Friday, September 30, 2016

Pipeline Or Bust

Imperial Subjects,

There is a fevered urgency to current US efforts to sustain the strategic global position of the over-extended military-financial-empire.
The big threat is that the $US gets replaced as global-reserve-currency, and the rest of the world stops giving real-goods-and-services for promissory-notes.
The $US wealth-extraction, which supports the cost of vast global military, and keeps the bread-and-(political)-circuses funded in the "homeland" will abruptly stop, reducing federal government funding by about 50%, in what will clearly be a great-depression. (Imagine yourself getting by on half of everything. It's hard. I'm trying to get there...)

Providing context: George Carlin, "The Real Owners of the Country" (uh, I get a bank of America commercial before this short video...)

Barack Obama, on the congressional override of his veto, which attempted to prevent suits against governments, related to the events of 9/11/01: 
(It's NOT about Saudi Arabia.)  "The concern that I've had has nothing to do with Saudi Arabia per se or my sympathy for 9/11 families. It has to do with me not wanting a situation where we're suddenly exposed to liabilities for all the work that we're doing all around the world and suddenly finding ourselves subject to private lawsuits." (Are Israeli and US government officials now subject to lawsuit?)

Militarized Police arrest 21 protesters in North Dakota, something Native Americans routinely expect. Native Americans were "trespassing" and "resisting arrest", of course.
© Unicorn Riot

Philippine president Rodrigo Duterte has said he is giving notice to the United States, his country’s long-standing ally, that joint exercises of Filipino and American troops next week will be the last such drills. He told the Filipino community in Hanoi late on Wednesday night that he will maintain the military alliance with the US because of the countries’ 1951 defence treaty. He says next week’s exercises will proceed only because he did not want to embarrass his defence secretary.  (Not merely insulting Obama's momma now.)  https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/sep/29/rodrigo-duterte-to-end-joint-us-and-philippine-military-drills
  Thanks to Eleni for the links to these WW-3-in-Syria stories:   US Outcry over Syria... Tears Followed By NATO Bombs: "The concerted, emotive appeals over the past week – bordering on hysteria – indicate a propaganda campaign coordinated between Washington and its Western allies, the mass media and the US-led NATO military alliance."  Finian Cunningham  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45575.htm
It comes down to a "final" need to show that the empire can deliver, in this case, deliver gas to Europe, via Qatari-pipeline (NOT Iranian pipeline) through Syria. The Russians and Iranians are competing with the Qatari/Saudi/US backed pipeline, and Turkey will presumably accommodate whoever gets a pipeline in place and pays them for transit rights. The energy choke-hold is upon US "allies" in Europe. Without the US controlling energy flow to Europe, why should Europe put up with all the military and economic and refugee crap from the American "unipolar power" neocons? Regime change in Syria did not work out. Plan-B is to carve-up Syria, with a Sunnistan/Pipelineistan carve out for the Qatari/imperial gas-pipe. The US attack on Syrian army at Dier EzZor last Friday, with the position overrun immediately by ISIS, then taken back by governemt forces, completely destroyed the US/Russian secret-cease-fire treaty. That would have required the US military to pre-confirm airstrike targets with the Russians, which would have prevented the US military from their actual purpose of supporting the anti-Assad forces ("terrorists", whatever) to justify enough war to balkanize Syria, into Pipelineistan/Sunnistan, Kurdistan and Israeli-oil/gas-Golan. Ash Carter was NEVER going to follow John Kerry's treaty. Now, Russians and Syrians will take the eastern-Aleppo enclave, where ISIS et.al. hold Syrian civilians as human shilds, though hundreds of thousands may have gotten to western Aleppo already. Civilian deaths from American bombs are "collateral damage", "regrettable-as-always", and so on, while civilian deaths from Russian bunker-busters into military targets are "war crimes" requiring "safe zones" for imperial pipelineistan forces.   http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article45576.htm
Here is a collection of stories detailing false claims in western media regarding Syria, grouped by sub-topic. "Humanitarian War" justifications, mostly.  https://counterinformation.wordpress.com/2016/09/29/syria-false-claims-in-western-news/
Third party Presidential Ticket  fact-sheet (convenient):   http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-30/cheat-sheet-third-party-presidential-candidates
Robots "could" (will?) replace 1.7 million American truck drivers within the next decade. (Hell, they already vote for us...)  http://www.latimes.com/projects/la-fi-automated-trucks-labor-20160924/#nt=oft12aH-1la1
Anticipating Redundancy 

