong Kong is becoming increasingly irrelevant for China. At the time of the World Bank-lauded “Asian tigers,” in the early to mid-1990s, Hong Kong’s share of China’s GDP was a hefty 27%. Today it’s a paltry 2.7%.
Hong Kong has been losing importance to China. File pic: Creative Commons/ Brian H.Y.
Capital has been steadily moving to Singapore, whose annual GDP per capita is now even higher than Hong Kong’s. Real wages are now lower than at the start of the decade. And wealthy Chinese mainlanders are buying everything in sight, thus excluding the average Hong Konger from an upwardly mobile trajectory.
Up to now, Hong Kong’s allure, for China, was its unique position as a free-trade mega-port, the proverbial gateway to the mainland, and one of the world’s top financial markets. But that’s increasingly in the past. Shenzhen, across the border, is already China’s top tech hub, and Shanghai is being slowly but surely configured as the top financial center.
China is also being hit, hybrid war-style, with a rolling trade war plus sanctions. The ultimate American imperial “dream” is to engineer a Chinese vassal. This has nothing to do with trade. There’s no logic of avoiding a trade deficit with China only to see the same products produced in Thailand or India. What’s goin’ on is rather hybrid war all over the spectrum: attempts to destabilize and possibly defeat Russia, China and Iran, the three key hubs of Eurasia integration.
New hybrid politics
The Hybrid War strategy has created our current state of financial warfare. And that inevitably implies blowback. The weaponization of the US dollar is leading Russia, China and Iran as well as Turkey, Syria and Venezuela to seriously turbo-charge their drive towards alternatives. They could be anchored to a basket of commodities, or it could be all about gold. Wily investor Jim Rickards defines Russia, China, Iran and Turkey as the “New Axis of Gold.”
Everything that happens geopolitically and geoeconomically in our turbulent times has to do with the US’ do-or-die imperial struggle against the Russia-China strategic partnership. Only total “victory,” by any means necessary, would assure the continuation of what could be defined as the New American Century.
And that brings us to the necessity of reconstructing Clausewitz’s axiom, according to which, originally, war is a continuation of politics by other means.
Clausewitz argued that war is a real political instrument. Now, Clausewitz remixed should read: Hybrid War is Politics by Other Means.
The means now go way beyond conventional war, as in Khmer empire times. They mix irregular and cyber war; fake news; lawfare (as in Brazil); electoral intervention; and even “diplomacy” (of the gunboat or economic blockade variety, as applied against Iran and Venezuela).
All Along the Watchtower, the song, as written by Dylan and delivered by Hendrix as a hurricane approached, is an ominous portent of Apocalypse Now. Hummed along the stones of the Bayon smiling cryptically at us out of centuries of impermanence-defying history, it seems so fitting for our times of Hybrid War.
Watch out: Pale riders are approaching, as the wind begins to howl.
Tuesday, August 20, 2019
SC195-9
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52125.htm
How the world learned to stop worrying and ignore Trump
In the age of Trump, American diplomacy seems to have died. After two years in the White House, the US president has alienated countless world leaders, including close allies.
Trump’s free-wheeling, reprobate style has caused Washington foreign policy establishment to shudder, decrying how his presidency has damaged the United States’ world standing.
The latest spat over his desire to “buy” Greenland, as if it were a piece of real estate, raises public questions over Trump’s sanity. The embarrassment among the urbane American political class from having such an uncouth president is acute.
Diplomacy and mediation require respect, historical knowledge, and empathy – the latter being the ability to see the perspective of others without necessarily agreeing with them. Trump shows none of these qualities. And with the diplomatic corps having been gutted of personnel during his presidency, there is little recourse for wiser counsel to offset this president’s boorish, bullying manner.
Trump’s mercurial character makes him unreliable as a partner. He is prone to turning nasty on a dime even to people whom he has at one time lauded as being friendly with. Witness his erratic behavior towards Chinese President Xi Jinping or French leader Emmanuel Macron. Trump seems to have no brake for his big mouth, or care about the consequences.
When he was hosting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Oval Office earlier this month, Trump announced that Indian leader Narendra Modi had requested his mediation over the long-running Kashmir dispute. It was an explosive claim by Trump, which Modi’s office vehemently denied, as India has repeatedly refused to entertain any international intervention over the territory which would dilute its authority. Trump’s clumsy interpolation has triggered the rush by India to tighten its control over Kashmir and the worrying escalation of cross-border shooting between Indian and Pakistani troops.
The two nuclear-armed states have gone to war on two occasions before over Kashmir. Trump’s cack-handed offer of “mediation” has brought the danger of war to a new threshold.
The trouble with Trump is not just his propensity for making stuff up, or more bluntly, lying. It is also his woeful ignorance of international affairs and history. Such ignorance for the commander-in-chief of the world’s biggest military power is frightful. Never mind foreign affairs, this president doesn’t even know the history of his own nation. During his 4th of July address when he described American revolutionary forces “taking over airports” from the British colonial power in the 1770s War of Independence.
