https://libertyblitzkrieg.com/2017/04/07/prepare-for-impact-this-is-the-beginning-of-the-end-for-u-s-empire/
Prepare for Impact – This is the Beginning of the End for U.S. Empire
Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.
Before I get into the meat of this post, I want to revisit something I wrote back in January.
From the post, Very Powerful People in the U.S. Government Want War – This is Their Sales Pitch:
We need to understand that those who want this war will be absolutely relentless. The sales pitch will not end until they get exactly what they want. This is where all of us critical thinkers need to play a key role. We must be prepared to diligently analyze all unsubstantiated official claims, and push back against the war-mongers, because we know for certain the oligarch-owned corporate media won’t. We must be prepared to inform our fellow citizens about what’s happening so that we don’t fall victim to a cheap sales pitch with devastating consequences. Unfortunately, we must also be prepared for a possible deep state false flag if the current sales tactic falls on deaf ears.
America cannot win a global war of such a scale if it is based on false pretenses and in the absence of exceedingly strong public support. This support does not exist. Will this serve as a necessary restraint against the masters of war and their devious plans? It’s too early to tell, but I do know that if we are unnecessarily pushed into a global conflagration, it will not end well for us. If this is the road our twisted status quo insists on taking us down, let us never forget who they are and the self-serving motivations behind their actions.
Four months later, the deep state got exactly what it wanted. Trump’s weaknesses have been identified and exploited, and he’s successfully been manipulated into neocon foreign policy like George W. Bush and Barack Obama before him. I’ve spent much of the past several months warning about exactly what happened last night, but the die is now cast. There’s no turning back from the path we’re on.
And don’t give me this garbage about Trump playing “4D chess.” Trump’s a brilliant salesman, and that’s about it. There’s nothing special or superior about Donald Trump intellectually, and he’s one of the most unwise people to ever become President. There was a hope he meant what he said about non-interventionism during the campaign, but that hope should be entirely extinguished at this point. Trump is a very weak man desperately looking for praise from those he claims to hate.
The purpose of today’s post is not to discuss what happened last night. All of you have read the news by now. My intent today is to explain what I think this means for the years ahead. I believe last night’s strike represents the beginning of the end for U.S. empire. Although the U.S. has been declining domestically for this entire century, America has still been calling all the shots on the international front. This makes sense in late-stage empire, as the focus of the fat and happy “elite” becomes singularly obsessed with domination and power, while the situation back home festers and rots.
Trump won on an “America first” platform that promised to emphasize the well-being of American citizens over geopolitical adventurism. We now know for certain he’s been manipulated into the imperial mindset, and his recklessness will merely accelerate U.S. decline on the world stage, and in turn, back home.
If anyone’s playing 4D chess it’s Russia. Russia is anti-fragile at this point, as has been proved by Putin’s survival in the face of economic sanctions, a collapsing ruble and a plunge in oil prices. Putin is still standing and arguably as powerful as ever. Not to mention the fact that the USSR completely disintegrated and collapsed within the past 30 years. They’ve been through a lot as a people. Meanwhile, the U.S. is extraordinarily fragile and weak by comparison, a distinction that will become quite obvious to us all in the years ahead. I don’t say this with any hint of glee or schadenfreude, I’m just stating the facts as I see them.
None of this implies that Russia’s leadership are a bunch of good people by any means. What I am saying is that they are a thousand times more strategic and intelligent compared to U.S. leadership.
To prove the point, this would be a good time to review a post I published back in 2014, Tensions Between the U.S. and Russia Are Worse Than You Realize – Remarks by Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov. Here’s some of what I noted:
There are two reasons I think the following remarks by Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov are so important.
First, as someone who spends much of his time analyzing and critiquing the many destructive policy decisions made by American “leaders,” I was shocked to find how accurate his description of the U.S. power structure’s mindset seems to be. He gets it, and he is more or less trying to warn the world that America’s leaders are basically power-drunk children. I concur.
Second, Lavrov also describes the negative impact that this behavior has had on the Russian psyche generally. He expresses dismay that the U.S. status quo sees the world as unipolar, and attempts to tackle every problem from the perspective that might is right. In no uncertain terms, Lavrov makes it clear that Russia will not stand for this. I don’t think the Russians are bluffing, so this is a very dangerous situation.
If there was actually someone in the U.S. State Department capable of such introspective and clear thinking, we might actually defuse this situation. Don’t hold your breath.
You should really read the entire post to see Lavrov’s comments for yourself in order to truly understand why I came to the above conclusions.
U.S. leadership is an absolute joke and will drive this entire country into a brick wall in the years ahead. John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Chucky Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, are you kidding me? They remind me of George Armstrong Custer, and we all know how that turned out.
The media is even worse. In what Glenn Greenwald accurately called “one of the sickest things ever to appear on US television,” MSNBC’s Brian Williams gushed about the “beauty” of U.S. cruise missiles.
Here’s another sign of imperial collapse, Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, in a war zone calling the shots.
This is not the sort of thing you see in a confident, brave, and civilized nation, it’s the sort of stuff you’d expect to see toward the end. It’s the stuff of craven war-mongers, of dishonest cowards, of a totally deranged and very dangerous media. The signs are everywhere; imperial decline is set to accelerate rapidly in the coming years.
Fine, but how is all this going to play out? Obviously nobody really knows, but I do think we’ve entered a new period in American history. I think it’s basically a crossing of the Rubicon moment for the American empire. Personally, I don’t expect a strong and visible military response from Russia in the near-term. I don’t think Putin wants to give the U.S. media and newly minted neocon Donald Trump an excuse to do anything truly crazy, which they can blame on Russia in the court of public opinion. I think Putin is too smart for that. Rather, what I think he’ll do is make all sorts of moves behind the scenes to weaken America’s economic power, while at the same time engaging in minor provocations to tempt the imbeciles in charge of U.S. foreign policy to make further mistakes abroad, to which they’ll emphatically oblige.
In other words, Russia will attempt to make the U.S. extend itself further in a region where no real success is possible, at the same time that the American economy deteriorates further. Recall that the current very weak economic “recovery” has been going on for nearly a decade. This cycle is very long in the tooth, and all Russia really needs to do is sit back, make some moves behind the scenes and allow the U.S. to collapse upon itself in its hubris and stupidity. This is precisely what I think is going to happen.
Finally, let’s not forget the following.
" Since 9/11:
1) Non-stop war.
2) Destruction of U.S. middle class.
3) Banker bailouts
4) Death of civil liberties.
We showed 'em terrorists. "
Expect more of all the above as the U.S. empire enters its most devastating phase of collapse. Think about what it might mean for you and your family and prepare accordingly.
Sunday, April 9, 2017
Friday, April 7, 2017
SC142-13
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46816.htm
Poodle Trump Runs With Dogs of War
So the brash, big-mouth tycoon in the White House with an outsized ego has finally unleashed the dogs of war in Syria.
Invoking God and the suffering of “little babies”, the supposed US Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump ordered the bombing of Syria with cruise missiles launched from warships in the Mediterranean.
A Syrian airbase was destroyed, along with several casualties, and civilians reportedly among the dead.
This was while Trump was digesting a dinner of steak and carrots in his Florida beach resort on Thursday night.
Trump has styled himself as a hard-nosed and “unpredictable” American president.
The bitter irony here is that everything Trump is doing in his latest act of illegal war is actually so predictable.
The US political establishment – driven as it always is by the imperative need of waging wars to shore up its crumby capitalist economy – has been baying for all-out deployment in Syria for the past six years.
Since Washington instigated its criminal regime-change operation against the sovereign government of Syria in March 2011, the hawkish establishment was never quite satisfied with the strategy of using proxy terror groups to do the dirty work. Direct military intervention to topple the Syrian state has always been on the cards as the preferred method.
The Deep State establishment – or the War Party comprising both Republicans and Democrats in hock to the military-intelligence apparatus – thought they would get their way with the election of warmonger Hillary Clinton last November. Alas, the surprise election of Trump to the presidency temporarily upset their militarist agenda.
But the advent of Trump to the White House was only a hitch for the powers-that-be. The relentless Deep State-driven media witch-hunt against Trump over ridiculous allegations of being a Russian puppet has evidently prevailed.
Trump, the self-declared “outsider” has been forced to prove that he is an “insider”, an obedient poodle to the American war Rottweiler – if he wants to stay in office and see out the next four years without being impeached.
In order to survive the pressure over “Russian stooge” allegations, Trump is throwing some meat to the US War Party by giving them their long-sought-after direct military intervention in Syria.
Trump’s order to blast Syria with 59 cruise missiles is a brazen act of war that makes a mockery of international law. Russia and some other independent nations have denounced the US “act of aggression against a sovereign state”.
The fact that Russian forces were stationed at the targeted airbase at Shayrat – but were reportedly unscathed – is a shocking sign of how reckless the latest American military action is. If Russian personnel had been killed, then that would potentially be cause for a full-scale war between two nuclear powers.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a US-based law scholar at University of Notre Dame, Indiana, was quoted by the Guardian saying there was “zero legal basis” for Trump’s missile attack. She said it was an unfounded act of aggression.
Even some members of the US Congress have questioned Trump’s unilateral action as being unconstitutional since he did not receive authorization from Congress, as required by American law.
But these are piffling, academic concerns when it comes to how the US always behaves. International law is only a selective rhetorical device for a rogue state that considers itself above the law.
As Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov remarked , the US has been waging wars regardless of international law for decades based on concocted pretexts, as in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and now Syria.
Trump has finally bought into the US war agenda in Syria – despite mouthing off against such an intervention as far back as 2013 – in order to keep his seat in the Oval Office. The intense media pressure from the witch-hunt over Russia has seen to that, in part.
The next prop in the whole despicable drama was Trump’s gullibility over the latest false flag involving chemical weapons in Syria earlier this week.
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Anyone with a bit of wit can see that the CIA-trained and Turkish, Saudi-supplied terrorist proxies carried out the massacre of civilians from their own toxic arsenal. The CIA-trained bandits tried the same deadly stunt back in August 2013 when they gassed hundreds of children near Damascus and videoed the horror for Western media dissemination.
The same profane ploy was used again this week in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Syria’s northern Idlib province.
The truth is simple: the Syrian army does not have chemical weapons, after they were destroyed as part of a Russian-brokered decommissioning deal back in 2013. The only party to have access to such weapons are the Western, Turkish and Saudi-backed terror groups.
Like the propaganda service they are, the Western mainstream media then dutifully blasted the “news” that the Syrian air force dropped chemical weapons on Khan Sheikhoun – willingly and unquestioningly using the images and video supplied by “activists” affiliated with the jihadist terror groups.
When US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley stood up in front of the Security Council holding photographs of dying children – purportedly from poisonous gas – she was role-playing for the false flag.
As with the general Western media response, Haley’s display had the unmistakable air of choreography. It was 2003 all over again, when then Secretary of State Colin Powell lied to the Security Council about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while brandishing dud vials of “lethal chemicals”.
It is not clear whether Trump or his ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley are merely gullible or something more sinister, such as willing accomplices in a charade.
But the upshot is this: Trump is acting like an obedient poodle going along with the Machiavellian American power system. Invoking God and suffering babies is just a shallow moral cover for his complicity in another US criminal act – in a countless list of such crimes down through history.
There is something fitting about Trump’s background as a real estate billionaire. That business is all about shafting people, cheating to stay ahead, or selling overinflated assets.
Trump himself is one such overinflated “asset”. All his past talk about “America first”, “forgotten workers”, “draining the swamp” and lashing out against his predecessor Barack Obama over “reckless wars in the Middle East” – is all just cheap hokum.
To save his political skin and no doubt lucrative future business opportunities for his dynasty, Trump has donned the cap of Commander-in-Chief and is groveling before the American war machine.
He is handing over an “official” license for war in Syria that the American Deep State has been craving for years.
It is a measure of how crazed and obscene the American political system is. The message is: no matter which way the electorate votes, the warmongers in the Pentagon and their corporate masters get the result they want. Which is war. Even if that risks a world war with Russia.
That’s how American capitalism works. And Trump is nothing but a poodle willing to jump through the hoops, roll over and lick the boots of the criminal masters.
Poodle Trump Runs With Dogs of War
So the brash, big-mouth tycoon in the White House with an outsized ego has finally unleashed the dogs of war in Syria.
Invoking God and the suffering of “little babies”, the supposed US Commander-in-Chief Donald Trump ordered the bombing of Syria with cruise missiles launched from warships in the Mediterranean.
A Syrian airbase was destroyed, along with several casualties, and civilians reportedly among the dead.
This was while Trump was digesting a dinner of steak and carrots in his Florida beach resort on Thursday night.
Trump has styled himself as a hard-nosed and “unpredictable” American president.
The bitter irony here is that everything Trump is doing in his latest act of illegal war is actually so predictable.
The US political establishment – driven as it always is by the imperative need of waging wars to shore up its crumby capitalist economy – has been baying for all-out deployment in Syria for the past six years.