Tuesday, September 27, 2016

Unreality TV

Mud Rasslin',

I just watched the most TV I've watched in the new millennium (most of the debate).
Hillary looked really uncomfortable with her lies about black injustice for some reason. I was surprised. I don't know what's up.
She looked uncomfortable talking about cybersecurity (ok...I get THAT)
Donald started out seeming thoughtful, but by halfway through he was a narcissist who couldn't shut up when he was hurting himself, and Hillary smiled more and looked grand and imperial and haughty. She got into her stride talking about killing people and name-dropping  world leaders and targets. Donald was just snitty, and kept his whining teenage girl face on.
I think he said he would not have nuclear fist strike policy, but then he said "North Korea" and "not take anything off the table", so I don't know.
He talks like he's pals with Bibi Netanyahu. Shit!
The rest of the world got no indication here of anything but more killing by the empire, and Trump wants to extract more tribute of a monetary sort, pretending "we aren't paid enough for all our nice defending of allies."
Can our owners really be in 2 factions with these 2 dogs in the fight?
There is no hope for humanity in these candidates.
We must really look to ourselves, and to be as helpful as we can to help each other, and those who are in acute need.

Trump/Clinton debate, "a degrading spectacle" according to World Socialist Website. 
"Whatever the outcome of the election, whether Donald Trump or Hillary Clinton replaces Barack Obama in the White House, the next administration will be the most reactionary government in the history of the country, committed to a program of imperialist war, social austerity and attacks on democratic rights."

Most polls say Trump "won" the debate. (I see a whole world full of losers, myself.)

Elizabeth Warren is setting up a shadow-cabinet for Hillary Clinton's administration. (I think it could easily transfer to a democratic October-surprise-replacement candidate, such as Warren, Biden, or Sanders.  

US and Turkey have begun WW-3 in Syria, and it is a war against Russia.

If elected President of France, Marine LePen will recognize Crimea as part of Russia.

Facing Reality

Monday, September 26, 2016

Up For Grabs

Refusing to Drink Poison,

Here is an assessment of the shifting fortunes of Clinton and Trump in this election, and the limits of demonizing Russia and Putin, and associating them with Trump. Quoting the final paragraph:
"But the Democrats still have one more option up their sleeve, which some experts have been discussing from the very beginning: pulling Hillary Clinton off the ballot "for health reasons" and nominating a new candidate to be determined by the leaders of the Democratic Party. However, there is a difficulty there as well: many within the Democratic establishment are adamantly opposed to the "socialist" Bernie Sanders, and there is not enough time left to crank up the publicity machines for Vice President Joe Biden or Secretary of State John Kerry, whose names have been mentioned more often than any others in this regard. Nor would it be a simple matter to coax the former first lady, who is already envisioning herself as the mistress of the Oval Office, to quit the game."

"Clown Show" is one expectation of the presidential debate. I expect high visual drama, myself. 
If the many persuadable people who tune in see a more palatable Trump, the Democratic power-elites will have to rapidly jettison Clinton. I presume they have several contingency plans for that. (90 commercial-free minutes. Highest viewer participation ever. What will America be "surprised" with?)

Did the media representation of the Charlotte shooting of a black man, by a black police officer, misrepresent the officer's race to increase the impact?  

The video footage released by the Charlotte police department has been edited. 
The seconds where the two police officers go up to the fatally wounded man are missing from the dash-cam video, though the sound keeps going. (Throw down weapon?)   It looks like other images/video may also have been witheld (selfie-stick images?)

The Natural Gas War Burning Under Syria, really just gets to the facts of the matter, why this war was started and why it continues with such vast outside funding. Control of the European natural gas market.

US-backed anti-Assad forces in Aleppo cut off water for 1.5 million civilians, which is expected to lead to spread of disease from being forced to drink filthy water. Aleppo was just recently Syria's largest city and economic center. It is very close to being under full control of government forces.

American soldiers are now holding 7 locations in northern Syria, against international law, an invasion. They are making at least 2 airfields operational. Where's the Congressional debate?