His supposed showpiece for international peace mediation concerning Israel and Palestine has turned out like of lot Trump’s initiatives, empty bluster and hype signifying nothing. The so-called “deal of the century” is an astounding betrayal of Palestinian rights and an equally shocking endorsement of expanding illegal Israeli occupation.
Trump’s call last week for US Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Omar Ilhan to be banned from visiting the West Bank territory was an egregious display of how ignorant and biased this White House is on a key source of conflict in the Middle East.
No wonder Palestinian leaders refuse to engage with the Trump administration, in admission that US “mediation” is utterly futile and indeed injurious to their desire for nationhood.
In truth, decades of US diplomacy and mediation in the Middle East have been in effect futile for bringing about a just and peaceful settlement. Administrations from Carter, to Clinton, to Obama, have been adept at paying empathetic lip service to Palestinian grievances. But the purported peace efforts have delivered nothing for Palestinians because fundamentally Washington sponsors the Israeli occupation. What Trump is doing is just making the American incompetence at diplomacy explicit. That’s why elite US establishment figures are vexed by Trump. He is spoiling the carefully-crafted image of America’s supposed moral authority and world leadership.
Trump’s lack of general world knowledge seems to know no bounds. For a time his maverick personality can seem to work a charm on foreign counterparts. But eventually, the titanic tin ear of this real-estate-mogul-turned-president leads to trouble.
His brazen calls for Britain to go for a “hard Brexit” from Europe is further alienating US relations with Europe, particularly Germany. German media reports this week deplore how relations between Washington and Berlin are at an all-time low. That has been exacerbated by Trump’s relentless haranguing for not spending more on military, as if 50,000 US troops stationed in Germany are there for chivalrous protection of the country.
Trump’s fulsome backing for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s no-deal departure from the European Union is another reckless intervention. The consequences of political and economic disruption on the island of Ireland as a result of a hard border potentially returning are worrying, yet Trump talks with breathtaking ignorance about how the US shares a common “border problem.”
Even Trump’s one seeming success regarding his surprise engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is far from certain. The resumption of North Korean missile tests last week, and the North’s denunciation of continued US-South Korean military maneuvers, could easily see Trump’s partial progress on engaging with Kim unravel. The recurring problem is again Trump having no credibility or substance to sustain whatever mediation he endeavors in.
There appears to be very few nations willing to give Washington the time of day owing to Trump’s talent for annoying everyone and showing no scruples. It is significant that after several weeks of calling for an international naval coalition to ostensibly protect commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf from “Iranian aggression,” most nations have balked at getting involved. Britain and Israel are the only two which have shown an interest (for their own self-serving ingratiation with Trump). Even longtime US allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seem wary of following Trump’s dubious leadership to the abyss.
The G7 summit later this week in Biarritz will be a telling spectacle of how isolated Trump has become on the world stage. Previous gatherings have shown disregard and peevishness from other leaders. The forthcoming meeting promises to be even more cringeworthy because of Trump’s increasingly tarnished image.
Trump’s overbearing egotism and mental meltdown make him a person whom others are learning to ignore.
How the world learned to stop worrying and ignore Trump
In the age of Trump, American diplomacy seems to have died. After two years in the White House, the US president has alienated countless world leaders, including close allies.
Trump’s free-wheeling, reprobate style has caused Washington foreign policy establishment to shudder, decrying how his presidency has damaged the United States’ world standing.
The latest spat over his desire to “buy” Greenland, as if it were a piece of real estate, raises public questions over Trump’s sanity. The embarrassment among the urbane American political class from having such an uncouth president is acute.
Diplomacy and mediation require respect, historical knowledge, and empathy – the latter being the ability to see the perspective of others without necessarily agreeing with them. Trump shows none of these qualities. And with the diplomatic corps having been gutted of personnel during his presidency, there is little recourse for wiser counsel to offset this president’s boorish, bullying manner.
Trump’s mercurial character makes him unreliable as a partner. He is prone to turning nasty on a dime even to people whom he has at one time lauded as being friendly with. Witness his erratic behavior towards Chinese President Xi Jinping or French leader Emmanuel Macron. Trump seems to have no brake for his big mouth, or care about the consequences.
When he was hosting Pakistan’s Prime Minister Imran Khan in the Oval Office earlier this month, Trump announced that Indian leader Narendra Modi had requested his mediation over the long-running Kashmir dispute. It was an explosive claim by Trump, which Modi’s office vehemently denied, as India has repeatedly refused to entertain any international intervention over the territory which would dilute its authority. Trump’s clumsy interpolation has triggered the rush by India to tighten its control over Kashmir and the worrying escalation of cross-border shooting between Indian and Pakistani troops.
The two nuclear-armed states have gone to war on two occasions before over Kashmir. Trump’s cack-handed offer of “mediation” has brought the danger of war to a new threshold.