Since Washington instigated its criminal regime-change operation against the sovereign government of Syria in March 2011, the hawkish establishment was never quite satisfied with the strategy of using proxy terror groups to do the dirty work. Direct military intervention to topple the Syrian state has always been on the cards as the preferred method.
The Deep State establishment – or the War Party comprising both Republicans and Democrats in hock to the military-intelligence apparatus – thought they would get their way with the election of warmonger Hillary Clinton last November. Alas, the surprise election of Trump to the presidency temporarily upset their militarist agenda.
But the advent of Trump to the White House was only a hitch for the powers-that-be. The relentless Deep State-driven media witch-hunt against Trump over ridiculous allegations of being a Russian puppet has evidently prevailed.
Trump, the self-declared “outsider” has been forced to prove that he is an “insider”, an obedient poodle to the American war Rottweiler – if he wants to stay in office and see out the next four years without being impeached.
In order to survive the pressure over “Russian stooge” allegations, Trump is throwing some meat to the US War Party by giving them their long-sought-after direct military intervention in Syria.
Trump’s order to blast Syria with 59 cruise missiles is a brazen act of war that makes a mockery of international law. Russia and some other independent nations have denounced the US “act of aggression against a sovereign state”.
The fact that Russian forces were stationed at the targeted airbase at Shayrat – but were reportedly unscathed – is a shocking sign of how reckless the latest American military action is. If Russian personnel had been killed, then that would potentially be cause for a full-scale war between two nuclear powers.
Mary Ellen O’Connell, a US-based law scholar at University of Notre Dame, Indiana, was quoted by the Guardian saying there was “zero legal basis” for Trump’s missile attack. She said it was an unfounded act of aggression.
Even some members of the US Congress have questioned Trump’s unilateral action as being unconstitutional since he did not receive authorization from Congress, as required by American law.
But these are piffling, academic concerns when it comes to how the US always behaves. International law is only a selective rhetorical device for a rogue state that considers itself above the law.
As Russian military spokesman Igor Konashenkov remarked , the US has been waging wars regardless of international law for decades based on concocted pretexts, as in Serbia (1999), Afghanistan (2001), Iraq (2003), Libya (2011), and now Syria.
Trump has finally bought into the US war agenda in Syria – despite mouthing off against such an intervention as far back as 2013 – in order to keep his seat in the Oval Office. The intense media pressure from the witch-hunt over Russia has seen to that, in part.
The next prop in the whole despicable drama was Trump’s gullibility over the latest false flag involving chemical weapons in Syria earlier this week.
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Anyone with a bit of wit can see that the CIA-trained and Turkish, Saudi-supplied terrorist proxies carried out the massacre of civilians from their own toxic arsenal. The CIA-trained bandits tried the same deadly stunt back in August 2013 when they gassed hundreds of children near Damascus and videoed the horror for Western media dissemination.
The same profane ploy was used again this week in the town of Khan Sheikhoun, in Syria’s northern Idlib province.
The truth is simple: the Syrian army does not have chemical weapons, after they were destroyed as part of a Russian-brokered decommissioning deal back in 2013. The only party to have access to such weapons are the Western, Turkish and Saudi-backed terror groups.
Like the propaganda service they are, the Western mainstream media then dutifully blasted the “news” that the Syrian air force dropped chemical weapons on Khan Sheikhoun – willingly and unquestioningly using the images and video supplied by “activists” affiliated with the jihadist terror groups.
When US ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley stood up in front of the Security Council holding photographs of dying children – purportedly from poisonous gas – she was role-playing for the false flag.
As with the general Western media response, Haley’s display had the unmistakable air of choreography. It was 2003 all over again, when then Secretary of State Colin Powell lied to the Security Council about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, while brandishing dud vials of “lethal chemicals”.
It is not clear whether Trump or his ambassador to the UN Nikki Haley are merely gullible or something more sinister, such as willing accomplices in a charade.
But the upshot is this: Trump is acting like an obedient poodle going along with the Machiavellian American power system. Invoking God and suffering babies is just a shallow moral cover for his complicity in another US criminal act – in a countless list of such crimes down through history.
There is something fitting about Trump’s background as a real estate billionaire. That business is all about shafting people, cheating to stay ahead, or selling overinflated assets.
Trump himself is one such overinflated “asset”. All his past talk about “America first”, “forgotten workers”, “draining the swamp” and lashing out against his predecessor Barack Obama over “reckless wars in the Middle East” – is all just cheap hokum.
To save his political skin and no doubt lucrative future business opportunities for his dynasty, Trump has donned the cap of Commander-in-Chief and is groveling before the American war machine.
He is handing over an “official” license for war in Syria that the American Deep State has been craving for years.
It is a measure of how crazed and obscene the American political system is. The message is: no matter which way the electorate votes, the warmongers in the Pentagon and their corporate masters get the result they want. Which is war. Even if that risks a world war with Russia.
That’s how American capitalism works. And Trump is nothing but a poodle willing to jump through the hoops, roll over and lick the boots of the criminal masters.
SC142-12
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46819.htm
The Impending Clash Between the U.S. and Russia
President Donald Trump’s missile attack on the Shayrat Airfield in Western Syria was a poorly planned display of imperial muscle-flexing that had the exact opposite effect of what was intended. While the attack undoubtedly lifted the morale of the jihadists who have been rampaging across the country for the last six years, it had no military or strategic value at all. The damage to the airfield was very slight and there is no reason to believe it will impact the Syrian Army’s progress on the ground.
The attack did however kill four Syrian servicemen which means the US troops in Syria can no longer be considered part of an international coalition fighting terrorism. The US is now a hostile force that represents an existential threat to the sovereign government.
Is that the change that Trump wanted?
As of Friday, Russia has frozen all military cooperation with the United States. According to the New York Times:
“In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syria’s air defense systems and reportedly planned to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus….
Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said that the cruise missile strikes on Friday represented a “significant blow” to American-Russian ties, and that Mr. Putin considered the attack a breach of international law that had been made under a false pretext. “The Syrian Army has no chemical weapons at its disposal,” Mr. Peskov said.” (New York Times)
The missile attack has ended all talk of “normalizing” relations with Russia. For whatever the reason, Trump has decided that identifying himself and the United States as an enemy of Moscow and Damascus is the way he wants to conduct business. That, of course, is the President’s prerogative, but it would be foolish not to think there will be consequences.
Russia’s Minister of Defense Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov issued a statement saying:
“All the accusations against Damascus that it violated the Chemical Weapons Convention of 2013 given by the USA as reasons for the strike are groundless. The Russian Defence Ministry has repeatedly explained that the Syrian troops had not used chemical weapons….
It is to be stressed that in the years 2013-2016 the Syrian government undertook all measures to eliminate chemical weapons, its delivery systems, production facilities. All chemical weapons stocks have been eliminated. The components for their production have been transported from the Syrian Arab Republic to the enterprises of the United States, Finland, Great Britain, and Germany where they have been destroyed.”
This is a hotly contested issue and one that requires greater clarification. The rational approach would be for the UN to send a team of chemical weapons and forensic experts to the site of the bombing to try to figure out what really happened. Trump decided he couldn’t be bothered with such trivialities as a formal investigation. He was more interested in projecting the image of a strong and decisive leader which is why he decided to shoot first and ask questions later. His action was applauded by leaders around the world including Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Recep Erdogan of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel none of who believe that the United States should have to get the nod from the UN Security Council before bombing a sovereign country.
I don’t know who is responsible for the chemical attack at Khan Shaikhoun, but there is an interesting interview on Thursday’s Scott Horton show that suggests that things may not be what they seem. In a 14 minute interview, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi, explains what’s happening behind the scenes in the Middle East where “military and intelligence personnel,” “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham.”
I have transcribed a 5 minute segment of the interview here– not because it provides conclusive evidence one way or the other— but because curious readers will find it intriguing. (Any mistakes in the transcript are mine.)
Philip Giraldi– I am hearing from sources on the ground, in the Middle East, the people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence available are saying that the essential narrative we are all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham. The intelligence confirms pretty much the account the Russians have been giving since last night which is that they hit a warehouse where al Qaida rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear, and people both in the Agency and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he should already have known — but maybe didn’t–and they’re afraid this is moving towards a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict.
Scott Horton– Tell me everything you can about your sources or how you are learning about this?
Philip Giraldi– Okay. These are essentially sources that are right on top of the issue right in the Middle East. They’re people who are stationed there with the military and the Intelligence agencies that are aware and have seen the intelligence And, as I say, they are coming back to contacts over here in the US essentially that they astonished at how this is being played by the administration and by the media and in some cases people are considering going public to stop it. They’re that concerned about it, that upset by what’s going on.
Scott Horton– So current CIA officers are thinking about going public right now?
Philip Giraldi– They are, because they’re that concerned about the way this thing is moving. They are military and intelligence personnel who are stationed in the Middle East and are active duty and they are seeing the intelligence the US government has in its hands about what happened in Syria, and the intelligence indicates that it was not an attack by the Syrian government using chemical weapons… There was an attack but it was with conventional weapons–a bomb– and the bomb ignited the chemicals that were already in place that had been put in there by the terrorist group affiliated with al Qaida.
Scott Horton– You say this thing is moving really fast. How fast is this thing moving?
Philip Giraldi– It’s moving really fast. Apparently the concern among the people who are active duty personnel is that the White House is anticipating doing something to take steps against the Syrian government What that might consist of nobody knows. But Trump was sending a fairly clear signal yesterday and so was our ambassador to the UN. about the heinousness of this act. Trump talked about crossing numerous “red lines” and they are essentially fearful that this is going to escalate . Now bear in mind, Assad had no motive for doing this. If anything, he had a negative motive. The Trump said there was no longer any reason to remove him from office, well, this was a big win for him. To turn around and use chemical weapons 48 hours later, does not fit ant reasonable scenario, although I’ve seen some floated out there, but they are quite ridiculous.” (The Scott Horton Show)
I think you’ll find that listening to the whole show is worth the time.
Giraldi’s observations are persuasive but not conclusive. There needs to be an investigation, that much is certain. (The show was taped before the missile attack, which does show that Giraldi was right about “how fast” things were moving.)
Media analysts appear to be surprised that Russia hasn’t responded militarily to Thursday’s attack. Some even see it as a sign of weakness. But Moscow’s approach to Washington’s impulsiveness has been fairly consistent for the last decade or so. With as little fanfare as possible, Moscow goes about its business and works discreetly to protect its interests. Unlike Trump, Putin is not a man who likes to attract a lot of attention to himself. He likes to operate off the radar. Even so, Russia has a coherent policy in Syria (fighting terrorism and preserving the sovereign government) and it’s not going to veer from that policy. Most Americans don’t seem to understand that. Russia’s not going to budge, which is why the Kremlin cut off cooperation with Washington, shored up its missile defenses in Syria, and moved a frigate to the Mediterranean. Moscow does not want a broader conflict, but it will be prepared if one breaks out.
The Russians are concerned about Trump’s sudden escalation, but they’re not surprised. They have spotted a pattern in US war-making and they’re able to comment on it quite calmly despite its terrible implications. Here’ more from the Russian Minister of Defense:
“The US administrations have changed but the methods for unleashing wars have remained the same since bombardments of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya. Allegations, falsifications, grandstand playing with photos and test-tubes with pseudo results in international organizations became the reason for initiating aggression instead of an objective investigation.”
Lie, bomb, kill, repeat. Konashenkov doesn’t sound surprised at all, does he? It’s a pattern, a deadly, frightening pattern. The only thing that changes is the names of the victims.
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And here’s another thing readers might find interesting: The Russians have an impressive grasp of Washington’s global strategy, in fact, their analysis is vastly superior to anything you’ll read in either the western journals or the establishment media. Here’s a short clip from a recent speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov:
“The concept of managed chaos appeared long ago as a method of strengthening US influence. Its basic premise is that managed chaos projects should be launched away from the United States in regions that are crucial for global economic and financial development. The Middle East has always been in the focus of politicians and foreign policy engineers in Washington. Practice has shown that this concept is dangerous and destructive, in particular for the countries where the experiment was launched, namely Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan…In Iraq, Syria and Libya, this chaos was created intentionally.
…Responsible politicians have come to see that the managed chaos theory is destroying life in many regions. Some parties can benefit in the short term from fluctuations on the raw materials markets provoked by the revolutions orchestrated by external forces, but this theory ultimately backfires at its engineers and executors in the form of massive migration inflows, which terrorists use to enter these countries. We can see this in Europe. Terrorist attacks have been staged even in the United States. The Atlantic Ocean has not protected it from the terrorist threat. This is the boomerang effect.” (Lavrov)
“Managed chaos”. Brilliant. That’s Washington’s foreign policy in a nutshell. That’s why there’s been no effort to create strong, stable, secular governments that can provide security for their people in any of the countries the US has destroyed in the last 16 years, because this long string of failed states that now stretches from North Africa, through the Middle East and into Central Asia (The ‘arc of instability’) create a permanent justification for US military intervention as well as strategic access to vital resources. So why waste money and time on nation building when nation building runs counter to Washington’s strategic objectives? Instead, decimate the nation state wherever you go, and leave the people to scratch out a miserable hardscrabble existence for themselves while fending off the relentless violence and persecution of tribal elders or local warlords.