“When the humanitarian convoy was hit [outside Aleppo], we demanded that an investigation be conducted. [US Secretary of State] John Kerry, a good partner of mine, behaved the way he never has done previously. He claimed that the investigation might take place, but they know who did it, namely the Syrian Army or Russia, and that it was Russia's fault in any case,” he saidquoted by RT. Kerry appeared to be “pinned down by stark criticism from the American military apparatus,” Lavrov noted, which may indicate that the US military does not comply with its commander-in-chief’s orders. “[President] Barack Obama always supported, as I was told, cooperation with Russia, and he confirmed it himself during the meeting with [President] Vladimir Putin in China. It seems to me that the military may not be obeying their supreme commander too much.”  http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-26/us-slams-russian-barbarism-syria-moscow-responds-peace-almost-impossible-now

Over 300 people die in a Mediterranean shipwreck, off the coast of Egypt.These humans are not merely trying to live in Paris, London or Berlin. Their world has been made into hell by war, which none of them ever wanted, war to control oil and gas and markets. More will die this year than last year. They are spending everything they have and can borrow from those who love them to risk a cold, watery death with smugglers.

Jeremy Corbyn is re-elected Labour Party leader, with an even larger margin than before, after "coup attempt" this summer failed miserably. Labour has attracted enough new members to have more than doubled. It is now Europe's largest political party (until it is no longer part of Europe, of course.)

UK PM Theresa May (Tory) visits new York, to be informed by Goldman Sachs and friends that if they do not get assurances that London will remain a European financial hub, they will move their offices somewhere that is (Paris, Frankfurt, Brussels, etc.) Such assurances would require goodwill from all 27 EU members. They're mostly in quite bad moods about this, and London's loss is potentially their gain.

Smaller Chinese banks are all lending to each other. They are booking the loans to each other as assets. This can go on until it suddenly collapses. The assets are "bad", but supportable as long as the music keeps playing. The scale of this is vast, bigger by far than 2008.

Former employees file $2.6 billion class-action lawsuit against Wells Fargo. (That may get the attention of extractive-shareholders and parasitic management.)
"Wells Fargo fired or demoted employees who failed to meet unrealistic quotas while at the same time providing promotions to employees who met these quotas by opening fraudulent accounts." 

"The things which are most essential to life and basic material security also happen to be the things which capitalists, in alliance with the state, have been most successful at enclosing with artificial property rights and extracting rents from. The landlord monopoly — by which vacant land is engrossed and enclosed and then either held out of use altogether, or opened to use only in exchange for tribute — is the obvious example."

Why Cuba? Environmentalists in the United States swim upstream in a consumerist, oil-saturated society fueled by an extractive-economy worldview. Conversely, there is no clearer example of what a postcarbon, fossil-fuel-free future actually looks like than Cuba. Due to a US-imposed trade embargo and the political collapse of their Soviet trade partners, Cubans had no choice but to return to organic, decentralized food production. When Soviet oil-based fertilizer, pesticide, and herbicide imports stopped coming and Cuba had no way to obtain substitute chemicals, Cuban agronomists dove into agroecology to feed the people. (Ask Cubans. It's very hard, not glamorous, but growing food shifted back to small family farmers when massive mechanical farming co-ops ran out of diesel, fertilizer and pesticides.)

Growing Cabbage

Saturday, September 24, 2016

Hellfire And Mutiny

Watching Fireworks,

When fireworks go off, there is often a white explosion, then an expanding sphere of light and color, as chemically-doped particles  burn in various colors at different delays in the expansion from the bang. 
Fluorinated aluminum particles shoot out like little sparkles from the fireball, them make bright spots at the periphery. 
Look at the video. 
This is the visual signature of this particular firework, a "Hellfire missile" this one seems to have gone off last Monday around an aid convoy and warehouse in Aleppo, Syria. 
Only the US makes these things, fired off a Predator drone, which was also there Monday night. Only the US and Israel would have been able to put Predator and Hellfire there Monday night, not Russia or Syria.

"Mutiny": 
The US Defense Department effectively rebelled against the president’s authority when it said it may or we may not comply with the ceasefire. 
(It looks like the "deep-state" have been "compromising", by accidentally killing 80+ Syrian soldiers in a key position Friday before last, so ISIS could promptly rush in, then false-flag-blow-up the aid convoy Monday and blame it on Russia and Syria. That's as close as Ash Carter wants to come to any coordination with Russia against ISIS.

