Thursday, March 8, 2018

Why Populism

People,

"Populism" is a wide and deep swelling of the feeling that the social order is unjustly choking people to death, and that it is intolerable to those being choked. Populist feelings in the western world are the highest they have been since 1942, and they appear to be stuck there. Our manipulators seek to guide this into things like identity-politics, to avoid mass cooperation to change the system which feeds them upon our blood. Their class cannot cooperatively negotiate smaller blood-lettings, so the show must go on, until... But we cannot tolerate it! WW-3 would be the answer under the old order of things, but M.A.D. looks more certain than ever. How many overkills of life on earth are we up to? Mass-global-life-force-consciousness has not yet derived the answer to this conundrum. Tension persists. We can all work on this solution. We are part of it.

This Bloomberg (consider the source) article says that "Italy's Populists split the country in half". 
No; that is how a ruling elite looks at things. Divide-and-conquer. Italian populists do not split the country in half. 
Italian populists seek to unite their energies to create a different social and financial order which will suck less of their blood every single night.
A clear majority of Italians have voted against the current arrangement, but do not yet agree on the direction through which changes should be worked out.

The upcoming Italian government will be led by a Euroskeptic. 
Opportunities to work towards shared interest will present themselves between "conservatives" and "liberals", I think.

Google is part of Big-Borg-Brother, joined at the hips now, improving the artificial intelligence guiding drone killings (What is the BEST wedding to bomb on this mission?)
there is so much more. It is already inside all of us, and reporting, and guiding our decisions, and learning more about us. Thanks Colleen.

All I am Offering is the Truth, Paul Craig Roberts. Thanks Eleni:
"I remember when Americans were free people. This is no longer the case. The prison in which Americans live is not a physical one with bars, although many Americans including innocent ones do live behind physical bars. It is an informational prison achieved by control over the explanations that Americans are given." 

Back to the topic of populism vs neoliberal globalism, I present this article proving that Trump's talk of bringing jobs to the American steel industry with tariffs is wrong, because the jobs went away, even while steel production was increasing. This is true, and presented in a graph. 
Modern steel mills are far more automated, employing about 1/3 to 1/4 of the workers per unit produced. A lot of steel "production" now is also mini-mills, which recycle scrap steel into specific grades and forms of specialty steel products. That is different from processing tons and tons of ore into iron and steel ingots.
What I saw in another article, and this misses, is that the intent is not to "bring back jobs", but to create a populist political base that supports his agenda of political/financial reform. Reform is not inherently better or worse, but it is different. Once the reform process begins, it is adaptive to the situation, which is in a lot of flux. The society acts as a kind of mind, figuring out a novel solution to the complex conundrums of the day. In 80 years, it will be different enough to need a new solution.

Can Russia and China Rescue Venezuela? (Good question. Venezuela is an oil producing country which has openly revolted agains $US hegemony and neoliberal globalism. Iraq and Libya got completely devastated for that offense.)

David Stockman has 2 articles here (a third to come) about how monetary policy in the US has corrupted American society, American economy and global economy, within his professional lifetime. Of the two, I actually recommend reading the second one first, where he explains the ongoing implications of "the dirty float" of US Treasury debt since it really took over in Nixon's 1973 presidential re-election bid. This explains how that created the situation of progressively pricing American workers out of the global economy, with no benefit to them in the process, while accelerating the enrichment of the rich, who are located wherever they want to be this week.

John Kiriakou "served" in the CIA for 14 years, in counterintelligence, the dirty world of Spy-vs-Spy, where he paid "sources" for information. Sometimes they needed to be paid in children. He was told to do his job and pay them. That was the business arrangement. Kiriakou has done some prison time for one of his revelations, and has written two books, listed here. You wan't see this on the evening news. the swamp is not drained yet. Kiriakou opines that the CIA probably does not need to exist. Some children died, they say...

Fox News identified Captain Jan Jordan as the Broward County law enforcement official who instructed the deputies to remain on the perimeter of the school rather than run into the building towards the gunfire to help save lives. These deputies were instructed to essentially stand down while innocent children were being slaughtered. 

Vladimir Putin says the US political system is "eating itself", that he finds Donald Trump pleasant and would like to be able to negotiate with him. Putin also says that Russia will defend itself with devastating nuclear counter strikes if an attack is detected and confirmed. He says that such an exchange would be devastating for the world, but that he is the head of the Russian state, which makes the point moot for him, if imminent Russian national destruction is the starting point of the hypothetical question.

The Arctic just had the warmest winter on record.

Agent of Change

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