The trouble with Trump is not just his propensity for making stuff up, or more bluntly, lying. It is also his woeful ignorance of international affairs and history. Such ignorance for the commander-in-chief of the world’s biggest military power is frightful. Never mind foreign affairs, this president doesn’t even know the history of his own nation. During his 4th of July address when he described American revolutionary forces “taking over airports” from the British colonial power in the 1770s War of Independence.
His supposed showpiece for international peace mediation concerning Israel and Palestine has turned out like of lot Trump’s initiatives, empty bluster and hype signifying nothing. The so-called “deal of the century” is an astounding betrayal of Palestinian rights and an equally shocking endorsement of expanding illegal Israeli occupation.
Trump’s call last week for US Congresswomen Rashida Tlaib and Omar Ilhan to be banned from visiting the West Bank territory was an egregious display of how ignorant and biased this White House is on a key source of conflict in the Middle East.
No wonder Palestinian leaders refuse to engage with the Trump administration, in admission that US “mediation” is utterly futile and indeed injurious to their desire for nationhood.
In truth, decades of US diplomacy and mediation in the Middle East have been in effect futile for bringing about a just and peaceful settlement. Administrations from Carter, to Clinton, to Obama, have been adept at paying empathetic lip service to Palestinian grievances. But the purported peace efforts have delivered nothing for Palestinians because fundamentally Washington sponsors the Israeli occupation. What Trump is doing is just making the American incompetence at diplomacy explicit. That’s why elite US establishment figures are vexed by Trump. He is spoiling the carefully-crafted image of America’s supposed moral authority and world leadership.
Trump’s lack of general world knowledge seems to know no bounds. For a time his maverick personality can seem to work a charm on foreign counterparts. But eventually, the titanic tin ear of this real-estate-mogul-turned-president leads to trouble.
His brazen calls for Britain to go for a “hard Brexit” from Europe is further alienating US relations with Europe, particularly Germany. German media reports this week deplore how relations between Washington and Berlin are at an all-time low. That has been exacerbated by Trump’s relentless haranguing for not spending more on military, as if 50,000 US troops stationed in Germany are there for chivalrous protection of the country.
Trump’s fulsome backing for British Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s no-deal departure from the European Union is another reckless intervention. The consequences of political and economic disruption on the island of Ireland as a result of a hard border potentially returning are worrying, yet Trump talks with breathtaking ignorance about how the US shares a common “border problem.”
Even Trump’s one seeming success regarding his surprise engagement with North Korean leader Kim Jong-un is far from certain. The resumption of North Korean missile tests last week, and the North’s denunciation of continued US-South Korean military maneuvers, could easily see Trump’s partial progress on engaging with Kim unravel. The recurring problem is again Trump having no credibility or substance to sustain whatever mediation he endeavors in.
There appears to be very few nations willing to give Washington the time of day owing to Trump’s talent for annoying everyone and showing no scruples. It is significant that after several weeks of calling for an international naval coalition to ostensibly protect commercial shipping in the Persian Gulf from “Iranian aggression,” most nations have balked at getting involved. Britain and Israel are the only two which have shown an interest (for their own self-serving ingratiation with Trump). Even longtime US allies like Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates seem wary of following Trump’s dubious leadership to the abyss.
The G7 summit later this week in Biarritz will be a telling spectacle of how isolated Trump has become on the world stage. Previous gatherings have shown disregard and peevishness from other leaders. The forthcoming meeting promises to be even more cringeworthy because of Trump’s increasingly tarnished image.
Trump’s overbearing egotism and mental meltdown make him a person whom others are learning to ignore.
Monday, August 19, 2019
SC195-8
https://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/there-is-no-normal/
There Is No Normal
The wheel of time rolls forward, never retracing its path, but because it is a wheel, and we are riding in it, a persistent illusion persuades us that the landscape is recognizably the same, and that our doings within the regular turning of the seasons seem comfortably normal. There is no normal.
There is for us, at this moment in history, an especially harsh turning (so Strauss and Howe would say) as our journey takes the exit ramp out of the high energy era into the next reality of a long emergency. The human hive-mind senses that something is different, but at the same moment we’re unable to imagine changing all our exquisitely tuned arrangements — especially the thinking class in charge of all that, self-enchanted with pixeled fantasies. The dissonance over this is driving America crazy.
The wheel hit a deep pothole in 2008 turning onto the off-ramp and has been wobbling badly ever since. 2008 was a warning that going through the motions isn’t enough to sustain a sense of purpose, either nationally or for individuals trying to keep their lives together ever more desperately. The cultural memory of the confident years, when we seemed to know what we were doing, and where we were going, dogs us and mocks us.