Is that a fair assessment of US foreign policy?
Indeed, it is. And the Russian leadership understands the far-reaching implications of that policy. They know that Washington’s ambitions could result in a war between the two nuclear-armed adversaries. They fully understand that.
Even so, they’re not going to budge. They’re not going to let Syria become another Iraq. They’re not going to let that happen.
So, it’s all coming to a head. The unstoppable force is fast approaching the immovable object. There’s going to be a collision.
The Impending Clash Between the U.S. and Russia
President Donald Trump’s missile attack on the Shayrat Airfield in Western Syria was a poorly planned display of imperial muscle-flexing that had the exact opposite effect of what was intended. While the attack undoubtedly lifted the morale of the jihadists who have been rampaging across the country for the last six years, it had no military or strategic value at all. The damage to the airfield was very slight and there is no reason to believe it will impact the Syrian Army’s progress on the ground.
The attack did however kill four Syrian servicemen which means the US troops in Syria can no longer be considered part of an international coalition fighting terrorism. The US is now a hostile force that represents an existential threat to the sovereign government.
Is that the change that Trump wanted?
As of Friday, Russia has frozen all military cooperation with the United States. According to the New York Times:
“In addition to suspending the pact to coordinate air operations over Syria, an accord that was meant to prevent accidental encounters between the two militaries, Russia also said it would bolster Syria’s air defense systems and reportedly planned to send a frigate into the Mediterranean Sea to visit the logistics base at the Syrian port of Tartus….
Dmitri S. Peskov, a spokesman for President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, said that the cruise missile strikes on Friday represented a “significant blow” to American-Russian ties, and that Mr. Putin considered the attack a breach of international law that had been made under a false pretext. “The Syrian Army has no chemical weapons at its disposal,” Mr. Peskov said.” (New York Times)
The missile attack has ended all talk of “normalizing” relations with Russia. For whatever the reason, Trump has decided that identifying himself and the United States as an enemy of Moscow and Damascus is the way he wants to conduct business. That, of course, is the President’s prerogative, but it would be foolish not to think there will be consequences.
Russia’s Minister of Defense Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov issued a statement saying:
“All the accusations against Damascus that it violated the Chemical Weapons Convention of 2013 given by the USA as reasons for the strike are groundless. The Russian Defence Ministry has repeatedly explained that the Syrian troops had not used chemical weapons….
It is to be stressed that in the years 2013-2016 the Syrian government undertook all measures to eliminate chemical weapons, its delivery systems, production facilities. All chemical weapons stocks have been eliminated. The components for their production have been transported from the Syrian Arab Republic to the enterprises of the United States, Finland, Great Britain, and Germany where they have been destroyed.”
This is a hotly contested issue and one that requires greater clarification. The rational approach would be for the UN to send a team of chemical weapons and forensic experts to the site of the bombing to try to figure out what really happened. Trump decided he couldn’t be bothered with such trivialities as a formal investigation. He was more interested in projecting the image of a strong and decisive leader which is why he decided to shoot first and ask questions later. His action was applauded by leaders around the world including Angela Merkel, François Hollande, Recep Erdogan of Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Israel none of who believe that the United States should have to get the nod from the UN Security Council before bombing a sovereign country.
I don’t know who is responsible for the chemical attack at Khan Shaikhoun, but there is an interesting interview on Thursday’s Scott Horton show that suggests that things may not be what they seem. In a 14 minute interview, former CIA officer and Director of the Council for the National Interest, Philip Giraldi, explains what’s happening behind the scenes in the Middle East where “military and intelligence personnel,” “intimately familiar” with the intelligence, say that the narrative that Assad or Russia did it is a “sham.”
I have transcribed a 5 minute segment of the interview here– not because it provides conclusive evidence one way or the other— but because curious readers will find it intriguing. (Any mistakes in the transcript are mine.)
Philip Giraldi– I am hearing from sources on the ground, in the Middle East, the people who are intimately familiar with the intelligence available are saying that the essential narrative we are all hearing about the Syrian government or the Russians using chemical weapons on innocent civilians is a sham. The intelligence confirms pretty much the account the Russians have been giving since last night which is that they hit a warehouse where al Qaida rebels were storing chemicals of their own and it basically caused an explosion that resulted in the casualties. Apparently the intelligence on this is very clear, and people both in the Agency and in the military who are aware of the intelligence are freaking out about this because essentially Trump completely misrepresented what he should already have known — but maybe didn’t–and they’re afraid this is moving towards a situation that could easily turn into an armed conflict.
Scott Horton– Tell me everything you can about your sources or how you are learning about this?
Philip Giraldi– Okay. These are essentially sources that are right on top of the issue right in the Middle East. They’re people who are stationed there with the military and the Intelligence agencies that are aware and have seen the intelligence And, as I say, they are coming back to contacts over here in the US essentially that they astonished at how this is being played by the administration and by the media and in some cases people are considering going public to stop it. They’re that concerned about it, that upset by what’s going on.
Scott Horton– So current CIA officers are thinking about going public right now?
Philip Giraldi– They are, because they’re that concerned about the way this thing is moving. They are military and intelligence personnel who are stationed in the Middle East and are active duty and they are seeing the intelligence the US government has in its hands about what happened in Syria, and the intelligence indicates that it was not an attack by the Syrian government using chemical weapons… There was an attack but it was with conventional weapons–a bomb– and the bomb ignited the chemicals that were already in place that had been put in there by the terrorist group affiliated with al Qaida.
Scott Horton– You say this thing is moving really fast. How fast is this thing moving?
Philip Giraldi– It’s moving really fast. Apparently the concern among the people who are active duty personnel is that the White House is anticipating doing something to take steps against the Syrian government What that might consist of nobody knows. But Trump was sending a fairly clear signal yesterday and so was our ambassador to the UN. about the heinousness of this act. Trump talked about crossing numerous “red lines” and they are essentially fearful that this is going to escalate . Now bear in mind, Assad had no motive for doing this. If anything, he had a negative motive. The Trump said there was no longer any reason to remove him from office, well, this was a big win for him. To turn around and use chemical weapons 48 hours later, does not fit ant reasonable scenario, although I’ve seen some floated out there, but they are quite ridiculous.” (The Scott Horton Show)
I think you’ll find that listening to the whole show is worth the time.
Giraldi’s observations are persuasive but not conclusive. There needs to be an investigation, that much is certain. (The show was taped before the missile attack, which does show that Giraldi was right about “how fast” things were moving.)
Media analysts appear to be surprised that Russia hasn’t responded militarily to Thursday’s attack. Some even see it as a sign of weakness. But Moscow’s approach to Washington’s impulsiveness has been fairly consistent for the last decade or so. With as little fanfare as possible, Moscow goes about its business and works discreetly to protect its interests. Unlike Trump, Putin is not a man who likes to attract a lot of attention to himself. He likes to operate off the radar. Even so, Russia has a coherent policy in Syria (fighting terrorism and preserving the sovereign government) and it’s not going to veer from that policy. Most Americans don’t seem to understand that. Russia’s not going to budge, which is why the Kremlin cut off cooperation with Washington, shored up its missile defenses in Syria, and moved a frigate to the Mediterranean. Moscow does not want a broader conflict, but it will be prepared if one breaks out.
The Russians are concerned about Trump’s sudden escalation, but they’re not surprised. They have spotted a pattern in US war-making and they’re able to comment on it quite calmly despite its terrible implications. Here’ more from the Russian Minister of Defense:
“The US administrations have changed but the methods for unleashing wars have remained the same since bombardments of Yugoslavia, Iraq, and Libya. Allegations, falsifications, grandstand playing with photos and test-tubes with pseudo results in international organizations became the reason for initiating aggression instead of an objective investigation.”
Lie, bomb, kill, repeat. Konashenkov doesn’t sound surprised at all, does he? It’s a pattern, a deadly, frightening pattern. The only thing that changes is the names of the victims.
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And here’s another thing readers might find interesting: The Russians have an impressive grasp of Washington’s global strategy, in fact, their analysis is vastly superior to anything you’ll read in either the western journals or the establishment media. Here’s a short clip from a recent speech by Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov:
“The concept of managed chaos appeared long ago as a method of strengthening US influence. Its basic premise is that managed chaos projects should be launched away from the United States in regions that are crucial for global economic and financial development. The Middle East has always been in the focus of politicians and foreign policy engineers in Washington. Practice has shown that this concept is dangerous and destructive, in particular for the countries where the experiment was launched, namely Iraq, Libya, Syria, Yemen and Afghanistan…In Iraq, Syria and Libya, this chaos was created intentionally.
…Responsible politicians have come to see that the managed chaos theory is destroying life in many regions. Some parties can benefit in the short term from fluctuations on the raw materials markets provoked by the revolutions orchestrated by external forces, but this theory ultimately backfires at its engineers and executors in the form of massive migration inflows, which terrorists use to enter these countries. We can see this in Europe. Terrorist attacks have been staged even in the United States. The Atlantic Ocean has not protected it from the terrorist threat. This is the boomerang effect.” (Lavrov)
“Managed chaos”. Brilliant. That’s Washington’s foreign policy in a nutshell. That’s why there’s been no effort to create strong, stable, secular governments that can provide security for their people in any of the countries the US has destroyed in the last 16 years, because this long string of failed states that now stretches from North Africa, through the Middle East and into Central Asia (The ‘arc of instability’) create a permanent justification for US military intervention as well as strategic access to vital resources. So why waste money and time on nation building when nation building runs counter to Washington’s strategic objectives? Instead, decimate the nation state wherever you go, and leave the people to scratch out a miserable hardscrabble existence for themselves while fending off the relentless violence and persecution of tribal elders or local warlords.
Is that a fair assessment of US foreign policy?
Indeed, it is. And the Russian leadership understands the far-reaching implications of that policy. They know that Washington’s ambitions could result in a war between the two nuclear-armed adversaries. They fully understand that.
Even so, they’re not going to budge. They’re not going to let Syria become another Iraq. They’re not going to let that happen.
So, it’s all coming to a head. The unstoppable force is fast approaching the immovable object. There’s going to be a collision.
Wednesday, April 5, 2017
SC142-11
http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-world-disorder-disintegration-stage-commences/5582542
New World Disorder – Disintegration Stage Commences
The mainstream media has a new in vogue phrase and you are sure to have heard it by now – ‘the rules based international order (or system)’. The Royal Institute of International Affairs based in London, commonly known as Chatham House commented a several years ago that “Economic and political upheavals are emboldening challengers to the rules-based international system, and to the liberal Western values it embodies. To stay relevant, the system must address three major flaws.”
For a system based on rules to have effect, these rules must be visibly observed by their principal and most powerful advocates.
A rules-based order must work to the advantage of the majority and not a minority.
The longevity of the current international system may have led to the assumption that it was in some way the natural order of things, requiring only occasional repair and defence against particular challengers.
Given recent global events it is clear that the so-called rules based order has systemically failed to address any of these flaws. The most powerful advocates and the institutions that support this system have made the most disastrous decisions culminating in an epic financial crisis with austerity its ideological birth. The West flounders from one crisis to the next, the majority disciplined for the malfeasance and lawlessness of the few and the system is consuming itself from the inside out – a neoliberal bowel cancer with no cure in sight.
The European Union
With Britain’s recent EU referendum result came the realisation that the rules based system on the continent had failed. Rising discontent is gathering at an unstoppable pace, much to the alarm of the ruling elite. A federalised state dreamt up by America and handed to Germany with the intention of destroying national identities, borders and sovereign rights is slowly turning into a nightmare as the 28 nation bloc enters what can only be described as a disintegration phase.
Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics puts it this way:
Protests across Europe go largely unreported by the Mainstream media as important elections are due in 2017
“The EU intends to make it a mistake that the British will regret and fall to their knees. This attitude is consistent with the constant endeavour to explain all the shortcomings of the EU as insignificant and irrelevant, thereby closing their ears and mind to any possible reform. They have no clear statement to challenge what is going on. The regulatory nightmare and outright rage that is rising among the people is simply ignored by Brussels. The legal uncertainty with the British exit on the banking system is something nobody even wants to speculate about. How do bail-ins work in Europe if abandoned in Britain? So while the EU thinks by punishing Britain they will discourage others from leaving, they are seriously mistaken. The dream of the EU is dead. It should have remained just a trade union – that was it.”
A recent BBC programme entitled Brexit: The Battle for Europe (YouTube video/58mins) produced the line “the power-brokers of Europe face an unprecedented challenge. For the EU this is a battle to survive.” In the programme Martin Schulz, former president of the European Parliament admitted there was a “real risk the EU will fall apart” as populism rises. Schulz has since emerged as the Social Democrats main challenger in a desperate bid against Merkel in Germany’s upcoming elections.
