Tuesday, July 3, 2018

Next Logical Step

Tripping,

Chris Hedges talks about The Coming Collapse:
As a foreign correspondent I covered collapsed societies, including the former Yugoslavia. It is impossible for any doomed population to grasp how fragile the decayed financial, social and political system is on the eve of implosion. All the harbingers of collapse are visible: crumbling infrastructure; chronic underemployment and unemployment; the indiscriminate use of lethal force by police; political paralysis and stagnation; an economy built on the scaffolding of debt; nihilistic mass shootings in schools, universities, workplaces, malls, concert venues and movie theaters; opioid overdoses that kill some 64,000 people a year; an epidemic of suicides; unsustainable military expansion; gambling as a desperate tool of economic development and government revenue; the capture of power by a tiny, corrupt clique; censorship; the physical diminishing of public institutions ranging from schools and libraries to courts and medical facilities; the incessant bombardment by electronic hallucinations to divert us from the depressing sight that has become America and keep us trapped in illusions. We suffer the usual pathologies of impending death. I would be happy to be wrong. But I have seen this before. I know the warning signs. All I can say is get ready.

The only comprehensive and scientific study which has ever been done of whether the US is a democracy or instead a dictatorship, was published in 2014. It studied the period during 1981 through 2002, and it found that, “In the United States, our findings indicate, the majority does not rule — at least not in the causal sense of actually determining policy outcomes.”
https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/07/01/dictatorship-over-america-how-it-functions.html

​What will Trump and Putin and Lavrov and Bolton talk about July 16?
Trump also suggested that scrapping sanctions on Russia depended on its actions, including in Syria. Asked about potentially lifting sanctions on Russia, Trump told reporters, "We'll see what Russia does. We're going to be talking to Russia about a lot of things. We're going to be talking to them about Syria."

Lavrov says Edward Snowden is a free-agent, not a bargaining chip. Lavrov very carefully chooses and keeps his words. 
He says the Western order is pretty late in it's process of corruption; well past it's sell-by date.
“I do not know why people would start asking this particular question in relation to the summit. Edward Snowden is the master of his own destiny,” Lavrov reiterated. 

The risks of peace breaking out when Putin and Trump talk are mind-boggling. Nobody really gets how catastrophic this could be! Just shoot me now...
In the context of the impending US-Russia presidential talks, not a single Western media outlet mentioned that, as detailed in the 2018 World Report of the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI), “In 2017 the USA spent more on its military [$610 billion] than the next seven highest-spending countries combined... at $66.3 billion, Russia’s military spending in 2017 was 20 per cent lower than in 2016.”
​ ...
US Senator Ben Sasse grouched that “Putin is not our friend and he is not the president’s buddy. He is a thug using Soviet-style aggression to wage a shadow war against America, and our leaders should act like it.”

​These guys have to talk about Israel, don't they?
Israeli planes have been bombing Syria and, less publicly, the Houthi regions of Yemen, using “roundabout” routes to evade air defenses. This, in itself, is not controversial. However, what is controversial is reports that Israel has been operating out of bases inside both Saudi Arabia and Jordan.
Sources not only confirm these reports but military analysis of Israel’s missions, as they announce them publicly, prove use of particularly Saudi bases is mandatory.
Questions then arise regarding the degree of inter-cooperation between these nations and the Gulf States, against Syria, against Yemen, against certainly Iran and to a lesser known extent, in support of ISIS operations across the region.
Of course, none of this would be possible without logistical support, mission planning and AWAC services supplied by the United States.
Thus, we are confronted with a leading question; how will Russian policy in the region address this threat to their own interests?

https://journal-neo.org/2018/07/01/will-israel-be-on-the-table-at-the-trump-putin-summit/

Angela Merkel says the refugee situation is sorted out, agreed in principle. Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic say they didn't get that memo.
“There are no any new agreements regarding the reception of asylum seekers from EU countries, we confirm (that), like the Czech Republic and Hungary,” Polish Foreign Ministry spokesman Artur Lompart said. 

CIA trained, equipped and paid good-terrorists are working hard to bring regime change to Iran. 
It seems more likely to just make Iranians more tired and pissed-off.

Rudy Giulliani says the end is near for Iran's rulers, as he cheerleads at a conference in France for said good-terrorists.
VILLEPINTE, France (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump will suffocate Iran’s “dictatorial ayatollahs”, his close ally Rudy Giuliani said on Saturday, suggesting his move to re-impose sanctions was aimed squarely at regime change. 

Indefinite Detention of Central American families fleeing the war-on-them is the new Federal policy. 
They can sleep in the same tent behind the concertina wire in the desert forever.
The executive order Trump signed June 20, which he claimed would end family separation, was in fact an instruction for the executive branch to start finding as much space as possible for family detention. It also told the Department of Justice to ask US District Judge Dolly Gee to reverse her own 2015 Flores settlement ruling that prevented the government from keeping children in immigration detention longer than necessary even when they were being held with their parents. 

Oh, Man the amount of this stuff is vast! The tiny little parts in it are inseparable and have bits of toxic poison lightly and evenly salted through them. There is no way out, once the machines are set in motion to make billions of iPhones, and laptops, and TVs, and so on. 
Until the beginning of this year, China was a willing recipient of the world’s electronic waste, which it recycled in vast factories. According to the UN, 70% of all electronic waste was ending up in China.
​ ​
But in January, having calculated that the environmental impact far outweighed the short-term profit, China closed its gates to virtually all foreign rubbish. It has prompted something of a global crisis, not just for e-waste but plastic waste as well.

​Keynesian Economics is an artifact of Cheap Energy (and it isn't working like it used to in 1970), Charles Hugh Smith

The hypothesis of how successful toolmaking, and the conveyance of that benefit through teaching other humans, led to a unique form of conceptual ability in humans.
Kolodny points out what might seem like a contradiction in this notion: Many species of ape use tools in sequence-dependent ways and also have highly developed levels of communication. But the order in which those apes produce their utterances doesn’t make much difference to their meaning, Kolodny explains. “The question becomes not ‘How did language arise only in humans?’but ‘Why did it not arise in other apes as well?’ And the answer is, the qualitative difference between us and other apes is they don’t have the communication system coupled to those temporal sequencing structural capabilities.”

​Chipping Flint​

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