The young adults feel all that most acutely. The pain prompts them to want to deconstruct that memory. “No, it didn’t happen that way,” they are saying. All those stories about the founding of this society — of those Great Men with their powdered hair-doos writing the national charter, and the remarkable experience of the past 200-odd years — are wrong! There was nothing wonderful about it. The whole thing was a swindle!
They are feeling the wheel’s turning most painfully, since they know they will see many more turnings in the years ahead, and the direction of the wheel is vectoring downward for them. The bottom-line is less of everything, not more. That is a new ethos here in America and it’s hardly comforting: Less income, fewer comforts, more literal hardships, fewer consolations for the universal difficulty of being alive. No wonder they are angry.
It’s this simple. We landed in the New World five hundred years ago. It was full of good things that human beings had barely begun to exploit, laid out like a banquet. There was plenty of good virgin soil for growing food, the best timber in the world, clean rivers and great lakes, ores full of iron, gold, and silver, and down deep a bonanza of coal and oil to drive the wheel through very flush times. The past century was particularly supercharged, the oil years.
Imagine living through the very start of all that, the blinding, fantastic newness of modernity! Look back at the stories and images around Teddy Roosevelt and his times, and the confidence of that era just astonishes you, An emergent cavalcade of wonders: electricity, telephones, railroads, subways, skyscrapers! And in a few more years movies, cars, airplanes, radio. Even the backstage wonders of the day were astonishments: household plumbing for all, running hot water, municipal water and sewer systems, refrigeration, tractors! It’s hard to conceive how much these developments changed the human experience of daily life.
Even the traumas of the 20th century’s world wars did not crush that sense of amazing progress, at least not in North America, spared the wars’ mighty wreckage. The post-war confidence of American society achieved a level of in-your-face laughable hubris — see the USA in your Chevrolet! — until John Kennedy was shot down, and after that the delirious moonshot euphoria steadily gave way to corrosive skepticism, anxiety, acrimony, and enmity. My generation, booming into adulthood, naively thought they could fix all that with Earth Day, tofu, and computers, and keep the great wheel rolling down into an even more glorious cybernetic nirvana.
Fakeout. That’s not where the wheel is going. We borrowed all we possibly could from the future to pretend that the system was still working, and now the future is at the door like a re-po man come to take away both the car and the house. The financial scene is an excellent analog to our collective psychology. Its workings depend on the simple faith that its workings work. So, it is easy to imagine what happens when that faith wavers.
We’re on the verge of a lot of things coming apart: supply lines, revenue streams, international agreements, political assumptions, promises to do this and that. We have no idea how to keep it together on the downside. We don’t even want to think about it. The best we can do for the moment is pretend that the downside doesn’t exist. And meanwhile, fight both for social justice and to make America great again, two seemingly noble ideas, both exercises in futility. The wheel is still turning and the change of season soon upon us. What will you do?
There Is No Normal
The wheel of time rolls forward, never retracing its path, but because it is a wheel, and we are riding in it, a persistent illusion persuades us that the landscape is recognizably the same, and that our doings within the regular turning of the seasons seem comfortably normal. There is no normal.
There is for us, at this moment in history, an especially harsh turning (so Strauss and Howe would say) as our journey takes the exit ramp out of the high energy era into the next reality of a long emergency. The human hive-mind senses that something is different, but at the same moment we’re unable to imagine changing all our exquisitely tuned arrangements — especially the thinking class in charge of all that, self-enchanted with pixeled fantasies. The dissonance over this is driving America crazy.
The wheel hit a deep pothole in 2008 turning onto the off-ramp and has been wobbling badly ever since. 2008 was a warning that going through the motions isn’t enough to sustain a sense of purpose, either nationally or for individuals trying to keep their lives together ever more desperately. The cultural memory of the confident years, when we seemed to know what we were doing, and where we were going, dogs us and mocks us.
The young adults feel all that most acutely. The pain prompts them to want to deconstruct that memory. “No, it didn’t happen that way,” they are saying. All those stories about the founding of this society — of those Great Men with their powdered hair-doos writing the national charter, and the remarkable experience of the past 200-odd years — are wrong! There was nothing wonderful about it. The whole thing was a swindle!
They are feeling the wheel’s turning most painfully, since they know they will see many more turnings in the years ahead, and the direction of the wheel is vectoring downward for them. The bottom-line is less of everything, not more. That is a new ethos here in America and it’s hardly comforting: Less income, fewer comforts, more literal hardships, fewer consolations for the universal difficulty of being alive. No wonder they are angry.
It’s this simple. We landed in the New World five hundred years ago. It was full of good things that human beings had barely begun to exploit, laid out like a banquet. There was plenty of good virgin soil for growing food, the best timber in the world, clean rivers and great lakes, ores full of iron, gold, and silver, and down deep a bonanza of coal and oil to drive the wheel through very flush times. The past century was particularly supercharged, the oil years.