Sky News reported (11th Feb) that “Jean-Claude Juncker has expressed doubts that EU countries will be able to maintain a united front during Brexit negotiations.” Juncker even went on to admit that the EU project is now failing and sees disintegration going forward. He asked:
“Has the time come for when the European Union of the 27 must show unity, cohesion and coherence? Yes, I say yes, when it comes to Brexit … but I have some justified doubts that it will really happen.” He added: “Do the Hungarians and the Poles want exactly the same thing as the Germans and the French?” – “I have serious doubts.”
Even the the founding architect of the monetary union, Otmar Issing has warned that the Brussels’ dream of a European superstate will finally be buried amongst the rubble of the crumbling single currency.
“Realistically, it will be a case of muddling through, struggling from one crisis to the next. It is difficult to forecast how long this will continue for, but it cannot go on endlessly. Governments will pile up more debt—and then one day, the house of cards will collapse.”
United States of America
What we are witnessing in America is the crisis and erosion of the international rules based order that America constructed and maintained since the end of World War II. The US still dominates the world in terms economic and military power, that is not under dispute, but the challenge is that she is simply unable her to get her way and control the globalisation project that it largely helped to create.
American world domination is not just declining, it is coming to an end. The international liberal order is facing off against nationalism and protectionism, headed up by populist movements – Donald Trump being the evidence that citizens have had enough, they are desperate. Both Trump and Brexit are the result of protest votes for the masses and a stark reminder that politician’s no longer represent the people and the people know it.
For America, the writing is on the wall. In 1990 the global south, made up of Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia including the Middle East accounted for 30 percent of global trade, today that figure has risen to 50 percent. Interestingly, the OECD has predicted that by 2060, the GDP of the developing world, including China and India, would exceed that of developed OECD and non-OECD countries: 57.7 percent to 42.3 percent. This is a big problem for the West and its world order.
Military power is no longer just about how much firepower is available, weapon technology is no longer the preserve of the West, cyber-warfare is becoming just as dangerous as nuclear weapons. The rise of global terrorism has not abated and looks set to only get worse.
Traditional political power is being replaced by transnational social movements and corporations who increasingly dominate global politics. Organisations like Facebook, Google and the Gates Foundation disperse and erode centralised American power. Interdependence by rising regional powers is much more likely to dominate the world order than America’s failing approach of global coercion.
America’s traditional outlets of power such as the UN, IMF, World Bank, WHO, UNHCR and the WTO etc are themselves waning in authority and no longer command the respect they once had. There is a rising tide of new kids on the block. The G20 for instance comprises of economic power houses from both North and South. China’s One Belt, One Road Program and the Silk Road projects are supported by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) – their version of the World Bank.
The inauguration of Donald Trump heralds the arrival of a new world order – or disorder. The West is now weaker than ever before and rising US nationalism poses a threat to the European Union.
The long-term structural factors and institutions that underpinned America’s global influence are failing. The petrodollar is currently in collapse mode, NATO is being challenged and global trade agreements are being redefined. The BRICS nations economic rise will see growth doubling from 2010 to 2020, China alone will see its economic clout nearly treble in the same time frame, whilst the West’s anaemic economy limps from one crisis to the next with what is clearly turning out to be a failed neoliberal project. Capitalism is failing because everything is rigged.
The transition from America’s vision of a rules based system that it insists on devising and leading to a more complicated and internationally led system will be messy – dangerous even. America sees the rise of China and Russia as a threat to its dominance. Unable to innovate, negotiate and calmly influence its way in the 21st century, America could do the unthinkable and attack its perceived opponents in a desperate attempt to regain control with catastrophic repercussions.
The Deep State
Once the arena of ‘conspiracy theorists,’ now the playground of the mainstream media. The Deep State is defined as “a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies, corporations or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.”
Glen Greenwald, interviewed by DemocracyNow said
“What they’re doing instead is trying to take maybe the only faction worse than Donald Trump, which is the deep state, the CIA, with its histories of atrocities, and say they ought to almost engage in like a soft coup, where they take the elected president and prevent him from enacting his policies. And I think it is extremely dangerous to do that. Even if you’re somebody who believes that both the CIA and the deep state, on the one hand, and the Trump presidency, on the other, are extremely dangerous, as I do, there’s a huge difference between the two, which is that Trump was democratically elected and is subject to democratic controls, as these courts just demonstrated and as the media is showing, as citizens are proving. But on the other hand, the CIA was elected by nobody. They’re barely subject to democratic controls at all. And so, to urge that the CIA and the intelligence community empower itself to undermine the elected branches of government is insanity.”
Britain’s own Deep State is steeped in history, effectively manipulating the global map from days of Empire. More recently, it is evidently active. Carne Ross, ex senior British diplomat named the ‘deep state’ for acting to prevent public knowledge of what really happened prior and during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. He said
“I testified last week to the Chilcot inquiry. My experience demonstrates an emerging and dangerous problem with the process. This is not so much a problem with Sir John Chilcot and his panel, but rather with Britain’s own “deep state” – that is covering up its mistakes and denying access to critical documents.”
The Deep State in Britain will be the main driver of the Brexit negotiations in the coming months and years as it manipulates legislation in favour of unprecedented political power focused on the drip-drip erosion of civil liberties and human rights to pave the way for ever-increasing corporate profits and plunder that privatisation brings. Other countries have the same problems.
Influential members of government, corporations and the military, are involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy according to many MSM outlets today
In France there are upcoming elections and another populist threatens the establishment in LePen. Diana Johnstone explains it in great detail for Global Research – “But the pro-European Union, pro-NATO, neoliberal Establishment is at work to keep that from happening. On every possible magazine cover or talk show, the media have shown their allegiance to a “New! Improved!” middle of the road candidate (in Emmanuel Macron) who is being sold to the public like a consumer product. Together, the anonymous sources of the “deep state” and the mass corporate media have become accustomed to controlling the narrative told to the public. They don’t want to give that power up. And they certainly don’t want to see it challenged by outsiders”
The West is no longer governed by a properly functioning political or capitalist system. Bush, Blair, Trump along with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, TTIP, CETA, the global financial crisis, tax havens, etc are all evidence of that. Tens of millions have protested, none were heard – that is until the shock waves of disobedience reverberated in 2016, its effects yet to unfold.
Other Global Threats
The human population is also facing a new series of perils that threatens the international rules based system of order. If climate science is to be believed, climate change threatens water supplies, food prices, health and global security. By 2030 water stress will affect 47 percent of humanity. It is predicted to undermine global health efforts, increase poverty and will destroy global economic growth.
Humans and animals are increasingly sharing virulent viruses raising the risk of pandemics. The World Health Organisation has clearly stated “Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today” with Antibiotic resistance rising to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world.
Nuclear proliferation is now a real problem. Nine countries roughly control 15,000 armed and ready-to-fire civilisation destroying weapons. There are a number of other countries who have never declared their nuclear capabilities and more are lining up to acquire the technology. If a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb were to fall into the hands of a rogue state – anything could happen.
Around 95% of active climate researchers publish climate papers endorsing the consensus position. The Petition Project features over 30,000 scientists signing the petition stating “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The EU, worried about Trump’s commitment to NATO and European defence are considering their own nuclear defence system by combining Britain and France into a pan European nuclear umbrella deterrant – no doubt controlled by Germany. That decision alone could cause the EU to implode.
Religious and sectarian divisions continue to dominate the Middle East. The excuse is the battle for global energy supplies which continues to rage with the resulting refugee crisis that threatens the EU. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict raises political volatility with global implications. Syria currently has over two-thirds of the worlds nations involved in the fighting either directly or indirectly – a single spark could escalate into an uncontrollable inferno.
The South China Sea, Ukraine, NATO, Russia, China, Iran, Syria – all pose the potential for existential risk for millions. North Korea is rushing full on to develop a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile that increasingly demonstrates its desire to reach the US. A problem for every US president since the 1980’s, North Korea is now posing a real threat that is pushing Japan into developing its own nuclear defence system. America and China need to negotiate and put NK on a leash, but they aren’t talking either.
Disorder Not Order
Strategic manoeuvres on the global chessboard of power politics is creating a period of transition. Everything is changing; political alliances, the global economy and its demography, all facilitated by new game-changing technologies. A fight for resources is already underway particularly as globalisation slowly and reluctantly withdraws in favour of regionalised re-industrialisation and nationalism.
A new world disorder is materialising as the West’s traditional grip on the global economy weakens. As with Ying and Yang or the global pendulum, all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites. If one economy or political power base increases – it is only at the expense of the other.
As Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations notes, such eras are often “the most frightening periods in history.” Quoting Antonio Gramsci, Leonard points out that; “Disorder, war, and even disease can flood into the vacuum that forms when the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”
The truth is that the post-Cold War “American-policed security order” along with the “European-inspired legal order” have both fractured at the same time. The really big problem is that no real candidates to replace them have yet emerged from what looks like a long and dangerous road ahead for us all.
New World Disorder – Disintegration Stage Commences
The mainstream media has a new in vogue phrase and you are sure to have heard it by now – ‘the rules based international order (or system)’. The Royal Institute of International Affairs based in London, commonly known as Chatham House commented a several years ago that “Economic and political upheavals are emboldening challengers to the rules-based international system, and to the liberal Western values it embodies. To stay relevant, the system must address three major flaws.”
For a system based on rules to have effect, these rules must be visibly observed by their principal and most powerful advocates.
A rules-based order must work to the advantage of the majority and not a minority.
The longevity of the current international system may have led to the assumption that it was in some way the natural order of things, requiring only occasional repair and defence against particular challengers.
Given recent global events it is clear that the so-called rules based order has systemically failed to address any of these flaws. The most powerful advocates and the institutions that support this system have made the most disastrous decisions culminating in an epic financial crisis with austerity its ideological birth. The West flounders from one crisis to the next, the majority disciplined for the malfeasance and lawlessness of the few and the system is consuming itself from the inside out – a neoliberal bowel cancer with no cure in sight.
The European Union
With Britain’s recent EU referendum result came the realisation that the rules based system on the continent had failed. Rising discontent is gathering at an unstoppable pace, much to the alarm of the ruling elite. A federalised state dreamt up by America and handed to Germany with the intention of destroying national identities, borders and sovereign rights is slowly turning into a nightmare as the 28 nation bloc enters what can only be described as a disintegration phase.
Martin Armstrong of Armstrong Economics puts it this way:
Protests across Europe go largely unreported by the Mainstream media as important elections are due in 2017
“The EU intends to make it a mistake that the British will regret and fall to their knees. This attitude is consistent with the constant endeavour to explain all the shortcomings of the EU as insignificant and irrelevant, thereby closing their ears and mind to any possible reform. They have no clear statement to challenge what is going on. The regulatory nightmare and outright rage that is rising among the people is simply ignored by Brussels. The legal uncertainty with the British exit on the banking system is something nobody even wants to speculate about. How do bail-ins work in Europe if abandoned in Britain? So while the EU thinks by punishing Britain they will discourage others from leaving, they are seriously mistaken. The dream of the EU is dead. It should have remained just a trade union – that was it.”
A recent BBC programme entitled Brexit: The Battle for Europe (YouTube video/58mins) produced the line “the power-brokers of Europe face an unprecedented challenge. For the EU this is a battle to survive.” In the programme Martin Schulz, former president of the European Parliament admitted there was a “real risk the EU will fall apart” as populism rises. Schulz has since emerged as the Social Democrats main challenger in a desperate bid against Merkel in Germany’s upcoming elections.
Sky News reported (11th Feb) that “Jean-Claude Juncker has expressed doubts that EU countries will be able to maintain a united front during Brexit negotiations.” Juncker even went on to admit that the EU project is now failing and sees disintegration going forward. He asked:
“Has the time come for when the European Union of the 27 must show unity, cohesion and coherence? Yes, I say yes, when it comes to Brexit … but I have some justified doubts that it will really happen.” He added: “Do the Hungarians and the Poles want exactly the same thing as the Germans and the French?” – “I have serious doubts.”
Even the the founding architect of the monetary union, Otmar Issing has warned that the Brussels’ dream of a European superstate will finally be buried amongst the rubble of the crumbling single currency.
“Realistically, it will be a case of muddling through, struggling from one crisis to the next. It is difficult to forecast how long this will continue for, but it cannot go on endlessly. Governments will pile up more debt—and then one day, the house of cards will collapse.”
United States of America
What we are witnessing in America is the crisis and erosion of the international rules based order that America constructed and maintained since the end of World War II. The US still dominates the world in terms economic and military power, that is not under dispute, but the challenge is that she is simply unable her to get her way and control the globalisation project that it largely helped to create.
American world domination is not just declining, it is coming to an end. The international liberal order is facing off against nationalism and protectionism, headed up by populist movements – Donald Trump being the evidence that citizens have had enough, they are desperate. Both Trump and Brexit are the result of protest votes for the masses and a stark reminder that politician’s no longer represent the people and the people know it.