“Whether or not John Kerry was completely in the ‘loop’ remains unclear, but the realities both on the ground and in the Pentagon very strongly suggest that the ceasefire was quite clearly nothing but a cynical tactic to provide an opportunity for US proxies to consolidate their positions and undertake further offensives with the aim of securing territory at the expense of Syria’s government. Either John Kerry has been played or he is part of the bigger problem.”
“So either the general is ‘rebelling’ against civilian control of the military or the position he has so rigidly expressed indicates there is a major spat unfolding between John Kerry and Ashton Carter, both of whom are appointed by and theoretically beholding to the president, although many people understandably wonder if they are not more committed to certain outside, special interests. Regardless, it seems that US foreign policy is now made by the Department of Defense rather than the State Department.”

Countries (at least partly) Destroyed by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, alphabetized. Thanks Cat.

What if we're in a depression, but don't know it? Charles Hugh Smith

The Coming Wave of Defaults Will Be Devastating, also by Charles Hugh Smith

How the FDA manipulates the Media, by Scientific American 
(This is really much stronger than the title suggests, and it is not just the FDA, but almost all government and many private entities at all levels. There is absolute and strict control of message, and of questions asked, and of whom, and when. Reporters must play to get special access, without which, they are greatly disadvantaged, since all the "players" have a 24 hour head start on their stories.)

Marginalized

Friday, September 23, 2016

Beneath The Surface

Burning With Fever,

There appears to be increasingly heated proxy warfare, now spilling over into  killing of covert (nuclear-power) special-forces, without public announcements. This is a dangerous level of escalation in the Syrian war, as the secret-cease-fire agreement between the US and Russia appears to have been born-dead. 
This means that American command and control is fragmented, that the Secretary of State and the military/covert forces are not in the same chain of command.

A Red Crescent aid convoy (which one) was attacked in Syria, at the warehouse where supplies were stored, with most of the trucks and a lot of aid workers killed. Who did this How? Who benefits? What was in the trucks?
"The only undeniable fact is that another tragedy killed at least twenty Syrian Arab Red Crescent volunteers and the organisation’s local Director Omar Barakat, father of nine. At least eighteen of the thirty one-truck convoy were destroyed with the warehouse where humanitarian aid was stored. The Russian Defence Ministry has categorically denied any attack and claims the convoy caught fire (1):  “We have studied video footage from the scene from so-called ‘activists’ in detail and did not find any evidence that the convoy had been struck by ordnance”, commented Igor Konashenkov, a Ministry spokesman. “There are no craters and the exterior of the vehicles do not have the kind of damage consistent with blasts caused by bombs dropped from the air.” His observations are hard to challenge, anyone who has studied the assaults of the “international community” on far away countries over the last decades knows what a bombed truck looks like – what fragments remains of it."  
An American Predator attack-drone got to the area where the warehouses and convoy were destroyed a little before the destruction, left 30 minutes after, and is bound to have it all on video. No such video has been produced, though the US initially asserted that Russian and/or Syrian planes had destroyed the convoy. (Even Jimmy Carter seemed to say that Russia/Syria attacked the convoy from the air.)

On the day after the destruction of the convoy: 
The UN then suddenly reversed its official statement, and withdrew its assessment that the destruction was caused by 'air strikes' and deferred the matter to pending investigation.
Russia released aerial footage of the aid caravan, also showing an off-road vehicle towing a large caliber mortar.
21Wire, noticed that several of the released photographs of the damaged trucks indicated evidence of small weapons fire, and noted a lack of the sort of craters or blast marks that would be consistent with either shelling or an aerial attack.

Here is something that is appearing NOT AT ALL in Western media. It looks like a Russian response to an American false-flag convoy attack. Those missiles change the game:
"The Russian warships fired three Caliber missiles at the foreign officers' coordination operations room in Dar Ezza region in the Western part of Aleppo near Sam'an mountain, killing 30 Israeli and western officers," the Arabic-language service of Russia's Sputnik news agency quoted battlefield source in Aleppo as saying on Wednesday.
30 Israeli, Foreign Intelligence Officers Killed in Russia's Caliber Missile Attack in Aleppo
Russia is sending her aircraft carrier (completed in 1990, as USSR collapsed) to the Mediterranean. The Admiral Kuznetsov is really more of a missile-cruiser with 50 aircraft attached.