Imagine living through the very start of all that, the blinding, fantastic newness of modernity! Look back at the stories and images around Teddy Roosevelt and his times, and the confidence of that era just astonishes you, An emergent cavalcade of wonders: electricity, telephones, railroads, subways, skyscrapers! And in a few more years movies, cars, airplanes, radio. Even the backstage wonders of the day were astonishments: household plumbing for all, running hot water, municipal water and sewer systems, refrigeration, tractors! It’s hard to conceive how much these developments changed the human experience of daily life.
Even the traumas of the 20th century’s world wars did not crush that sense of amazing progress, at least not in North America, spared the wars’ mighty wreckage. The post-war confidence of American society achieved a level of in-your-face laughable hubris — see the USA in your Chevrolet! — until John Kennedy was shot down, and after that the delirious moonshot euphoria steadily gave way to corrosive skepticism, anxiety, acrimony, and enmity. My generation, booming into adulthood, naively thought they could fix all that with Earth Day, tofu, and computers, and keep the great wheel rolling down into an even more glorious cybernetic nirvana.
Fakeout. That’s not where the wheel is going. We borrowed all we possibly could from the future to pretend that the system was still working, and now the future is at the door like a re-po man come to take away both the car and the house. The financial scene is an excellent analog to our collective psychology. Its workings depend on the simple faith that its workings work. So, it is easy to imagine what happens when that faith wavers.
We’re on the verge of a lot of things coming apart: supply lines, revenue streams, international agreements, political assumptions, promises to do this and that. We have no idea how to keep it together on the downside. We don’t even want to think about it. The best we can do for the moment is pretend that the downside doesn’t exist. And meanwhile, fight both for social justice and to make America great again, two seemingly noble ideas, both exercises in futility. The wheel is still turning and the change of season soon upon us. What will you do?
Sunday, August 18, 2019
SC195-7
https://srsroccoreport.com/the-u-s-corn-ethanol-boondoggle-producing-1-million-barrels-per-day-of-unprofitable-energy/
THE U.S. CORN ETHANOL BOONDOGGLE: Producing 1 Million Barrels Per Day Of Unprofitable Energy
The U.S. Corn Ethanol Industry, the largest in the world, is now losing a serious amount of money producing unprofitable biofuel. While the situation for the ethanol producers was bad in 2018, due to losses stemming from falling margins, it’s even worse this year. This has prompted one of the country’s largest ethanol producers, ADM – Archer Daniels Midland, to sell some of its ethanol assets with the possibility of spinning off its entire ethanol business operation.
While higher corn prices and falling revenues have negatively impacted the U.S. Ethanol Industry recently, that is only a small part of a much bigger problem. You see, the EROI (Energy Returned On Investment) for corn-based ethanol, is so low, there’s virtually little if any, net energy produced from the 16 billion gallons of the biofuel supplied by the U.S. industry last year… or any year prior.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please understand my analysis of the U.S. ethanol industry is focused at the macro-economic level and is not directed at the individuals or companies who are doing the best to their abilities. The main problem as I see it is that the leadership today is not providing the market with wise advice on our energy situation. Instead, we are ignorantly heading over the energy cliff without a care in the world. Unfortunately, this will end badly
That being said, according to the Alternative Fuels Data Center, U.S. ethanol production has more than doubled from 6.5 billion gallons in 2007 to 15.8 billion gallons in 2017:
As we can see in the chart, the United States is by far the largest ethanol producer (Blue bars), followed by Brazil (Orange bars) at a little more than 7 billion gallons per year. The United States and Brazil account for 85% of global ethanol production.
Now, how much corn does the U.S. Ethanol Industry consume to produce nearly 16 billion gallons of its biofuel per year? Well, according to the information from the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and WorldofCorn.com, the Ethanol Industry consumed nearly 40% of the entire U.S. corn crop last year:
Of the total 14.4 billion bushels of the U.S. corn crop in 2018, the domestic ethanol industry devoured 5.5 billion bushels or 38% of the entire supply. So, how much land is needed for U.S. ethanol production?? The USDA states that the farming industry harvested 81.7 million acres in 2018 to supply that 14.4 billion bushels of corn. Thus, the U.S. Ethanol Industry needed 31 million acres of corn just to produce its biofuel last year.
How much land is 31 million acres?? That’s nearly 48,500 square miles. Thus, the Ethanol Industry needed the crop acreage of the following states total area to produce its fuel:
Rhode Island
Delaware
Connecticut
New Jersey
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Vermont
Maryland (90%)
Actually, I was quite surprised how much corn the Ethanol Industry consumed to make its fuel. I knew it was a lot, but I had no idea. By the way, here is an interesting data point. The largest food component of the corn industry is not food or cereals; it’s High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Check out how much corn the Ethanol Industry consumes versus the Food and High-Fructose Corn Syrup Industries:
U.S. Corn Consumption 2018 (million bushels)
Ethanol Fuel = 5,515 million bushels
High-Fructose Corn Syrup = 455 million bushels
Food & Cereal = 209 million bushels
The U.S. Ethanol Industry consumed 12 times more corn than the High-Fructose Corn Syrup Industry and 26 times more than the Food & Cereal Industry. This data came from WorldofCorn.com. Pretty amazing… huh? And even more surprising, the number one consumer of corn in the United States is the Ethanol Industry (38%) followed by the Animal Feed Industry (34%). So, all you folks who thought the miles and miles of corn in the midwest were mostly grown for food, think again.