For America, the writing is on the wall. In 1990 the global south, made up of Africa, Latin America, and developing Asia including the Middle East accounted for 30 percent of global trade, today that figure has risen to 50 percent. Interestingly, the OECD has predicted that by 2060, the GDP of the developing world, including China and India, would exceed that of developed OECD and non-OECD countries: 57.7 percent to 42.3 percent. This is a big problem for the West and its world order.
Military power is no longer just about how much firepower is available, weapon technology is no longer the preserve of the West, cyber-warfare is becoming just as dangerous as nuclear weapons. The rise of global terrorism has not abated and looks set to only get worse.
Traditional political power is being replaced by transnational social movements and corporations who increasingly dominate global politics. Organisations like Facebook, Google and the Gates Foundation disperse and erode centralised American power. Interdependence by rising regional powers is much more likely to dominate the world order than America’s failing approach of global coercion.
America’s traditional outlets of power such as the UN, IMF, World Bank, WHO, UNHCR and the WTO etc are themselves waning in authority and no longer command the respect they once had. There is a rising tide of new kids on the block. The G20 for instance comprises of economic power houses from both North and South. China’s One Belt, One Road Program and the Silk Road projects are supported by the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) – their version of the World Bank.
The inauguration of Donald Trump heralds the arrival of a new world order – or disorder. The West is now weaker than ever before and rising US nationalism poses a threat to the European Union.
The long-term structural factors and institutions that underpinned America’s global influence are failing. The petrodollar is currently in collapse mode, NATO is being challenged and global trade agreements are being redefined. The BRICS nations economic rise will see growth doubling from 2010 to 2020, China alone will see its economic clout nearly treble in the same time frame, whilst the West’s anaemic economy limps from one crisis to the next with what is clearly turning out to be a failed neoliberal project. Capitalism is failing because everything is rigged.
The transition from America’s vision of a rules based system that it insists on devising and leading to a more complicated and internationally led system will be messy – dangerous even. America sees the rise of China and Russia as a threat to its dominance. Unable to innovate, negotiate and calmly influence its way in the 21st century, America could do the unthinkable and attack its perceived opponents in a desperate attempt to regain control with catastrophic repercussions.
The Deep State
Once the arena of ‘conspiracy theorists,’ now the playground of the mainstream media. The Deep State is defined as “a body of people, typically influential members of government agencies, corporations or the military, believed to be involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy.”
Glen Greenwald, interviewed by DemocracyNow said
“What they’re doing instead is trying to take maybe the only faction worse than Donald Trump, which is the deep state, the CIA, with its histories of atrocities, and say they ought to almost engage in like a soft coup, where they take the elected president and prevent him from enacting his policies. And I think it is extremely dangerous to do that. Even if you’re somebody who believes that both the CIA and the deep state, on the one hand, and the Trump presidency, on the other, are extremely dangerous, as I do, there’s a huge difference between the two, which is that Trump was democratically elected and is subject to democratic controls, as these courts just demonstrated and as the media is showing, as citizens are proving. But on the other hand, the CIA was elected by nobody. They’re barely subject to democratic controls at all. And so, to urge that the CIA and the intelligence community empower itself to undermine the elected branches of government is insanity.”
Britain’s own Deep State is steeped in history, effectively manipulating the global map from days of Empire. More recently, it is evidently active. Carne Ross, ex senior British diplomat named the ‘deep state’ for acting to prevent public knowledge of what really happened prior and during the run-up to the invasion of Iraq. He said
“I testified last week to the Chilcot inquiry. My experience demonstrates an emerging and dangerous problem with the process. This is not so much a problem with Sir John Chilcot and his panel, but rather with Britain’s own “deep state” – that is covering up its mistakes and denying access to critical documents.”
The Deep State in Britain will be the main driver of the Brexit negotiations in the coming months and years as it manipulates legislation in favour of unprecedented political power focused on the drip-drip erosion of civil liberties and human rights to pave the way for ever-increasing corporate profits and plunder that privatisation brings. Other countries have the same problems.
Influential members of government, corporations and the military, are involved in the secret manipulation or control of government policy according to many MSM outlets today
In France there are upcoming elections and another populist threatens the establishment in LePen. Diana Johnstone explains it in great detail for Global Research – “But the pro-European Union, pro-NATO, neoliberal Establishment is at work to keep that from happening. On every possible magazine cover or talk show, the media have shown their allegiance to a “New! Improved!” middle of the road candidate (in Emmanuel Macron) who is being sold to the public like a consumer product. Together, the anonymous sources of the “deep state” and the mass corporate media have become accustomed to controlling the narrative told to the public. They don’t want to give that power up. And they certainly don’t want to see it challenged by outsiders”
The West is no longer governed by a properly functioning political or capitalist system. Bush, Blair, Trump along with Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan, TTIP, CETA, the global financial crisis, tax havens, etc are all evidence of that. Tens of millions have protested, none were heard – that is until the shock waves of disobedience reverberated in 2016, its effects yet to unfold.
Other Global Threats
The human population is also facing a new series of perils that threatens the international rules based system of order. If climate science is to be believed, climate change threatens water supplies, food prices, health and global security. By 2030 water stress will affect 47 percent of humanity. It is predicted to undermine global health efforts, increase poverty and will destroy global economic growth.
Humans and animals are increasingly sharing virulent viruses raising the risk of pandemics. The World Health Organisation has clearly stated “Antibiotic resistance is one of the biggest threats to global health, food security, and development today” with Antibiotic resistance rising to dangerously high levels in all parts of the world.
Nuclear proliferation is now a real problem. Nine countries roughly control 15,000 armed and ready-to-fire civilisation destroying weapons. There are a number of other countries who have never declared their nuclear capabilities and more are lining up to acquire the technology. If a nuclear weapon or dirty bomb were to fall into the hands of a rogue state – anything could happen.
Around 95% of active climate researchers publish climate papers endorsing the consensus position. The Petition Project features over 30,000 scientists signing the petition stating “There is no convincing scientific evidence that human release of carbon dioxide will, in the forseeable future, cause catastrophic heating of the Earth’s atmosphere.
The EU, worried about Trump’s commitment to NATO and European defence are considering their own nuclear defence system by combining Britain and France into a pan European nuclear umbrella deterrant – no doubt controlled by Germany. That decision alone could cause the EU to implode.
Religious and sectarian divisions continue to dominate the Middle East. The excuse is the battle for global energy supplies which continues to rage with the resulting refugee crisis that threatens the EU. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict raises political volatility with global implications. Syria currently has over two-thirds of the worlds nations involved in the fighting either directly or indirectly – a single spark could escalate into an uncontrollable inferno.
The South China Sea, Ukraine, NATO, Russia, China, Iran, Syria – all pose the potential for existential risk for millions. North Korea is rushing full on to develop a nuclear-armed intercontinental ballistic missile that increasingly demonstrates its desire to reach the US. A problem for every US president since the 1980’s, North Korea is now posing a real threat that is pushing Japan into developing its own nuclear defence system. America and China need to negotiate and put NK on a leash, but they aren’t talking either.
Disorder Not Order
Strategic manoeuvres on the global chessboard of power politics is creating a period of transition. Everything is changing; political alliances, the global economy and its demography, all facilitated by new game-changing technologies. A fight for resources is already underway particularly as globalisation slowly and reluctantly withdraws in favour of regionalised re-industrialisation and nationalism.
A new world disorder is materialising as the West’s traditional grip on the global economy weakens. As with Ying and Yang or the global pendulum, all things exist as inseparable and contradictory opposites. If one economy or political power base increases – it is only at the expense of the other.
As Mark Leonard of the European Council on Foreign Relations notes, such eras are often “the most frightening periods in history.” Quoting Antonio Gramsci, Leonard points out that; “Disorder, war, and even disease can flood into the vacuum that forms when the old is dying and the new cannot be born.”
The truth is that the post-Cold War “American-policed security order” along with the “European-inspired legal order” have both fractured at the same time. The really big problem is that no real candidates to replace them have yet emerged from what looks like a long and dangerous road ahead for us all.
Monday, March 27, 2017
SC142-10
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46718.htm
The FBI’s Conspiracy Theory of a Trump/Putin Collusion Has No Clothes
Unable to provide an ounce of evidence that a Trump/Putin conspiracy stole the presidential election from Hillary Clinton, the corrupt US “intelligence” agencies are shifting their focus to social media and to Internet sites such as Alex Jones and Breitbart. Little doubt the FBI investigation will trickle down to Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, Zero Hedge, the Ron Paul Institute, Nomi Prins, Naked Capitalism, Lew Rockwell, Global Research, antiwar.com, and to others on the PropOrNot, Harvard Library, and Le Monde lists, such as top Reagan administration officials David Stockman and myself. It is extraordinary that the FBI is so desperate to protect the budget of the military/security complex that it brings such embarrassment to itself. Who in the future will believe any FBI report or anything a FBI official says?
Those behind this “investigation” understand that it is so ridiculous that they must give it gravity and credibility. They selected two reporters, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, in the McClatchy News Washington Bureau, who fit Udo Ulfkotte’s definition of “bought journalists.” Hiding behind anonymous sources—“two people familiar with the inquiry” and “sources who spoke on condition of anonymity”—the presstitutes fell in with the attack on independent media, reporting that one former US intelligence official said: “This may be one of the most highly impactful information operations in the history of intelligence.” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article139695453.html
Wow! A totally ridiculous “investigation” is one of the most important in history. The implication is that the Russians are operating through scores or hundreds of independent media sites to control how Americans vote.
There was once a time in America when people were skeptical of anonymous sources. It was widely understood that anyone could tell a reporter anything and that a reporter could claim an anonymous source whether or not the source existed. Perhaps it was the Watergate “investigation” by the Washington Post that gave anonymity credibility. The Post’s reports made it sound like any sources ratting on Nixon’s perfidy was at risk of their lives, and the subtle emphasis on risk gave anonymity credibility.
The real story under our noses is not a Trump/Putin/independent media conspiracy to steal the presidential election. The real story is the totally obvious collusion between the Hillary forces, the US print and TV media (with the partial exception of Fox News), and the CIA and FBI to steal the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, the presidential election from Donald Trump, and to delegitimize Trump’s election.
The theft of the nomination from Sanders is precisely what the leaked Podesta emails show. The totally one-sided presstitute support for Hillary and full-scale assault on Trump clearly show the presstitutes participation in the collusion. The extraordinary lies told in public by Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan clearly demonstrate the CIA’s lead in the attempted frame-up of Trump and his team. FBI Director Comey’s statement the day before the presidential election that the FBI had once again cleared Hillary of criminal charges sent the Dow up 371 points and set the stage for a Hillary election victory.
Why are not any of these hard facts in the news?
Why, instead, do the presstitutes and “intelligence” agencies report nothing but fake news, supported by anonymous “sources”? Why is a false reality being constructed, and the hard facts ignored?
Note another extremely strange feature of our strange time. Elements of the liberal/progressive/left portray President Trump as a member of the One Percent operating for the One Percent against the people and filling his government up with generals and his budget with more military spending. Why then is Trump under full-scale assault from the military/security complex? Why are they working to contradict, delegitimize and impeach their own agent?
If Americans were a thinking people, or even a people capable of thought, how could such inconsistent disinformation dominate public discussion?
What we should be scared about is that in America today, facts cannot compete with lies.
The McClatchy story describing a pointless investigation as one of the most important in history is working its way through the media. See:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-some-right-wing-sites-under-1490115530-htmlstory.html
http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/21/fbi-probing-breitbart-infowars-in-russian-influence-investigation/
http://news.antiwar.com/2017/03/21/fbis-russia-probe-turns-focus-on-social-media-bots/print/
Are we to conclude that America’s corrupt and disloyal “intelligence” agencies are a direct threat to democracy, that they are committed to overthrowing Trump’s presidency in a “color revolution,” that, unable to provide any evidence whatsoever for their conspiracy theory of a Trump/Putin collusion to steal the presidential election, the “intelligence” agencies have moved on to the discredit the independent Internet media that are in the way of the “intelligence” agencies’ control over explanations?
It is a hard fact that the Democrats, US “intelligence,” and the presstitutes are absolutely determined to control the explanations given to the American people and the wider world.
The Agents are out in force, and Neo is nowhere in sight.
The demonization of Russia and the extraordinary level of tension that the ignorant and foolish Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes created with Russia are disconcerting, indeed, frightening to those, such as myself, Patrick Buchanan, and Stephen Cohen, who experienced the long decades of the Cold War. We have never seen such highly provocative, entirely gratuitous behavior of one nuclear power toward another as the behavior of the US toward Russia over the past six presidential terms. What the Cold Warriors of the time experienced was a gradual buildup of mutual trust that enabled Reagan and Gorbachev to end the Cold War and remove the threat of nuclear Armageddon.
