Monthly Archives: March 2018

He Said That? 3/27/18

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 1 comment

From Friedrich Nietzsche (1844–1900), German philosopher, cultural critic, composer, poet, philologist, and Latin and Greek scholar, Beyond Good and Evil (1886):

One must shed the bad taste of wanting to agree with many. “Good” is no longer good when one’s neighbor mouths it. And how should there be a “common good”! The term contradicts itself: whatever can be common always has little value. In the end it must be as it is and always has been: great things remain for the great, abysses for the profound, nuances and shudders for the refined, and, in brief, all that is rare for the rare.

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America’s State Wreck Gathers Steam: The Donald’s War Cabinet And The Fiscal Doom Loop, Part 2, by David Stockman

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 1 comment

Trump wouldn’t veto an obscenely bloated budget bill to “save” its obscenely bloated appropriation for the obscenely bloated military. From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com:

Last week the Donald’s incipient trade war got Wall Street’s nerves jangling, but that wasn’t the half of what’s coming.

To wit, Trump has now essentially formed a War Cabinet and signed a Horribus spending bill that is a warrant for fiscal meltdown. Indeed, the two essentially comprise a self-fueling doom loop which means Washington’s descent into fiscal catastrophe is well-nigh unstoppable; it’s all over except for the screaming in the bond pits.

That is, Trump’s new War Cabinet of John Bolton, Mike Pompeo, Gina Haspel and Mad Dog Mattis is arguably the most interventionist, militarist, confrontationist and bellicose national security team ever assembled by a sitting President. We cannot think of a single country that has even looked cross-eyed at Washington in recent years where one or all four of them has not threatened to drone, bomb, invade or decapitate its current ruling regime.

That means Imperial Washington’s rampant War Fever owing to the Dem-left declaration of war on Russia and Putin is now about to be drastically intensified by the complete victory of the neocon-right in the Trump Administration. The result will be sharpened confrontation, if not actual outbreak of hostilities, across the full spectrum of adversaries—Iran, Russia, China, Syria and North Korea—-and an escalating tempo of military operations and procurement to implement the policy.

At the same time, the Donald’s pathetic Fake Veto maneuver on Friday cemented the special interest lobbies’ absolute control over domestic appropriations. Of course, Chuckles Schumer and Nancy Pelosi crowed loudly about the $63 billion annual domestic spending increase they got in return for the Donald’s $80 billion defense add-on, but the victory was not partisan; it belonged to the Swamp creatures who suckle the politicians of both parties and own the appropriations committees lock, stock and barrel.

To be sure, upon folding at mid-day from his four-hour’s earlier veto tweet, the Donald promised “never again”, but his reason for signing the most wasteful, pork-ridden appropriations bill of this century tells you all you need to know. To wit,

“There are a lot of things I’m unhappy about in this bill. There are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill, but we were in a sense forced if we want to build our military,” Trump said. “I said to Congress, I will never sign another bill like this again.”

To continue reading: America’s State Wreck Gathers Steam: The Donald’s War Cabinet And The Fiscal Doom Loop, Part 2

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Reality Check: How Prevalent is the Global Child Sex Trade in the U.S.? by Ben Swann

Posted on March 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

It’s definitely out there, but it’s impossible to get an accurate measure of how much child sex trafficking goes on in the US. From Ben Swan at truthinmedia.com:

It’s a horrific issue that doesn’t get nearly enough coverage in U.S. mainstream media. Child sex trafficking is a booming black market business.

Most parents can’t imagine it happening in their own backyard.

While we know it’s a global issue, child sex trafficking is finally starting to become a mainstream topic in the U.S.

A film called “I Am Jane Doe,” released in February, highlights young girls between the ages of 13 and 15 years old who were picked up off the street and sold for sex online.

The film takes aim at Backpage.com. But in reality, the issue of child sex trafficking is so much bigger than one website. And the appetite for child sex abuse goes all the way to the top.

It’s a disheartening statistic: the child sex trafficking market is resulting in more than 1 million children abused around the world each year. So how has this market proliferated?

Tim Swarens, a columnist and editor for The Indianapolis Star, recently began publishing a series of articles about the child sex trade, a subject he’s reportedly investigated for more than a year. He explains that the child sex trade is like any other business trade, driven by supply and demand.

