Chained by Lies,
Here is the new introduction to a much-easier to-comprehend version of American history. War and Empire, The American Way of Life
Secretary of State Dean Acheson: “Thank God Korea came along.”
Though Acheson himself had declared that Korea was outside of America’s “defensive perimeter,” warhawks in Washington and on Wall Street declared that the civil war between Korean factions on the other side of the planet imperiled the “free world.” What actually was at risk was the new militarized superstate, and the tax guaranteed profits to the corporations embedded in the war economy. The war that followed left 3 million Koreans and 37,000 US soldiers dead, threatened China with nuclear destruction, leading the Chinese to deploy their own nukes in short order.
American Democracy, a Dead Man Walking, by Paul Craig Roberts, has an unusually frank quote from Vladimir Putin. Thanks Eleni.
"In the West, voters cannot change policies through elections, because the ruling elites control whoever is elected. Elections give the appearance of democracy, but voting does not change the policies that favor war and the elites. Therefore, the will of the people is impotent. People are experiencing that they and their votes have no influence on the conduct of affairs of the country. This makes them afraid, frusrated, and angry, a combination of emotions that is dangerous to the ruling elite, who in response organize the powers of the state against the people, while urging them with propaganda to support more wars."
Peter Koenig states most clearly that we are slaves to this new world order. Slavehood 2017
"Independent thinking has become a crime, as it impedes the advancement of slavehood. Education is designed to kill individual thinking and the wide range of inventiveness – because it’s dangerous – for those who enslave and control us... Idiots are easily enslaved and exploited and sent to wars – to steal foreign resources to satisfy the greed of a few. We love to be cannon fodder, as we were told – enslaved – to believe that good patriots love to die for their country."
The Skin of Others in Your Game, by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, explains why James Bond and Sherlock Holmes, and so many other popular heroic figures really needed to be single and unattached men, unconnected to vulnerable loved ones. They became able to consider threats and benefits to society with noble objectivity.
It's not like that when you have a family. You could be influenced to take actions that will enable millions of humans to be murdered, because you cannot allow harm to come to your own family. Most of us have faced this in smaller ways.
Why a new Afghan Surge is a terrible idea (but not bad if you make war-money and control global resources, like heroin...)
Generations of American developers and soldiers intended to transform this austere landscape into a breadbasket and bastion of democratic values. Instead, they created the world’s largest opium poppy plantation, the heartland of the thriving Taliban-led insurgency... Afghanistan today remains the largest U.S. military foreign engagement. From the peak of about 100,000 boots on the ground during the Obama-era surge, there are still almost 10,000 U.S. troops in Afghanistan, plus up to 26,000 highly paid contractors for the Department of Defense and other agencies... Will Surge 2.0 be consequential, relevant, sustainable? Or will it be another futile chapter in an unwinnable war? (Rhetorical question, detailed here...)
"Why We Should Be Concerned About Low Oil Prices", Gail Tverberg
Peak Oil production in the US was successfully predicted and dated by M. King Hubbert, probably the premier oil geologist in the US, in the mid 1950s, and came to pass around 1971, as predicted. Since the 1970s, when the US did suffer the obvious consequences of national oil depletion, the financial equations have changed defensively. Massive debt financing within global capitalism has become the stability mechanism to keep the oil coming. Financial arrangements have become the rate-limiting factor for now. As long as payments on the very-low-interest debts of oil companies are not defaulted, the oil will be pumped, even though, the drilling and exploration has mostly stopped. There will now be a couple of years lag before absolute production capacity begins declining.
We have low oil prices, since global workers are also the global market, and their wages have been getting cut in real terms for the past 15 years. The top 10% can't buy enough, and credit cards are maxed out.
An inevitable crisis of confidence will topple this global financial regime.
The Great Climate Silence: We are on the Edge of the Abyss, but we ignore it...
"Good luck, Mr. Macron, you will need it", Editorial from The Guardian UK
[My editorial is that this youngest ever French President was the architect in charge of the neoliberal austerity measures the French hated so much, yet is nearly impossible to personally hate. He speaks in gently glowing circles of platitude. He is a Rothschild banking scion, with all the right credentials, so presents a Rothschild-veto in anything the House of Rothschild finds to be against their interests. He beat French-Nationalist, Marine LePen 65% to 35%, though a clear majority of the French electorate support nationalist policies. The left-nationalists were cut out of the 2-way election, and the highest ever proportion of French voters (12%) responded by giving blank or damaged ballots. This was also the lowest turnout since 1974. Macron has no party, so no parliamentarians. Parliamentary voting in about 6 weeks will be fractious. No national consensus is expected to emerge, but to whatever degree it does, Rothschild has the veto, and a sweet young spokesman for their interests.]
Greece can never pay it's debts, so why not admit it? (The reason presented here is that banking deals extracted huge profits from Greece, and from the first bail-out, then transferred the inevitable losses onto European taxpayers, "while banks-were-saved", which makes politicians to blame, and they cannot accept the blame until their personal futures are as secure as their partners in finance.)
Bleeding Scapegoat
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