In contrast, the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes, the FBI, CIA, NSA, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, and the rest of the presstitutes, the right-wing Republicans, such as Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Ben Sasse, the Democratic Party, and the liberal/progressive/left have convinced Russia, in the words of Russia’s President Putin, that “we cannot trust the United States.”
This “achievement” of these idiots comprises the greatest crime humans have committed in their entire history. The atomic bombs with which the Americans gratuitously destroyed two Japanese cities are mere pop guns compared to the thermo-nuclear weapons of today. Some of the crazed neoconservatives erroneously believe that Russia is not sufficiently well-armed to respond to US aggression, but the fact of the matter is that Russia’s strategic weapons are superior and more powerful than those of the US.
How can it be anything other than a death wish for European governments to be egging on conflict with Russia, for women marching not against war but against Trump for wanting to reduce tensions with Russia, for US “intelligence” to be totally committed to orchestrating a “Russian threat” that all but guarantees thermo-nuclear war? One would think that people would be marching in favor of reduced tensions with Russia and demanding that Trump deliver on this promise, not that they would be out opposing Trump. What is the importance of Identity Politics compared to nuclear war?
How can Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Europeans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and Japanese contain their outrage against the governments that are putting the life of the planet at risk for nothing except the budget and power of the US military/security complex? Trump is silly to roll back environmental protections, but this pales in comparison to the environmental damage of thermo-nuclear war.
How can the left-wing be lost in Identity Politics while the life of the planet is being put at extreme risk?
Why did CounterPunch recently and suddenly abandon the working class and peace and take up the cause of the victim groups of Identity Politics— women, blacks, homosexuals, lesbians, transgendered, and Muslim refugees (see Eric Draitser CP, Vol. 24, No. 1), the cause of the EU and globalism (see http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/20/brexit-nationalism-and-the-damage-done/ ) which benefits only the One Percent, and the demonization of Trump and Putin? Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but CounterPunch’s collapse coincides with CP being put on and removed from the PropOrNot list of Russian agents/dupes. My columns, for years a welcome feature on CounterPunch, suddenly ceased to appear. We have had no explanation from CounterPunch why the site suddenly gave up on peace and bread.
One might think that the audacity of the lies from the FBI, CIA, NSA and their media whores would provoke a powerful response from the liberal/progressive/left and from European populations, but it hasn’t.
What about Trump himself? Has he been forced to abandon his goal of normal relations with Russia, as this article in the Intercept suggests? https://theintercept.com/2017/03/21/revolving-door-military/ If not, is Trump filling top Pentagon and Homeland Security positions with generals and defense contractors in order to neutralize the military from participating in a CIA/presstitute coup against him?
If Trump is eliminated, with Pence as VP and the list of appointees provided by the Intercept, the US government will pass into the hands of the military/security complex for the remainder of its existence.
Is Trump now focused on protecting himself instead of protecting all of us from a deadly conflict with Russia?
If so, this is the achievement of the US “intelligence” services, the Democratic Party, right-wing Republicans, the presstitute media, and the liberal/progressive/left.
If anyone remains to write the history of the Great Incineration, the identity of those responsible is completely clear.
The FBI’s Conspiracy Theory of a Trump/Putin Collusion Has No Clothes
Unable to provide an ounce of evidence that a Trump/Putin conspiracy stole the presidential election from Hillary Clinton, the corrupt US “intelligence” agencies are shifting their focus to social media and to Internet sites such as Alex Jones and Breitbart. Little doubt the FBI investigation will trickle down to Glenn Greenwald at The Intercept, Zero Hedge, the Ron Paul Institute, Nomi Prins, Naked Capitalism, Lew Rockwell, Global Research, antiwar.com, and to others on the PropOrNot, Harvard Library, and Le Monde lists, such as top Reagan administration officials David Stockman and myself. It is extraordinary that the FBI is so desperate to protect the budget of the military/security complex that it brings such embarrassment to itself. Who in the future will believe any FBI report or anything a FBI official says?
Those behind this “investigation” understand that it is so ridiculous that they must give it gravity and credibility. They selected two reporters, Peter Stone and Greg Gordon, in the McClatchy News Washington Bureau, who fit Udo Ulfkotte’s definition of “bought journalists.” Hiding behind anonymous sources—“two people familiar with the inquiry” and “sources who spoke on condition of anonymity”—the presstitutes fell in with the attack on independent media, reporting that one former US intelligence official said: “This may be one of the most highly impactful information operations in the history of intelligence.” http://www.mcclatchydc.com/news/politics-government/white-house/article139695453.html
Wow! A totally ridiculous “investigation” is one of the most important in history. The implication is that the Russians are operating through scores or hundreds of independent media sites to control how Americans vote.
There was once a time in America when people were skeptical of anonymous sources. It was widely understood that anyone could tell a reporter anything and that a reporter could claim an anonymous source whether or not the source existed. Perhaps it was the Watergate “investigation” by the Washington Post that gave anonymity credibility. The Post’s reports made it sound like any sources ratting on Nixon’s perfidy was at risk of their lives, and the subtle emphasis on risk gave anonymity credibility.
The real story under our noses is not a Trump/Putin/independent media conspiracy to steal the presidential election. The real story is the totally obvious collusion between the Hillary forces, the US print and TV media (with the partial exception of Fox News), and the CIA and FBI to steal the Democratic nomination from Bernie Sanders, the presidential election from Donald Trump, and to delegitimize Trump’s election.
The theft of the nomination from Sanders is precisely what the leaked Podesta emails show. The totally one-sided presstitute support for Hillary and full-scale assault on Trump clearly show the presstitutes participation in the collusion. The extraordinary lies told in public by Obama’s CIA Director John Brennan clearly demonstrate the CIA’s lead in the attempted frame-up of Trump and his team. FBI Director Comey’s statement the day before the presidential election that the FBI had once again cleared Hillary of criminal charges sent the Dow up 371 points and set the stage for a Hillary election victory.
Why are not any of these hard facts in the news?
Why, instead, do the presstitutes and “intelligence” agencies report nothing but fake news, supported by anonymous “sources”? Why is a false reality being constructed, and the hard facts ignored?
Note another extremely strange feature of our strange time. Elements of the liberal/progressive/left portray President Trump as a member of the One Percent operating for the One Percent against the people and filling his government up with generals and his budget with more military spending. Why then is Trump under full-scale assault from the military/security complex? Why are they working to contradict, delegitimize and impeach their own agent?
If Americans were a thinking people, or even a people capable of thought, how could such inconsistent disinformation dominate public discussion?
What we should be scared about is that in America today, facts cannot compete with lies.
The McClatchy story describing a pointless investigation as one of the most important in history is working its way through the media. See:
http://www.latimes.com/politics/washington/la-na-essential-washington-updates-some-right-wing-sites-under-1490115530-htmlstory.html
http://dailycaller.com/2017/03/21/fbi-probing-breitbart-infowars-in-russian-influence-investigation/
http://news.antiwar.com/2017/03/21/fbis-russia-probe-turns-focus-on-social-media-bots/print/
Are we to conclude that America’s corrupt and disloyal “intelligence” agencies are a direct threat to democracy, that they are committed to overthrowing Trump’s presidency in a “color revolution,” that, unable to provide any evidence whatsoever for their conspiracy theory of a Trump/Putin collusion to steal the presidential election, the “intelligence” agencies have moved on to the discredit the independent Internet media that are in the way of the “intelligence” agencies’ control over explanations?
It is a hard fact that the Democrats, US “intelligence,” and the presstitutes are absolutely determined to control the explanations given to the American people and the wider world.
The Agents are out in force, and Neo is nowhere in sight.
The demonization of Russia and the extraordinary level of tension that the ignorant and foolish Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes created with Russia are disconcerting, indeed, frightening to those, such as myself, Patrick Buchanan, and Stephen Cohen, who experienced the long decades of the Cold War. We have never seen such highly provocative, entirely gratuitous behavior of one nuclear power toward another as the behavior of the US toward Russia over the past six presidential terms. What the Cold Warriors of the time experienced was a gradual buildup of mutual trust that enabled Reagan and Gorbachev to end the Cold War and remove the threat of nuclear Armageddon.
In contrast, the Clinton, Bush, and Obama regimes, the FBI, CIA, NSA, the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, and the rest of the presstitutes, the right-wing Republicans, such as Lindsey Graham, John McCain, and Ben Sasse, the Democratic Party, and the liberal/progressive/left have convinced Russia, in the words of Russia’s President Putin, that “we cannot trust the United States.”
This “achievement” of these idiots comprises the greatest crime humans have committed in their entire history. The atomic bombs with which the Americans gratuitously destroyed two Japanese cities are mere pop guns compared to the thermo-nuclear weapons of today. Some of the crazed neoconservatives erroneously believe that Russia is not sufficiently well-armed to respond to US aggression, but the fact of the matter is that Russia’s strategic weapons are superior and more powerful than those of the US.
How can it be anything other than a death wish for European governments to be egging on conflict with Russia, for women marching not against war but against Trump for wanting to reduce tensions with Russia, for US “intelligence” to be totally committed to orchestrating a “Russian threat” that all but guarantees thermo-nuclear war? One would think that people would be marching in favor of reduced tensions with Russia and demanding that Trump deliver on this promise, not that they would be out opposing Trump. What is the importance of Identity Politics compared to nuclear war?
How can Americans, Democrats, Republicans, Greens, Europeans, Canadians, Australians, New Zealanders, and Japanese contain their outrage against the governments that are putting the life of the planet at risk for nothing except the budget and power of the US military/security complex? Trump is silly to roll back environmental protections, but this pales in comparison to the environmental damage of thermo-nuclear war.
How can the left-wing be lost in Identity Politics while the life of the planet is being put at extreme risk?
Why did CounterPunch recently and suddenly abandon the working class and peace and take up the cause of the victim groups of Identity Politics— women, blacks, homosexuals, lesbians, transgendered, and Muslim refugees (see Eric Draitser CP, Vol. 24, No. 1), the cause of the EU and globalism (see http://www.counterpunch.org/2017/03/20/brexit-nationalism-and-the-damage-done/ ) which benefits only the One Percent, and the demonization of Trump and Putin? Perhaps it is only a coincidence, but CounterPunch’s collapse coincides with CP being put on and removed from the PropOrNot list of Russian agents/dupes. My columns, for years a welcome feature on CounterPunch, suddenly ceased to appear. We have had no explanation from CounterPunch why the site suddenly gave up on peace and bread.
One might think that the audacity of the lies from the FBI, CIA, NSA and their media whores would provoke a powerful response from the liberal/progressive/left and from European populations, but it hasn’t.
What about Trump himself? Has he been forced to abandon his goal of normal relations with Russia, as this article in the Intercept suggests? https://theintercept.com/2017/03/21/revolving-door-military/ If not, is Trump filling top Pentagon and Homeland Security positions with generals and defense contractors in order to neutralize the military from participating in a CIA/presstitute coup against him?
If Trump is eliminated, with Pence as VP and the list of appointees provided by the Intercept, the US government will pass into the hands of the military/security complex for the remainder of its existence.
Is Trump now focused on protecting himself instead of protecting all of us from a deadly conflict with Russia?
If so, this is the achievement of the US “intelligence” services, the Democratic Party, right-wing Republicans, the presstitute media, and the liberal/progressive/left.
If anyone remains to write the history of the Great Incineration, the identity of those responsible is completely clear.
SC142-9
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/46736.htm
Russophobia – Symptom of US Implosion
There was a time when Russophobia served as an effective form of population control – used by the American ruling class in particular to command the general US population into patriotic loyalty. Not any longer. Now, Russophobia is a sign of weakness, of desperate implosion among the US ruling class from their own rotten, internal decay.
This propaganda technique worked adequately well during the Cold War decades when the former Soviet Union could be easily demonized as «godless communism» and an «evil empire». Such stereotypes, no matter how false, could be sustained largely because of the monopoly control of Western media by governments and official regulators.
The Soviet Union passed away more than a quarter of a century ago, but Russophobia among the US political class is more virulent than ever.
This week it was evident from Congressional hearings in Washington into alleged Russian interference in US politics that large sections of American government and establishment media are fixated by Russophobia and a belief that Russia is a malign foreign adversary.
However, the power of the Russophobia propaganda technique over the wider population seems to have greatly diminished from its Cold War heyday. This is partly due to more diverse global communications which challenge the previous Western monopoly for controlling narrative and perception. Contemporary Russophobia – demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin or Russian military forces – does not have the same potency for scaring the Western public. Indeed, due to greater diversity in global news media sources, it is fair to say that «official» Western depictions of Russia as an enemy, for example allegedly about to invade Europe or allegedly interfering in electoral politics, are met with a healthy skepticism – if not ridicule by many Western citizens.
What is increasingly apparent here is a gaping chasm between the political class and the wider public on the matter of Russophobia. This is true for Western countries generally, but especially in the US. The political class – the lawmakers in Washington and the mainstream news media – are frenzied by claims that Russia interfered in the US presidential elections and that Russia has some kind of sinister leverage on the presidency of Donald Trump.