Now, it’s one thing for so much valuable farmland to be used for the production of fuel ethanol, but it’s even worse when the industry can’t turn a profit. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, while 2018 was rough for the Ethanol Industry, 2019 is turning out to be a REAL BUMMER.
I am not going to get into too many details plaguing the U.S. Ethanol Industry, but one of the more recent factors is the rising corn prices due to the record rains and flooding in the midwest negatively impacting the corn crop. And along with falling Ethanol fuel prices, it has put a real KIBOSH on profits.
If we look at the data provided by the Iowa State University on their estimated “Net Returns” for the ethanol producer, we have the following spreadsheet:
It’s hard to read this chart, so I made a larger table from the insert above:
The highlighted area of the table provides an “estimated net return” per gallon for the typical ethanol producer in the United States. By including “ALL COSTS,” the folks at Iowa State, (Iowa is the largest corn ethanol producer in the country), calculated that the typical ethanol producer lost 27 cents per gallon in May 2019. That 27 cent loss per gallon includes paying debt.
Now, if we look at some of the financials by the Ethanol producing companies, we see evidence of mounting losses. For example, Green Plains Inc, the fourth largest ethanol producer in the U.S., reported a $42 million loss in Q1 2019. Furthermore, Pacific Ethanol, a smaller producer, recorded a $13 million loss during the same quarter. And, if we look at Pacific Ethanol’s stock trend over the past few years, it seems as if INVESTORS are quite unhappy with the company’s performance:
As we can see, Pacific Ethanol was trading near a high of $24 in 2014, but now is a penny stock at a mere 60 cents a share. While Pacific Ethanol might be a smaller producer, it’s $1.5 billion in total revenues last year wasn’t chump change.
Also, as I mentioned, ADM, the second-largest producer in the country, is also struggling. From the article, ADM Separates Ethanol Business:
The Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) is breaking news of breaking off their ethanol unit…and a tumbling 40% decline in profit.
…. According to Reuters, “Last week, U.S. ethanol production hit 1.05 million barrels per day, highest in at least five years seasonally, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Inventories climbed to 22.75 million barrels, not far from the record of 24.45 million hit in March. Producers such as Green Plains (GPRE) and Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) have laid off workers and idled or sold plants to stay afloat during the sustained downturn. Ethanol prices are down 42 percent in the last five years, while Green Plains and Pacific Ethanol have seen their shares fall 33 percent and 92 percent, respectively, in that time.”
So, while we see real trouble for the U.S. Ethanol Industry as companies lay off workers, sell or idle plants to remain afloat, it’s only going to get worse. Why? Because the Ethanol Industry has one of the lowest energy EROI’s (Energy Returned On Investment) in the United States:
Corn-based ethanol fuel actually has a lower EROI than either Canadian Oil Sands or U.S. Shale Oil. If we look at the chart above, corn ethanol and biodiesel EROIs are tied for last place. Thus, by using higher quality EROI energy from oil, natural gas, and coal to grow, harvest, and produce the low-quality EROI corn-based ethanol fuel, the industry is basically turning GOLD into LEAD, while losing money doing it.
And, if that wasn’t bad enough, the huge increase in U.S. fuel ethanol production came on the back of rising shale oil production. Corn ethanol production in the United States remained relatively flat from 1990 to until the early 2000s. However, when U.S. shale oil started to ramp up in 2007, we see the same for ethanol production. Ethanol production jumped from 150 million barrels per year in 2007 to over 350 million barrels in 2016.
In an ironic twist of fate, the United States is trying to become energy independent by ramping up production of two of the lowest EROI fuels in the world. According to some studies, U.S. Shale oil has an EROI of 5/1 while corn ethanol is 1.2-1.5/1. Gone are the days in the 1930s when the U.S. oil industry was producing oil at an amazing EROI of 100/1.
Unfortunately, I see real trouble ahead for the U.S. Ethanol Industry… an industry that produces more than a million barrels of extremely low EROI ethanol fuel a year. When U.S. shale oil production peaks and declines, it makes perfect sense that domestic fuel ethanol production will also do the same.
Lastly, Zerohedge posted this article; This Is What Americans Spent The Most Money On In The Second Quarter, stating that Americans spent the most of their income in Q2 2019 on Recreational Goods and Vehicles… over $22 billion. This makes perfect sense. Americans are totally clueless about the coming economic calamity and are preparing by going further into debt by purchasing recreational vehicles so they can GET AWAY from the RAT RACE.