Syrian Social Nationalist Party representative Tarek Ahmad says that the war in Syria has reached a dead end, with the intervention of foreign powers turning the situation into a chaotic mess. Moreover, the politician says that Syria is just one front in a Third World War being waged by Washington and its allies. Following the US-led coalition's attack on Syrian forces in Deir ez-Zor last week, Ahmad warned that it's important to understand that the US position in Syria is tactical – not strategic. "The US's goal is not limited to Syria," the politician emphasized. "The Syrian front is not the goal in and of itself. We need to look at this issue objectively, and to admit that a Third World War is taking place in Syria, one which is led by the US and its allies – even if these allies are simultaneously victims as wellAmerica's main objective," according to Ahmad, "is to bring any world power that threatens them under control. Consequently, [Washington] is waging a war with these powers; and these powers include China and Russia." Ultimately, Ahmad suggested that "the lies told by President Obama at the UN General Assembly are merely the continuation of the American 'television show', whose plot consists of the US desire to continue this war. Every US action takes place with the aim of continuing this war for control of the world." With regard to the recently agreed-upon Russian-US ceasefire agreement, which is now looking less and less likely to be restored, the politician suggested that "Russia always understood that the US-Russian agreement on Syria would mean a US defeat in this conflict…if the agreement was adhered to."    http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2016-09-22/syrian-politician-ww-iii-has-begun-and-its-being-fought-syria
Hillary Clinton says that nobody needs to know what in her brain is causing the intermittent right cranial nerve palsey that is apparent in videos, including from this week.
Her right eye moves uncontrollably and independently from her left eye. Something in there is sick/injured, and this is a clue. (Probably Putin and Trump did it.)

Charlotte police say 70% of protesters arrested Wednesday night had out of state IDs, and came in big busloads. 
"These are not protesters. These are criminals." (More proxy-war?)
How did that happen? 
Why does looting and burglary, beating innocent people, shooting folks, and dropping rocks on cars from bridges pass as peaceful-protest? 
Who benefits?

Criminally Misrepresented

Thursday, September 22, 2016

Digging Deeper

Clickbaited,

Tristan Harris (now unemployed) was Google's "Design Ethicist" for 3 years, until quite recently. (He also likes sleight-of-hand "magic" tricks.)
Why are smart phones so addictive? 
Behavioral science has the answers right here: 
They are slot machines for sex fantasies, good stuff and social strokes. 
Once you get in, you get nice menu choices, which are close to what you wanted... "OUT" is not a menu choice, and you should be afraid to even have that thought. You will miss something you need and want if you are not paying attention. 
OK, now for that next click...

The Wells Fargo (control fraud) Scandal was by Design: 
You (high executive) get paid millions of dollars for certain statistics, like new-credit-card-accounts, so you tell the workers how many they have to create to keep their jobs. 
"That's impossible", becomes, "here they are, may I have more gruel?" 
You get caught.
You fire the thousands of corrupt-pawns, and say you "accept full responsibility". That means you get tens-of-millions of dollars and dressed-down by Senator Warren on TV. 
You never have to go to prison. 
You will do this again as soon as the bad press blows over.

2017 Global Financial/Economic Reset:
Such is the message from two of the world’s leading economic thinktanks, the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the UN Conference on Trade and Development (Unctad). Both their reports on Wednesday were thick with cloud and short on silver lining. Yes, the OECD believes that Brexit Britain will have a slightly easier time this year – but that will be followed by a far choppier 2017. And the Unctad report is even more troubling. The biggest single warning it makes is that the world is on the verge of “entering a third phase of the financial crisis”.

Ambrose Evans Pritchard follows up on that 2017 reset, with a little more flair and detail:
The third leg of the world's intractable depression is yet to come. If trade economists at the United Nations are right, the next traumatic episode may entail the greatest debt jubilee in history. It may also prove to be the definitive crisis of globalized capitalism, the demise of the liberal free-market orthodoxies promoted for almost forty years by the Bretton Woods institutions, the OECD, and the Davos fraternity... The UNCTAD critique - controversial to be sure - is that activist funds have acquired a stranglehold over the corporate management, leading to a culture of share-buybacks and the relentless extraction of profit... Its prescription is radical. The world must jettison neo-liberal ideology, and launch a "global new deal" with a blitz of investment on strategic sectors. It wants a return of the "developmental state", commanding a potent industrial policy, and backed by severe controls on capital flows.  