But this frenzy of Russophobia is not reflected among the wider public of ordinary American citizens. Rabid accusations that Russia hacked the computers of Trump’s Democrat rival Hillary Clinton to spread damaging information about her; that this alleged sabotage of American democracy was an «act of war»; that President Trump is guilty of «treason» by «colluding» with a «Russian influence campaign» – all of these sensational claims seem to be only a preoccupation of the privileged political class. Most ordinary Americans, concerned about making a living in a crumbling society, either don’t buy the claims or view them as idle chatter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week dismissed the Congressional hearings into alleged Russian interference in US politics. He aptly said that US lawmakers and the corporate media have become «entangled» in their own fabrications. «They are trying to find evidence for conclusions that they have already made», said Peskov.
Other suitable imagery is that the US political class are tilting at windmills, chasing their own tails, or running from their own shadows. There seems to be a collective delusional mindset.
Unable to accept the reality that the governing structure of the US has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, that the people rebelled by electing an outsider in the form of business mogul-turned-politician Donald Trump, that the collapse of American traditional politics is due to the atrophy of its bankrupt capitalist economy over several decades – the ruling class have fabricated their own excuse for demise by blaming it all on Russia.
The American ruling class cannot accept, or come to terms, with the fact of systemic failure in their own political system. The election of Trump is a symptom of this failure and the widespread disillusionment among voters towards the two-party train wreck of Republicans and Democrats. That is why the specter of Russian interference in the US political system had to be conjured up, by necessity, as a way of «explaining» the abject failure and the ensuing popular revolt.
Russophobia was rehabilitated from the Cold War closet by the American political establishment to distract from the glaring internal collapse of American politics.
The corrosive, self-destruction seems to know no bounds. James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told Congress this week that the White House is being probed for illicit contacts with Russia. This dramatic notice served by Comey was greeted with general approval by political opponents of the Trump administration, as well as by news media outlets.
The New York Times said the FBI was in effect holding a «criminal investigation at the doorstep of the White House».
Other news outlets are openly airing discussions on the probability of President Trump being impeached from office.
The toxic political atmosphere of Russophobia in Washington is unprecedented. The Trump administration is being crippled at every turn from conducting normal political business under a toxic cloud of suspicion that it is guilty of treason from colluding with Russia.
President Trump has run afoul with Republicans in Congress over his planned healthcare reforms because many Republicans are taking issue instead over the vaunted Russian probe.
When Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reported to be skipping a NATO summit next month but was planning to visit Moscow later in the same month, the itinerary was interpreted as a sign of untoward Russian influence.
What makes the spectacle of political infighting so unprecedented is that there is such little evidence to back up allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. It is preponderantly based on innuendo and anonymous leaks to the media, which are then recycled as «evidence».
Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier this week that he has seen no actual evidence among classified documents indicating any collusion between the Trump campaign team and the Russian government.
Even former senior intelligence officials, James Clapper and Michael Morell who are no friends of Trump, have lately admitted in media interviews that there is no such evidence.
Yet, FBI chief James Comey told Congress that his agency was pursuing a potentially criminal investigation into the Trump administration, while at the same time not confirming or denying the existence of any evidence.
And, as already noted, this declaration of open-ended snooping by Comey on the White House was met with avid approval by political opponents of Trump, both on Capitol Hill and in the corporate media.
Let’s just assume for a moment that the whole Trump-Russia collusion story is indeed fake. That it is groundless, a figment of imagination. There are solid reasons to believe that is the case. But let’s just assume here that it is fake for the sake of argument.
That then means that the Washington seat of government and the US presidency are tearing themselves apart in a futile civil war.
The real war here is a power struggle within the US in the context of ruling parties no longer having legitimacy to govern.
This is an American implosion. An historic Made-in-America meltdown. And Russophobia is but a symptom of the internal decay at the heart of US politics.
....
Comment under the article,
neoconned · 2 days ago
I agree that the Russophobia is a symptom of the ongoing economic collapse of the USA. All one has to do is tune out the MSM and open one's eyes to the reality all around you. The truth is in the math. As one commented above about the malls closing - this is a reality in the US. You can see it with your own 2 eyes! Retail is a deadman walking. Sears, JC Penney, Macy's and other "anchor stores" are all closing hundreds if not thousands of outlets. Blame it on Amazon, the internet, Putin, etc., but the reality is another big lie - the unemployment #s. With 98 million able bodied workers who cannot find a job the reality is 23% unemployment which translates into a lot of broke people who cannot afford to go shopping any more and who have to squat in those closed down malls like dawn of the dead. And what about the 11% default ratio in the 1.3 trillion dollar student loan bubble? That's the same ratio as the subprime mortgage crisis that crashed the economy in 2008 - 1.3 trillion in garbage mortgages and 11% default ratio. But the masters of the universe after shifting their gambling losses in housing to the public with their TARP bailout had the collateral sitting there, so they had their hedge fund buddies buy up all the foreclosed real estate and keep it off the market to create "scarcity" and drive up housing prices again. And guess what they created rental backed securities which flopped because being a landlord isn't as easy as you think, and once again subprime mortgages are here again. And the subprime lending in the auto industry is now imploding as well. Why subprime? Because there are no prime borrowers anymore - everyone is out of work living hand to mouth with credit scores under 500. You don't see bread lines like during the great depression, but we have been in a depression since 2008 - only they have covered it up with SNAP benefit cards, fake news, fake statistics, and distractions like the fake wars on terror based on false flag attacks on 9-11. It all goes back to 9-11. Capitalism was teetering on the brink back then with the dotcom bubble bursting and all the wizards of wall street could come up with was more bubbles in the bubble economy that is the West. So now our infrastructure is crumbling, healthcare is a disaster, education is being undermined, and Trump is sabre rattling against N. Korea, China, Iran, Syria, and of course Russia even though he campaigned on a slogan of making peace with Russia, Well the neocons will have none of that! They have spent the last 30 plus years entrenching themselves in the deep state to pursue an agenda of global hegemony and israel first policies in the ME. So there will be hard times ahead. The real estate market is going to collapse again as will the stock market regardless of the manipulations of the plunge protection team. If you don't think it is coming and don't think the banks will be bailing in all your money so you can't even shop online anymore then just keep listening to the talking heads - the presstitutes on the MSM and be lulled into a sense of complacency. Don't go buy gold, or silver, or cloudcoins or bitcoins. Don't prep. Don't have an exit strategy from the empire. Take your soma and drink your victory gin as the mushroom clouds blossom on the horizon. Perhaps that is a fitting end to the empire. Blow up space ship Earth and eliminate all life on the planet because if the 1% cannot have it all then it's just not worth having anything.
Russophobia – Symptom of US Implosion
There was a time when Russophobia served as an effective form of population control – used by the American ruling class in particular to command the general US population into patriotic loyalty. Not any longer. Now, Russophobia is a sign of weakness, of desperate implosion among the US ruling class from their own rotten, internal decay.
This propaganda technique worked adequately well during the Cold War decades when the former Soviet Union could be easily demonized as «godless communism» and an «evil empire». Such stereotypes, no matter how false, could be sustained largely because of the monopoly control of Western media by governments and official regulators.
The Soviet Union passed away more than a quarter of a century ago, but Russophobia among the US political class is more virulent than ever.
This week it was evident from Congressional hearings in Washington into alleged Russian interference in US politics that large sections of American government and establishment media are fixated by Russophobia and a belief that Russia is a malign foreign adversary.
However, the power of the Russophobia propaganda technique over the wider population seems to have greatly diminished from its Cold War heyday. This is partly due to more diverse global communications which challenge the previous Western monopoly for controlling narrative and perception. Contemporary Russophobia – demonizing Russian President Vladimir Putin or Russian military forces – does not have the same potency for scaring the Western public. Indeed, due to greater diversity in global news media sources, it is fair to say that «official» Western depictions of Russia as an enemy, for example allegedly about to invade Europe or allegedly interfering in electoral politics, are met with a healthy skepticism – if not ridicule by many Western citizens.
What is increasingly apparent here is a gaping chasm between the political class and the wider public on the matter of Russophobia. This is true for Western countries generally, but especially in the US. The political class – the lawmakers in Washington and the mainstream news media – are frenzied by claims that Russia interfered in the US presidential elections and that Russia has some kind of sinister leverage on the presidency of Donald Trump.
But this frenzy of Russophobia is not reflected among the wider public of ordinary American citizens. Rabid accusations that Russia hacked the computers of Trump’s Democrat rival Hillary Clinton to spread damaging information about her; that this alleged sabotage of American democracy was an «act of war»; that President Trump is guilty of «treason» by «colluding» with a «Russian influence campaign» – all of these sensational claims seem to be only a preoccupation of the privileged political class. Most ordinary Americans, concerned about making a living in a crumbling society, either don’t buy the claims or view them as idle chatter.
Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov this week dismissed the Congressional hearings into alleged Russian interference in US politics. He aptly said that US lawmakers and the corporate media have become «entangled» in their own fabrications. «They are trying to find evidence for conclusions that they have already made», said Peskov.
Other suitable imagery is that the US political class are tilting at windmills, chasing their own tails, or running from their own shadows. There seems to be a collective delusional mindset.
Unable to accept the reality that the governing structure of the US has lost legitimacy in the eyes of the people, that the people rebelled by electing an outsider in the form of business mogul-turned-politician Donald Trump, that the collapse of American traditional politics is due to the atrophy of its bankrupt capitalist economy over several decades – the ruling class have fabricated their own excuse for demise by blaming it all on Russia.
The American ruling class cannot accept, or come to terms, with the fact of systemic failure in their own political system. The election of Trump is a symptom of this failure and the widespread disillusionment among voters towards the two-party train wreck of Republicans and Democrats. That is why the specter of Russian interference in the US political system had to be conjured up, by necessity, as a way of «explaining» the abject failure and the ensuing popular revolt.
Russophobia was rehabilitated from the Cold War closet by the American political establishment to distract from the glaring internal collapse of American politics.
The corrosive, self-destruction seems to know no bounds. James Comey, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, told Congress this week that the White House is being probed for illicit contacts with Russia. This dramatic notice served by Comey was greeted with general approval by political opponents of the Trump administration, as well as by news media outlets.
The New York Times said the FBI was in effect holding a «criminal investigation at the doorstep of the White House».
Other news outlets are openly airing discussions on the probability of President Trump being impeached from office.
The toxic political atmosphere of Russophobia in Washington is unprecedented. The Trump administration is being crippled at every turn from conducting normal political business under a toxic cloud of suspicion that it is guilty of treason from colluding with Russia.
President Trump has run afoul with Republicans in Congress over his planned healthcare reforms because many Republicans are taking issue instead over the vaunted Russian probe.
When Trump’s Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was reported to be skipping a NATO summit next month but was planning to visit Moscow later in the same month, the itinerary was interpreted as a sign of untoward Russian influence.
What makes the spectacle of political infighting so unprecedented is that there is such little evidence to back up allegations of Trump-Russia collusion. It is preponderantly based on innuendo and anonymous leaks to the media, which are then recycled as «evidence».
Devin Nunes, the ranking Republican on the House Intelligence Committee, said earlier this week that he has seen no actual evidence among classified documents indicating any collusion between the Trump campaign team and the Russian government.
Even former senior intelligence officials, James Clapper and Michael Morell who are no friends of Trump, have lately admitted in media interviews that there is no such evidence.
Yet, FBI chief James Comey told Congress that his agency was pursuing a potentially criminal investigation into the Trump administration, while at the same time not confirming or denying the existence of any evidence.
And, as already noted, this declaration of open-ended snooping by Comey on the White House was met with avid approval by political opponents of Trump, both on Capitol Hill and in the corporate media.
Let’s just assume for a moment that the whole Trump-Russia collusion story is indeed fake. That it is groundless, a figment of imagination. There are solid reasons to believe that is the case. But let’s just assume here that it is fake for the sake of argument.
That then means that the Washington seat of government and the US presidency are tearing themselves apart in a futile civil war.
The real war here is a power struggle within the US in the context of ruling parties no longer having legitimacy to govern.
This is an American implosion. An historic Made-in-America meltdown. And Russophobia is but a symptom of the internal decay at the heart of US politics.
....