According to a study by the Center for Court Innovation from 2016, between 8,900 and 10,500 children ages 13 to 17 are being sold in the U.S. each year. Swarens writes, “The researchers found that the average age of victims is 15 and that each child is purchased on average 5.4 times a day.”

To determine a conservative estimate of the demand, Swarens “multiplied the lower number of victims (8,900) identified in the Center for Court Innovation study by the rate of daily exploitation per child (5.4), and then by an average of only one ‘work’ day per week (52). The result: Adults purchase children for sex at least 2.5 million times a year in the United States.”

To continue reading: Reality Check: How Prevalent is the Global Child Sex Trade in the U.S.?

 

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If They Can’t Get Traffic Lights to Sync…, by Eric Peters

Posted on March 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

Eric Peters is skeptical about self-driving cars. From Peters at theburningplatform.com:

They can’t even get automated traffic lights to work – to sync the green/red cycles in order to smooth the flow of traffic – but we’re supposed to believe that millions of automated cars are going to sync perfectly, whizz along at 100 MPH in tight formation, without a hitch – just like the Blue Angels, the Navy’s precision flying demonstration squadron.

In the rain and snow. The heat of high summer, the bitter cold of January. Dirt, sand, potholes. 24/7, year ’round – for year after year after year, ongoing. Mechanical and electrical components will never wear out – or crap out, unexpectedly.

Really?

Traffic lights are pretty simple things – even the “smart” ones that have cameras and sensors with which they can “see” traffic (just like automated cars). But coordinating lights to go green at the same time – instead of one going green and then the next one just ahead going red, causing needless stop-and-go traffic congestion – seems to be a bridge too far for the same technocrats who promise a seamless, Blue Angles-like automated car experience.

Even when traffic lights are successfully synced, they rarely remain synced for long.

Something always goes wrong. A power outage scrambles their brains. A software/programming/hardware glitch upsets the apple cart. The timing gets jumbled. Red light, green light, red light.

Stop – and go.

But at least you can stop (and go).

For now.

Your current autonomous car – the one controlled by you – still has brake/accelerator pedals and a steering wheel.

Your Future Car may not. The idea being to automatethose functions, in order to take away your autonomy.

The good news is that it’ll probably work about as well as automated traffic lights.

Leavings aside the emasculation that automated cars would impose on us – male and female alike – by depriving us of the ability to control our vehicles, which would mean a return to childhood, a time when our parents took us places and we sat in the back and had little to no say in the matter – there is the false assumption about the omniscience and perfection of automated vehicle technology.

To continue reading: If They Can’t Get Traffic Lights to Sync…

 

 

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The US Government Just Destroyed Our Privacy While Nobody Was Paying Attention, by Carey Wedler

Posted on March 27, 2018 | Leave a comment

As is often the case with snake legislation, civil-liberties constricting legislation was stuck in a large, complicated bill, in this case the Omnibus Spending Bill (2300 pages), and nobody noticed. From Carey Wedler at theantimedia.org:

While the nation remained fixated on gun control and Facebook’s violative practices last week, the U.S. government quietly codified the CLOUD Act, its own intrusive policies on citizens’ data.

While the massive, $1.2 trillion omnibus spending bill passed Friday received widespread media attention, the CLOUD Act — which lawmakers snuck into the end of the 2,300-page bill — was hardly addressed.

The Clarifying Lawful Overseas Use of Data Act (CLOUD) “updates the rules for criminal investigators who want to see emails, documents and other communications stored on the internet,” CNET reported. “Now law enforcement won’t be blocked from accessing someone’s Outlook account, for example, just because Microsoft happens to store the user’s email on servers in Ireland.”

The CLOUD Act will also allow the U.S. to enter into agreements that allow the transfer of private data from domestic servers to investigators in other countries on a case-by-case basis, further globalizing the ever-encroaching surveillance state. The Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has strongly opposed the legislation, listed several consequences of the bill, which it called “far-reaching” and “privacy-upending”:

  • Enable foreign police to collect and wiretap people’s communications from U.S. companies, without obtaining a U.S. warrant.
  • Allow foreign nations to demand personal data stored in the United States, without prior review by a judge.
  • Allow the U.S. president to enter “executive agreements” that empower police in foreign nations that have weaker privacy laws than the United States to seize data in the United States while ignoring U.S. privacy laws.
  • Allow foreign police to collect someone’s data without notifying them about it.
  • Empower U.S. police to grab any data, regardless if it’s a U.S. person’s or not, no matter where it is stored.

