Wednesday, August 24, 2016

Great Balls Of Fire

Preordained,

Brad sends this article about the thrust we might extrapolate for a Trump and for a Clinton government. 
It is the approach that matters to our oligarchs, and any president could serve their purposes, once clearly agreed amongst them.
The issue is that the Neocons and Neoliberal Capitalists have a value-extracting empire going on, but the sea lines are completely vulnerable, and the imperial extraction process is loathsome-to-genocidal for the countries paying tribute.
The US just could not defend shipping against modern missiles. 
Empires overreach and their arms get severed.
There is a quiet surge among industrial capitalist oligarchs to retrench, to make the continental United States self-sufficient in fuel, military production, and as many other essentials as is feasible. this is eminently defensible. 
Trump's foreign policy faces the inevitable. The Wall-Street/Neocon foreign policy faces the next 5 minutes, but mostly the last 30 years. (I'll vote Green, again.)
Vladimir Putin is rational in this "Great Game", and Russia is united behind his game. China has the very long view of history with China at the center, and chafes at the choke chain the US now has around shipping of fuel and resource commodities. Iran, also an ancient civilization, is most prudent, but would much prefer the neocons and financial hit-men be replaced with reclusive industrialists over here.

"A thousand balls of flame": Dmitry Orlov looks at the current imperial chessboard, and what war between Russia and the US would look like for the US.
"You see, there are just a few magic ingredients that allow the US to continue to exist as a stable, developed country capable of projecting military force overseas. They are: the electric grid; the financial system; the interstate highway system; rail and ocean freight; the airlines; and oil and gas pipelines."

Colleen sends this article, asserting that the US is moving nuclear bombs from Incirlik air base in Turkey, to Romania. 
It's vehemently denied. 
This puts pressure on Russia and Turkey, even to float the idea, but it might not be productive...

Turkish artillery blasts northern Syria as Turkish tanks and APCs move toward Jarablus, a critical city for control of truck convoys into Syria. 
Syrian Kurds are fleeing the assault, and many civilian deaths are already reported. This is billed as "fighting ISIS" and it sort-of is true, but Turkey really does not want Kurdish presence in a continuous area of northern Syria, along the Turkish border. Turkey wants the Kurds to remain divided and conquered. The US and Russia have not made definitive moves yet.

Biden flies to Ankara to meet with Erdogan, and Kerry will meet Lavrov Friday in Geneva.

Paul Craig Roberts discusses the PR war around the power struggle for Syria.
"Let us not forget the tens of thousands of children that Washington’s wars and bombings of 7 Muslim countries have killed without any tears shed by CNN anchors, and let us not forget the 500,000 Iraqi children that the United Nations concluded died as a result of US sanctions against Iraq, children’s deaths that Clinton’s Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said were worth it."

Opaque NGOs run refugee camps for profit, while Mafia gangs take over at the level of mud and fear. Greeks, who jumped forward to help refugees last year, are now mostly kept out of the closed camps.

Serving the living and suddenly-dead on the high seas. "What surprised me was how polite people are, how they take their time to say "thank you'".

The US Federal Government will end the use of private prisons. Thanks Ray. This opens the door to states getting out of this arrangement, too. 
It's clearly time for prison reform.

Walking Away

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