Comment under the article,
neoconned · 2 days ago
I agree that the Russophobia is a symptom of the ongoing economic collapse of the USA. All one has to do is tune out the MSM and open one's eyes to the reality all around you. The truth is in the math. As one commented above about the malls closing - this is a reality in the US. You can see it with your own 2 eyes! Retail is a deadman walking. Sears, JC Penney, Macy's and other "anchor stores" are all closing hundreds if not thousands of outlets. Blame it on Amazon, the internet, Putin, etc., but the reality is another big lie - the unemployment #s. With 98 million able bodied workers who cannot find a job the reality is 23% unemployment which translates into a lot of broke people who cannot afford to go shopping any more and who have to squat in those closed down malls like dawn of the dead. And what about the 11% default ratio in the 1.3 trillion dollar student loan bubble? That's the same ratio as the subprime mortgage crisis that crashed the economy in 2008 - 1.3 trillion in garbage mortgages and 11% default ratio. But the masters of the universe after shifting their gambling losses in housing to the public with their TARP bailout had the collateral sitting there, so they had their hedge fund buddies buy up all the foreclosed real estate and keep it off the market to create "scarcity" and drive up housing prices again. And guess what they created rental backed securities which flopped because being a landlord isn't as easy as you think, and once again subprime mortgages are here again. And the subprime lending in the auto industry is now imploding as well. Why subprime? Because there are no prime borrowers anymore - everyone is out of work living hand to mouth with credit scores under 500. You don't see bread lines like during the great depression, but we have been in a depression since 2008 - only they have covered it up with SNAP benefit cards, fake news, fake statistics, and distractions like the fake wars on terror based on false flag attacks on 9-11. It all goes back to 9-11. Capitalism was teetering on the brink back then with the dotcom bubble bursting and all the wizards of wall street could come up with was more bubbles in the bubble economy that is the West. So now our infrastructure is crumbling, healthcare is a disaster, education is being undermined, and Trump is sabre rattling against N. Korea, China, Iran, Syria, and of course Russia even though he campaigned on a slogan of making peace with Russia, Well the neocons will have none of that! They have spent the last 30 plus years entrenching themselves in the deep state to pursue an agenda of global hegemony and israel first policies in the ME. So there will be hard times ahead. The real estate market is going to collapse again as will the stock market regardless of the manipulations of the plunge protection team. If you don't think it is coming and don't think the banks will be bailing in all your money so you can't even shop online anymore then just keep listening to the talking heads - the presstitutes on the MSM and be lulled into a sense of complacency. Don't go buy gold, or silver, or cloudcoins or bitcoins. Don't prep. Don't have an exit strategy from the empire. Take your soma and drink your victory gin as the mushroom clouds blossom on the horizon. Perhaps that is a fitting end to the empire. Blow up space ship Earth and eliminate all life on the planet because if the 1% cannot have it all then it's just not worth having anything.
Sunday, March 26, 2017
SC142-8
http://www.oftwominds.com/blog.html
Forget ObamaCare, RyanCare, and any Future ReformCare--the Healthcare System Is Completely Broken
It's time to start planning for what we'll do when the current healthcare system implodes.
As with many other complex, opaque systems in the U.S., only those toiling in the murky depths of the healthcare system know just how broken the entire system is. Only those dealing daily with the perverse incentives, the Kafkaesque procedures, the endlessly negative unintended consequences, the soul-deadening paper-shuffling, the myriad forms of fraud, the recalcitrant patients who don't follow recommendations but demand to be magically returned to health anyway, and of course the hopelessness of the financial future of a system with runaway costs, a rapidly aging populace and profiteering cartels focused on maintaining their rackets regardless of the cost to the nation or the health of its people.
Ask any doctor or nurse, and you will hear first-hand how broken the system is, and how minor policy tweaks and reforms cannot possibly save the system from imploding. Based on my own first-hand experience and first-hand reports by physicians, here are a few of the hundreds of reasons why the system cannot be reformed or saved.
Say 6-year old Carlos gets a tummy-ache at school. To avoid liability, the school doesn't allow teachers to provide any care whatsoever. The school nurse (assuming the school has one) doesn't have the diagnostic tools on hand to absolutely rule out the possibility that Carlos has some serious condition, so the parents are called and told to take Carlos to their own doctor.
Their pediatrician is already booked, so Carlos ends up waiting in the ER (emergency room). Neither the school nurse nor the parents see the symptoms as worrisome or dangerous, but here they are in ER, where standards of care require a CT scan and bloodwork.
Hours later, Carlos is released and some entity somewhere gets an $8,000 bill--for a tummy-ache that went away on its own without any treatment at all.
Since the Kafkaesque billing system rewards quick turn-arounds, observation is frowned upon unless it can be billed. So if observation is deemed necessary (to avoid any liability, of course), Carlos might be wheeled into an "observation room" filled with other people, where a nurse pops in every once in a while. This adds $3,000 to the bill.
(Never mind the stress on Carlos being in such unfamiliar surroundings; he might have felt better if he hadn't been subjected to the anxieties that come with being enmeshed in the healthcare system's straight-jacket of standards of care.)
If Carlos doesn't feel better after all this, then the bill is set to balloon bigtime because an overnight stay in the hospital is the next step--and if there isn't a 100% certainty that there is no chance of his stomach-ache becoming something serious, then the system will insist on overnight observation as the only legally defensible option.
There are other ways to increase the fees without actually providing additional care; was Carlos receiving "critical care"? Of course he was, because, well, it pays better, and by definition any ER visit is critical care.
This example is just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the point: all institutional care decisions ultimately revolve around thwarting future liability claims and maximizing the billing value of each interaction or procedure.
You've probably seen some of the racketeering that passes for "business as usual" in the pharmaceutical arm of the "healthcare" industry. A pharma company that spent $500,000 trying to keep pot illegal just got DEA approval for synthetic marijuana (via Chad D.)
Pinworm prescription jumps from $3 to up to $600 a pill (via John F.)
Off-patent medications double or triple in cost, and then double or triple again with a few years, without any justification. To extend expiring patents, Big Pharma corporations petition the FDA to change the target audience for the med, and this trivial administrative change awards the corporation years more of lucrative patent protection.
The scams are endless, the skims are endless, the fraud is endless, the waste is endless, the fortunes expended to limit "winner take all" liability claims are endless, the paperwork churn is endless and the perverse incentives and negative unintended consequences are endless.
Everyone knows the system is unsustainable, perverse and insane, but they are powerless to change it within the system as it is. The usual sort of political horsetrading that passes for "reform" yielded ObamaCare, which did essentially zero to limit costs or cartel rackets.
A system based on parasitic predation by all the cartel players cannot be reformed or saved from its own perverse incentives and skyrocketing costs. The foundations of U.S. healthcare are rotten to the core. "Reform" is an appealing delusion, but the rot is so deep and so pervasive it is embedded in the society and the culture, beyond the reach of legislative overhauls, no matter how well-meaning.
This chart-fest reflects the trends that cannot be reversed by policy tweaks and tucks: The U.S. spends more than twice as much per person than our advanced competitors such as Japan and France.
The U.S. spends 2.5 times more per person than the OECD (i.e. the industrialized nations) average:
Wages have risen 16%, GDP rose 168%, and healthcare soared 818%. Do you reckon wage earners might have a hard time paying for healthcare nowadays?
If healthcare had risen only as much as official inflation, each household would be saving $10,000 per year--$100,000 each decade. $100K here and $100K there, and pretty soon you're talking real money in a conventional wage-earner household budget.
Projections of skyrocketing Medicare and Medicaid program costs guarantee national bankruptcy. The projection of 90 million Medicare enrollees is predictable, but there is no reason to believe costs will be limited to $20,000 per enrollee annually.
U.S. healthcare costs more in every category than other healthcare systems. Tweaking policy in one slice does nothing to limit the staggering increases being logged in all the other tranches of the system.
America's healthcare system is the perfection of the fraud triangle: the pressure to increase billings, fees and profits is immense, the rationalizations are unlimited (it's within the legal guidelines, etc.) and the opportunities for fraud are equally unlimited.
Individual caregivers and administrators want a different, better role and a better outcome, but each is trapped in the system as it is--and reform is impossible given the systemic foundations, incentives and legal framework.
It's time to start planning for what we'll do when the current healthcare system implodes. We might start by considering The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash
Forget ObamaCare, RyanCare, and any Future ReformCare--the Healthcare System Is Completely Broken
It's time to start planning for what we'll do when the current healthcare system implodes.
As with many other complex, opaque systems in the U.S., only those toiling in the murky depths of the healthcare system know just how broken the entire system is. Only those dealing daily with the perverse incentives, the Kafkaesque procedures, the endlessly negative unintended consequences, the soul-deadening paper-shuffling, the myriad forms of fraud, the recalcitrant patients who don't follow recommendations but demand to be magically returned to health anyway, and of course the hopelessness of the financial future of a system with runaway costs, a rapidly aging populace and profiteering cartels focused on maintaining their rackets regardless of the cost to the nation or the health of its people.
Ask any doctor or nurse, and you will hear first-hand how broken the system is, and how minor policy tweaks and reforms cannot possibly save the system from imploding. Based on my own first-hand experience and first-hand reports by physicians, here are a few of the hundreds of reasons why the system cannot be reformed or saved.
Say 6-year old Carlos gets a tummy-ache at school. To avoid liability, the school doesn't allow teachers to provide any care whatsoever. The school nurse (assuming the school has one) doesn't have the diagnostic tools on hand to absolutely rule out the possibility that Carlos has some serious condition, so the parents are called and told to take Carlos to their own doctor.
Their pediatrician is already booked, so Carlos ends up waiting in the ER (emergency room). Neither the school nurse nor the parents see the symptoms as worrisome or dangerous, but here they are in ER, where standards of care require a CT scan and bloodwork.
Hours later, Carlos is released and some entity somewhere gets an $8,000 bill--for a tummy-ache that went away on its own without any treatment at all.
Since the Kafkaesque billing system rewards quick turn-arounds, observation is frowned upon unless it can be billed. So if observation is deemed necessary (to avoid any liability, of course), Carlos might be wheeled into an "observation room" filled with other people, where a nurse pops in every once in a while. This adds $3,000 to the bill.
(Never mind the stress on Carlos being in such unfamiliar surroundings; he might have felt better if he hadn't been subjected to the anxieties that come with being enmeshed in the healthcare system's straight-jacket of standards of care.)
If Carlos doesn't feel better after all this, then the bill is set to balloon bigtime because an overnight stay in the hospital is the next step--and if there isn't a 100% certainty that there is no chance of his stomach-ache becoming something serious, then the system will insist on overnight observation as the only legally defensible option.
There are other ways to increase the fees without actually providing additional care; was Carlos receiving "critical care"? Of course he was, because, well, it pays better, and by definition any ER visit is critical care.
This example is just the tip of the iceberg, but you get the point: all institutional care decisions ultimately revolve around thwarting future liability claims and maximizing the billing value of each interaction or procedure.
You've probably seen some of the racketeering that passes for "business as usual" in the pharmaceutical arm of the "healthcare" industry. A pharma company that spent $500,000 trying to keep pot illegal just got DEA approval for synthetic marijuana (via Chad D.)
Pinworm prescription jumps from $3 to up to $600 a pill (via John F.)
Off-patent medications double or triple in cost, and then double or triple again with a few years, without any justification. To extend expiring patents, Big Pharma corporations petition the FDA to change the target audience for the med, and this trivial administrative change awards the corporation years more of lucrative patent protection.
The scams are endless, the skims are endless, the fraud is endless, the waste is endless, the fortunes expended to limit "winner take all" liability claims are endless, the paperwork churn is endless and the perverse incentives and negative unintended consequences are endless.
Everyone knows the system is unsustainable, perverse and insane, but they are powerless to change it within the system as it is. The usual sort of political horsetrading that passes for "reform" yielded ObamaCare, which did essentially zero to limit costs or cartel rackets.
A system based on parasitic predation by all the cartel players cannot be reformed or saved from its own perverse incentives and skyrocketing costs. The foundations of U.S. healthcare are rotten to the core. "Reform" is an appealing delusion, but the rot is so deep and so pervasive it is embedded in the society and the culture, beyond the reach of legislative overhauls, no matter how well-meaning.
This chart-fest reflects the trends that cannot be reversed by policy tweaks and tucks: The U.S. spends more than twice as much per person than our advanced competitors such as Japan and France.
The U.S. spends 2.5 times more per person than the OECD (i.e. the industrialized nations) average:
Wages have risen 16%, GDP rose 168%, and healthcare soared 818%. Do you reckon wage earners might have a hard time paying for healthcare nowadays?
If healthcare had risen only as much as official inflation, each household would be saving $10,000 per year--$100,000 each decade. $100K here and $100K there, and pretty soon you're talking real money in a conventional wage-earner household budget.
Projections of skyrocketing Medicare and Medicaid program costs guarantee national bankruptcy. The projection of 90 million Medicare enrollees is predictable, but there is no reason to believe costs will be limited to $20,000 per enrollee annually.
U.S. healthcare costs more in every category than other healthcare systems. Tweaking policy in one slice does nothing to limit the staggering increases being logged in all the other tranches of the system.
America's healthcare system is the perfection of the fraud triangle: the pressure to increase billings, fees and profits is immense, the rationalizations are unlimited (it's within the legal guidelines, etc.) and the opportunities for fraud are equally unlimited.
Individual caregivers and administrators want a different, better role and a better outcome, but each is trapped in the system as it is--and reform is impossible given the systemic foundations, incentives and legal framework.
It's time to start planning for what we'll do when the current healthcare system implodes. We might start by considering The "Impossible" Healthcare Solution: Go Back to Cash
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