The bill is an update to the current MLAT (Mutual Legal Assistance Treaty), the current framework for sharing internet user data between countries, which both legislators and tech companies have criticized as inefficient.

To continue reading: The US Government Just Destroyed Our Privacy While Nobody Was Paying Attention

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Is Trump Assembling a War Cabinet? by Patrick J. Buchanan

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 1 comment

If personnel is policy, then Trump is preparing for war. From Patrick J. Buchanan at buchanan.org:

The last man standing between the U.S. and war with Iran may be a four-star general affectionately known to his Marines as “Mad Dog.”

Gen. James Mattis, the secretary of defense, appears to be the last man in the Situation Room who believes the Iran nuclear deal may be worth preserving and that war with Iran is a dreadful idea.

Yet, other than Mattis, President Donald Trump seems to be creating a war cabinet.

Trump himself has pledged to walk away from the Iran nuclear deal — “the worst deal ever” — and reimpose sanctions in May.

His new national security adviser John Bolton, who wrote an op-ed titled “To Stop Iran’s Bomb, Bomb Iran,” has called for preemptive strikes and “regime change.”

Secretary of State-designate Mike Pompeo calls Iran “a thuggish police state,” a “despotic theocracy,” and “the vanguard of a pernicious empire that is expanding its power and influence across the Middle East.”

Trump’s favorite Arab ruler, 32-year-old Saudi Prince Mohammed bin Salman, calls Iran’s Ayatollah Khamenei “the Hitler of the Middle East.”

Bibi Netanyahu is monomaniacal on Iran, calling the nuclear deal a threat to Israel’s survival and Iran “the greatest threat to our world.”

U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley echoes them all.

Yet Iran appears not to want a war. U.N. inspectors routinely confirm that Iran is strictly abiding by the terms of the nuclear deal.

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While U.S. warships in the Persian Gulf often encountered Iranian “fast attack” boats and drones between January 2016 and August 2017, that has stopped. Vessels of both nations have operated virtually without incident.

What would be the result of Trump’s trashing of the nuclear deal?

To continue reading: Is Trump Assembling a War Cabinet?

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Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments, Politics

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Nothing Exceeds Like Excess, by Jeff Thomas

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 1 comment

There’s no way the US government gets a dollar’s worth of defense per dollar spent. From Jeff Thomas from internationalman.com:

Nothing Exceeds Like Excess

The first panacea for a mismanaged nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

—Ernest Hemingway

Military spending is the second largest item in the US federal budget after Social Security. It has a habit of increasing significantly each year, and the proposed 2019 defense budget is $886 billion (roughly double what it was in 2003).

US military spending exceeds the total of the next ten largest countries combined. Although the US government acknowledges 682 military bases in 63 countries, that number may be over 1,000 (if all military installations are included), in 156 countries. Total military personnel is estimated at over 1.4 million.

The reader could be forgiven if he felt that a US military base was rather unnecessary in, say, Djibouti or the Bahamas, yet the US Congress will not allow the closure of any military bases. (The Bi-partisan Budget Act of 2013 blocked future military base closings under the argument that they’re all essential for “national security.”) And Congress has a vested interest in keeping all bases open and consuming as much in tax dollars as possible (more on that later).

Of course, those bases need to be kept well-stocked with small arms, tanks, missiles and aircraft. Yet, in spite of the admittedly incredible number of US military bases across the globe, the additional stockpile of weaponry is so great that the government has difficulty finding places to put it all.

One storage location is pictured in the photo above—Davis-Monthan Air Force Base in Tucson, Arizona. In spite of the size of the photo, it shows only a portion of the aircraft located there. (And bear in mind, such aircraft often cost over $100 million each.)

If asked, the military states that, although these aircraft are in dead storage and many have never seen any use whatever, they might possibly be called up for service, “if needed.” Of course, if they’re needed, they’re unlikely to be of use if located in Arizona. And, in addition, they may not be useful for warfare, as war technology has moved on since the days when such aircraft designs were suitable.