Years from now, we are going to look back at the Great U.S. Ethanol Boondoggle and why we wasted so much energy and capital producing one of the lowest EROI fuels in the world.
....
Fossil fuels have peaked and are in irreversible decline. At the time of the worldwide 2007-2008 economic crash you see that both fracking and ethanol production began to increase dramatically. The energy that makes modern lifestyles possible is beginning to wane and the pursuit of these two types of energy sources are signs of desperation. Its the same with projects of hundreds of millions of dollars and vast resources spent/used to build and install oil rigs in the deep ocean just to drill a hole to get oil thousands of feet down. It takes by some estimates 30 to 1 EROI to just keep modern economies maintained. The world as a whole is now falling below that. The days of 100 to 1 are long gone never to be repeated again. It appears a Seneca Energy Cliff scenario is approaching fast.
THE U.S. CORN ETHANOL BOONDOGGLE: Producing 1 Million Barrels Per Day Of Unprofitable Energy
The U.S. Corn Ethanol Industry, the largest in the world, is now losing a serious amount of money producing unprofitable biofuel. While the situation for the ethanol producers was bad in 2018, due to losses stemming from falling margins, it’s even worse this year. This has prompted one of the country’s largest ethanol producers, ADM – Archer Daniels Midland, to sell some of its ethanol assets with the possibility of spinning off its entire ethanol business operation.
While higher corn prices and falling revenues have negatively impacted the U.S. Ethanol Industry recently, that is only a small part of a much bigger problem. You see, the EROI (Energy Returned On Investment) for corn-based ethanol, is so low, there’s virtually little if any, net energy produced from the 16 billion gallons of the biofuel supplied by the U.S. industry last year… or any year prior.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Please understand my analysis of the U.S. ethanol industry is focused at the macro-economic level and is not directed at the individuals or companies who are doing the best to their abilities. The main problem as I see it is that the leadership today is not providing the market with wise advice on our energy situation. Instead, we are ignorantly heading over the energy cliff without a care in the world. Unfortunately, this will end badly
That being said, according to the Alternative Fuels Data Center, U.S. ethanol production has more than doubled from 6.5 billion gallons in 2007 to 15.8 billion gallons in 2017:
As we can see in the chart, the United States is by far the largest ethanol producer (Blue bars), followed by Brazil (Orange bars) at a little more than 7 billion gallons per year. The United States and Brazil account for 85% of global ethanol production.
Now, how much corn does the U.S. Ethanol Industry consume to produce nearly 16 billion gallons of its biofuel per year? Well, according to the information from the USDA (U.S. Department of Agriculture) and WorldofCorn.com, the Ethanol Industry consumed nearly 40% of the entire U.S. corn crop last year:
Of the total 14.4 billion bushels of the U.S. corn crop in 2018, the domestic ethanol industry devoured 5.5 billion bushels or 38% of the entire supply. So, how much land is needed for U.S. ethanol production?? The USDA states that the farming industry harvested 81.7 million acres in 2018 to supply that 14.4 billion bushels of corn. Thus, the U.S. Ethanol Industry needed 31 million acres of corn just to produce its biofuel last year.
How much land is 31 million acres?? That’s nearly 48,500 square miles. Thus, the Ethanol Industry needed the crop acreage of the following states total area to produce its fuel:
Rhode Island
Delaware
Connecticut
New Jersey
Massachusetts
New Hampshire
Vermont
Maryland (90%)
Actually, I was quite surprised how much corn the Ethanol Industry consumed to make its fuel. I knew it was a lot, but I had no idea. By the way, here is an interesting data point. The largest food component of the corn industry is not food or cereals; it’s High-Fructose Corn Syrup. Check out how much corn the Ethanol Industry consumes versus the Food and High-Fructose Corn Syrup Industries:
U.S. Corn Consumption 2018 (million bushels)
Ethanol Fuel = 5,515 million bushels
High-Fructose Corn Syrup = 455 million bushels
Food & Cereal = 209 million bushels
The U.S. Ethanol Industry consumed 12 times more corn than the High-Fructose Corn Syrup Industry and 26 times more than the Food & Cereal Industry. This data came from WorldofCorn.com. Pretty amazing… huh? And even more surprising, the number one consumer of corn in the United States is the Ethanol Industry (38%) followed by the Animal Feed Industry (34%). So, all you folks who thought the miles and miles of corn in the midwest were mostly grown for food, think again.
Now, it’s one thing for so much valuable farmland to be used for the production of fuel ethanol, but it’s even worse when the industry can’t turn a profit. As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, while 2018 was rough for the Ethanol Industry, 2019 is turning out to be a REAL BUMMER.
I am not going to get into too many details plaguing the U.S. Ethanol Industry, but one of the more recent factors is the rising corn prices due to the record rains and flooding in the midwest negatively impacting the corn crop. And along with falling Ethanol fuel prices, it has put a real KIBOSH on profits.