A fleet of offshore, deep-water drilling rigs is now mothballed-at-anchor, costing $15,000 per day per rig, a huge savings from the $40,000 per day per rig if they are kept running with minimal crews aboard. 
Easy choice? This has never been done before. 
These things cost $500 million each. They have a zillion presets to reset. They might not start up and work right. Who knows? 
This is one specific case of assuming we can go back to business-as-usual, when that business was the apogee of a one time boom in technology, driven by cheap oil. It may all be out of reach at any price, from here forward.

Here is an "October Surprise" story, from London. 
George Soros, the benevolent global multinational financial capitalist string-puller, has embarked on registering 8 million expatriate Americans to vote-against-Trump, not vote-for-Clinton (that would be illegal). 
What if they vote Green, or Libertarian?

In Praise of Community Gardens:
Directly Addressing Economic Fundamentals

Wednesday, September 21, 2016

Light And Heat

Increasingly Less Fooled,

Trump takes 7 point lead in LA Times poll, as blacks ditch Clinton. (Most other polls have them about even. Barack Obama says he'll be hurt if blacks leave Clinton, but blacks already know, from Colin Powell's emails, that Obama doesn't like Clinton, and she despises him.) 

Despite denying it, Hillary Clinton's main aide, Sidney Blumenthal, really did pay to dig up information to implicate Barack Obama as having been born in Kenya. 
Busted by emails. Don't tell black folks, ok?

The former Haitian Senate Leader has gone public that Hillary Clinton tried to bribe him, promising he would be "the richest man in Haiti" if he would conspire with the Clinton Foundation plans to squeeze wealth out of the rebuilding attempts for that desperately poor country. He didn't, and she revoked his visa. I think black folks already heard about this.

Clinton is picking up votes in other demographic categories, where Trump is losing them, particularly in the Bush family. They have been trying to keep this quiet, but George HW Bush has told a blabbermouth Kennedy that he's voting for Hillary this time. (Black folks and young people should be ok with that, right? He's just an old man now.)

14 pro-Clinton super PACs and non-profits are implicated in money laundering.

 On Saturday U.S. airplanes attacked the most important Syrian government position in Deir Ezzor. Nearly a hundred Syrian soldiers were killed and most of the heavy equipment the Deir Ezzor garrison had left was destroyed. Immediately after the attack fighters of the Islamic State occupied the bombed out government positions. These Islamic States fighters now own the heights above the Deir Ezzor airport. A day later the Islamic State shot down a Syrian government plane near Deir Ezzor. The city and its 150,000+ inhabitants are surrounded by the Islamic State. They had been supplied from Damascus by nightly flights to the airport. As the Islamic State now has fire-control over the airport as well as anti-air weapons those supply flights are no longer possible. The U.S. air attack practically closed down the Syrian government ability to supply the city. If this situation continues the city will fall to the Islamic State. The U.S. plan is to eventually take Raqqa by using Turkish or Kurdish proxies. It also plans to let the Iraqi army retake Mosul in Iraq. The only major city in Islamic State territory left between those two is Deir Ezzor. Should IS be able to take it away from the isolated Syrian army garrison it has at least a decent base to survive. (Conveniently there are also rich oil wells nearby.) No one, but the hampered Syrian state, would have an immediate interest to remove it from there.    http://www.moonofalabama.org/2016/09/deir-ezzor-attack-enables-the-salafist-principality-forseen-in-the-2012-dia-analysis.html

 We [Syrian soldiers] first thought the aircraft are support to us after the first 2 shots, but we quickly found out that they are targeting our forces aggressively, while we were fighting IS terrorists. The aircraft used cluster bombs against us.- A day before the airstrikes, the [US] drones were flying and scanning all the area- The US air-strikes destroyed all our equipment and defense points.  
- IS fighters attacked us immediately after and during the US strikes. Some of them were laughing
- US drones and helicopters opened fire from machine guns on our retreated forces
- It for sure wasn’t a mistake, they targeted us intentionally to help IS.         
“Nobody believes in it. You’re like, ‘Fuck this,’” a former Green Beret says of America’s covert and clandestine programs to train and arm Syrian militias. “Everyone on the ground knows they are jihadis. No one on the ground believes in this mission or this effort, and they know they are just training the next generation of jihadis, so they are sabotaging it by saying, ‘Fuck it, who cares?’”    http://turcopolier.typepad.com/sic_semper_tyrannis/2016/09/us-special-forces-sabotage-white-house-policy-gone-disastrously-wrong-with-covert-ops-in-syria-ttg.html
Saudi Arabia is using horrific , American made  white phosporous bombs and shells against people in Yemen.                 http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/saudi-arabia-appears-to-be-using-american-supplied-white-phosphorus-in-its-war-in-yemen-a7316841.html

"To avoid secondary movement to the rest of Europe, that means keeping asylum seekers on the islands for the most part,” Bertaud said also and threw the ball in the court of the Greek government. She said “the Greek government had described the situation as being under control. Transfers to the mainland would remain limited,” Bertaud said. [Concentration-Camp-Lesvos: That's it, the "solution". Thanks, Eleni]
Elections to the Russian Duma show very high levels of agreement and sharing of purpose among Russians. Thanks Eleni    http://theduran.com/heres-what-the-results-of-the-russian-election-mean-and-for-whom/
"Bankers in Sweden and Austria, Germany and Britain are about to discover that extending credit to nations that can’t (or won’t) pay may be their problem, not that of their debtors. No one wants to accept the fact that debts that can’t be paid, won’t be." (Massive structural defaults are about to end the Euro as a "hard currency", in Michael Hudson's analysis. History is about to rhyme again, as it faces global mountains of unpayable debt, with collateral that's no longer worth the loan.)               http://www.defenddemocracy.press/coming-european-debt-wars/

Yes, it is technically feasible to build a sustainable-energy infrastructure, using "seed-corn" of fossil fuels, without exceeding 2 degrees C of global warming. Whether there is a political path to this, remains the very open question. (We comfortable human herd should expect to be shocked by a huge crisis for such an abrupt change in direction of our stampede. That usually means war and acute fear of death.)  http://www.resilience.org/stories/2016-09-21/the-sower-s-way-the-path-for-the-future 


Loss of the reflectivity of ice sheets and ice caps, causing acceleration of global warming, as brown dirt soaks up the sun, is one tipping mechanism looked at here. The massive release of methane from thawing "permafrost" is another, and it is way bigger than is being openly discussed.       http://www.counterpunch.org/2016/09/19/loss-of-planet-reflectivity-an-impending-catastrophe/

Seeing the Light

Monday, September 19, 2016

Place In History

Being Here Now,

Richard Heinberg, who has been writing about the limitations of a finite world, with finite oil, vanishing ecosystems, and exponentially expanding human economy for decades, has an update. I have excerpted his book this year, Our Renewable Future. Heinberg is a serious analyst of the large bodies of data, and the conclusions of rational analysis remain the same. The minds of most humans remain religious, not analytical. There's one of the gaps. Heinberg says to "mind the gap". It's important. If we are analytical, find modest adaptations which we can actually do, and work together with others of like mind, we can do much better than if we just rely on the massive life-support-system ercted in our service. 

In Slowly, Then All At Once, James Howard Kunstler looks at the mayhem of the current American elections as an introduction to the fact that we are already in a world without economic growth, contracting, in fact, but we still have to deny it, because, ... well what else can we possibly do? 
Actually, he recommends organizing and working a 10 acre farm, instead of devising a new smart-phone ap. (Few who can do one can do the other.) We probably have to find anything practical we can do to expand our personal envelope, and cut out some addiction at the same time, to make room.

The Death of the Bakken Oil Field Has Begun, and the Eagle Ford shale, too, down 25% and 40% respectively from their late 2014 production peaks. Rapid decline is the rule for this kind of drilling. They never even made money, so how can they clean up the godawful mess that's just starting to surface?

Alabama, Tennessee, Georgia, Virginia and North Carolina are all states of gasoline emergency today. This happened due to one 1962 oil pipeline having a serious leak. This is a fragile system, far more fragile than in the 1970s oil-crisis. (Got bicycle?)