If we look at the data provided by the Iowa State University on their estimated “Net Returns” for the ethanol producer, we have the following spreadsheet:
It’s hard to read this chart, so I made a larger table from the insert above:
The highlighted area of the table provides an “estimated net return” per gallon for the typical ethanol producer in the United States. By including “ALL COSTS,” the folks at Iowa State, (Iowa is the largest corn ethanol producer in the country), calculated that the typical ethanol producer lost 27 cents per gallon in May 2019. That 27 cent loss per gallon includes paying debt.
Now, if we look at some of the financials by the Ethanol producing companies, we see evidence of mounting losses. For example, Green Plains Inc, the fourth largest ethanol producer in the U.S., reported a $42 million loss in Q1 2019. Furthermore, Pacific Ethanol, a smaller producer, recorded a $13 million loss during the same quarter. And, if we look at Pacific Ethanol’s stock trend over the past few years, it seems as if INVESTORS are quite unhappy with the company’s performance:
As we can see, Pacific Ethanol was trading near a high of $24 in 2014, but now is a penny stock at a mere 60 cents a share. While Pacific Ethanol might be a smaller producer, it’s $1.5 billion in total revenues last year wasn’t chump change.
Also, as I mentioned, ADM, the second-largest producer in the country, is also struggling. From the article, ADM Separates Ethanol Business:
The Archer Daniels Midland Company (ADM) is breaking news of breaking off their ethanol unit…and a tumbling 40% decline in profit.
…. According to Reuters, “Last week, U.S. ethanol production hit 1.05 million barrels per day, highest in at least five years seasonally, according to U.S. Energy Information Administration data. Inventories climbed to 22.75 million barrels, not far from the record of 24.45 million hit in March. Producers such as Green Plains (GPRE) and Pacific Ethanol (PEIX) have laid off workers and idled or sold plants to stay afloat during the sustained downturn. Ethanol prices are down 42 percent in the last five years, while Green Plains and Pacific Ethanol have seen their shares fall 33 percent and 92 percent, respectively, in that time.”
So, while we see real trouble for the U.S. Ethanol Industry as companies lay off workers, sell or idle plants to remain afloat, it’s only going to get worse. Why? Because the Ethanol Industry has one of the lowest energy EROI’s (Energy Returned On Investment) in the United States:
Corn-based ethanol fuel actually has a lower EROI than either Canadian Oil Sands or U.S. Shale Oil. If we look at the chart above, corn ethanol and biodiesel EROIs are tied for last place. Thus, by using higher quality EROI energy from oil, natural gas, and coal to grow, harvest, and produce the low-quality EROI corn-based ethanol fuel, the industry is basically turning GOLD into LEAD, while losing money doing it.
And, if that wasn’t bad enough, the huge increase in U.S. fuel ethanol production came on the back of rising shale oil production. Corn ethanol production in the United States remained relatively flat from 1990 to until the early 2000s. However, when U.S. shale oil started to ramp up in 2007, we see the same for ethanol production. Ethanol production jumped from 150 million barrels per year in 2007 to over 350 million barrels in 2016.
In an ironic twist of fate, the United States is trying to become energy independent by ramping up production of two of the lowest EROI fuels in the world. According to some studies, U.S. Shale oil has an EROI of 5/1 while corn ethanol is 1.2-1.5/1. Gone are the days in the 1930s when the U.S. oil industry was producing oil at an amazing EROI of 100/1.
Unfortunately, I see real trouble ahead for the U.S. Ethanol Industry… an industry that produces more than a million barrels of extremely low EROI ethanol fuel a year. When U.S. shale oil production peaks and declines, it makes perfect sense that domestic fuel ethanol production will also do the same.
Lastly, Zerohedge posted this article; This Is What Americans Spent The Most Money On In The Second Quarter, stating that Americans spent the most of their income in Q2 2019 on Recreational Goods and Vehicles… over $22 billion. This makes perfect sense. Americans are totally clueless about the coming economic calamity and are preparing by going further into debt by purchasing recreational vehicles so they can GET AWAY from the RAT RACE.
Years from now, we are going to look back at the Great U.S. Ethanol Boondoggle and why we wasted so much energy and capital producing one of the lowest EROI fuels in the world.
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Fossil fuels have peaked and are in irreversible decline. At the time of the worldwide 2007-2008 economic crash you see that both fracking and ethanol production began to increase dramatically. The energy that makes modern lifestyles possible is beginning to wane and the pursuit of these two types of energy sources are signs of desperation. Its the same with projects of hundreds of millions of dollars and vast resources spent/used to build and install oil rigs in the deep ocean just to drill a hole to get oil thousands of feet down. It takes by some estimates 30 to 1 EROI to just keep modern economies maintained. The world as a whole is now falling below that. The days of 100 to 1 are long gone never to be repeated again. It appears a Seneca Energy Cliff scenario is approaching fast.
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