Russia is restructuring her economy, from the collapsed state-driven model of the Soviet Union, to the bleeding and crawling Yeltsin-era invalid, to the proud-but-modest recovery under Putin, to a German model of manufacturing and export. Russia will use Russian resources to export finished products, not lumber, gas and oil. Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina spearheads this effort from the monetary and financial side. Russians work like Germans, it appears. Russia has already weathered collapse, and is rebuilding conservatively. 
(China has been rebuilding since Deng Xiaopeng took the reins in 1978. China has some resetting to do, but not another cultural Revolution. China has taken a long view for the last 4 decades. The US has not reset since 1929, right?)

Phase Shifted

Sunday, September 18, 2016

Double Dealing

Doubling Down,

The Neocons really, badly need a demon for their comeback world-tour. Vladimir Putin will just have to do.

The US military has just honored the secret cease-fire in Syria, that the UN Security Council can't see, by killing 62 Syrian soldiers with airstrikes. 
"Uh, bad coordinates. Uh, sorry, we made a mistake." 
Naw, it's not really and "act of war", just like Israeli air force attacks on Syrian soldiers in Syria were not.

This update increases the death toll to 80 and wounded are over 100. This is at a point which is critical to the battles in the area, the highest point in the region.
"The actions of the coalition "clearly paved the way for Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists to attack the position and take control of it," the agency said citing the General Command of the Army and Armed Forces." 

“I find it slightly unbelievable that the Americans could hit this target thinking this was ISIS when in fact ISIS is laying siege to the city. And the Syrian forces for years now have been known to be holed up in that city. So it seems just strange that the Americans are just saying it was a bit of a mistake,” Machon told RT. The former MI5 agent pointed out that Russian role in Syria is clear while the US policymakers are “divided” over their objectives in Syria. 

"Secret cables and reports by the U.S., Saudi and Israeli intelligence agencies indicate that the moment Assad rejected the Qatari pipeline, military and intelligence planners quickly arrived at the consensus that fomenting a Sunni uprising in Syria to overthrow the uncooperative Bashar Assad was a feasible path to achieving the shared objective of completing the Qatar/Turkey gas link. In 2009, according to WikiLeaks, soon after Bashar Assad rejected the Qatar pipeline, the CIA began funding opposition groups in Syria." — Robert F. Kennedy Jr.

In the Leeds email dated March 3, 2015, Powell writes that "Iranians can’t use [a nuke] if they finally make one," in the context of the ongoing talks about Tehran’s nuclear program. "The boys in Tehran know Israel has 200, all targeted on Tehran, and we have thousands. As [Iranian President Mahmoudin Ahmedinejad said], ‘What would we do with one, polish it?’

"According to the Quinnipiac University poll, Clinton has the support of just 31 percent of voters aged 18-34, with 29 percent for Libertarian Gary Johnson, 25 percent for Republican Donald Trump and 15 percent for Green Party candidate Jill Stein." 

9/11/16 Hillary Clinton Body-Double has distinctly different earlobes (and slimmer hips, fewer wrinkles, more energy, etc). I've been looking at these stories for several days. The earlobe differences are decisive. It's not just the earrings.

Here is what I have been seeing all week, and there is plenty of it.
http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/303334/clinton-release-medical-records-body-double/

I have been thinking too small, really. I've been thinking that Hillary Clinton has to withdraw from the race for a replacement to save-the-game for the team. 
Democratic shouting-heads are announcing that there will be blood all over Donald Trump's hands if Hillary Clinton gets assassinated.
Is that clear enough foreshadowing of what's in store for this used-up political liability? (Actually, Hillary could just be moved to Dubai, or the Denver airport underground complex, or something. I wonder how Saddam Hussein's body-doubles are doing. You never hear about those guys these days.)

To rephrase that recent Rasmussen poll. more Democratic voters want Bernie Sanders than want all other options combined (Biden, Kaine, other), should Hillary Clinton have to leave for health reasons.

Rob Hopkins relates his first year experience growing hops (and gets me interested again).

NASA and MIT are working on a passenger jet, that would carry double the  passengers for the amount of fuel used, by 2027.
Image result for nasa efficient passenger jet

Double-Wide