To continue reading: Nothing Exceeds Like Excess

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Obama’s FBI Knew Russia Aided Iran Nuclear Program Before Uranium One & Iran Deal: Report, by Tyler Durden

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 6 comments

Mr. Hope and Change didn’t seem to do much to stop either the Russians or the Iranians from acquiring nuclear materials and technology. Whatever the merits of the Iranian nuclear deal, there was no chance it would have gone through if US lawmakers had known about Russian assistance to the Iranian nuclear program. From Tyler Durden at zerohedge.com:

During Obama’s first term, the FBI was presented with evidence that Russia was providing assistance to Iran’s nuclear program, according to former undercover informant William Douglas Campbell.

Campbell – who worked for the CIA for decades before his work for the FBI, tells The Hill that he gathered evidence of Russia intercepting nonpublic copies of international inspection reports concerning Tehran’s nuclear program – sending equipment, advice and materials to one of Iran’s several nuclear facilities.

Campbell said Russian nuclear executives were extremely concerned that Moscow’s ongoing assistance to Iran might boomerang on them just as they were winning billions of dollars in new nuclear fuel contracts inside the United States. –The Hill

“The people I was working with had been briefed by Moscow to keep a very low profile regarding Moscow’s work with Tehran,” said Campbell. “Moscow was supplying equipment, nuclear equipment, nuclear services to Iran. And Moscow, specifically the leadership in Moscow, were concerned that it would offset the strategy they had here in the United States if the United States understood the close relationship between Moscow and Tehran.”

Notes of Campbell’s FBI debriefings show he reported in 2010 that a Russian nuclear executive was using “the same kind of payment network” to move funds between Russia and Iran as was used to launder kickbacks between Moscow and Americans.

Campbell worked from 2008 to 2014 as an undercover informant inside Rosatom, Russia’s state-controlled nuclear giant, while posing as a consultant. He helped the FBI put several Russian and U.S. executives in prison for a bribery, kickback, money laundering and extortion scheme.  –The Hill

To continue reading: Obama’s FBI Knew Russia Aided Iran Nuclear Program Before Uranium One & Iran Deal: Report

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Enough Is Enough: If You Really Want to Save Lives, Take Aim at Government Violence, by John W. Whitehead

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 2 comments

The government wrongly kills far more people every year than all the crazed loonies who open fire in public places put together. From John W. Whitehead at rutherford.org:

“It is often the case that police shootings, incidents where law enforcement officers pull the trigger on civilians, are left out of the conversation on gun violence. But a police officer shooting a civilian counts as gun violence. Every time an officer uses a gun against an innocent or an unarmed person contributes to the culture of gun violence in this country.”—Journalist Celisa Calacal

Enough is enough.

That was the refrain chanted over and over by the thousands of demonstrators who gathered to protest gun violence in America.

Enough is enough.

We need to do something about the violence that is plaguing our nation and our world.

Enough is enough.

The world would be a better place if there were fewer weapons that could kill, maim, destroy and debilitate.

Enough is enough.

On March 24, 2018, more than 200,000 young people took the time to march on Washington DC and other cities across the country to demand that their concerns about gun violence be heard.

More power to them.

I’m all for activism, especially if it motivates people who have been sitting silently on the sidelines for too long to get up and try to reclaim control over a runaway government.

Curiously, however, although these young activists were vocal in calling for gun control legislation that requires stricter background checks and limits the kinds of weapons being bought and sold by members of the public, they were remarkably silent about the gun violence perpetrated by their own government.

Enough is enough.

Why is no one taking aim at the U.S. government as the greatest purveyor of violence in American society and around the world?

The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror or mass shooting.

Violence has become our government’s calling card, starting at the top and trickling down, from the more than 80,000 SWAT team raids carried out every year on unsuspecting Americans by heavily armed, black-garbed commandos and the increasingly rapid militarization of local police forces across the country to the drone killings used to target insurgents.

Enough is enough.

The government even exports violence worldwide, with weapons being America’s most profitable export.

To continue reading: Enough Is Enough: If You Really Want to Save Lives, Take Aim at Government Violence

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The Future is Uncertain and the End is Always Near, by Jim Quinn

Posted on March 27, 2018 | 3 comments

Jim Quinn surveys deteriorating Pennsylvania and not quite as bad Colorado. From Quinn at theburningplatform.com:

Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hand upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we’re goin’ to the Roadhouse
We’re gonna have a real
Good time

The Doors – Roadhouse Blues

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Spending a week driving around a western state 1,700 miles from my stomping grounds in Pennsylvania provides a different perspective on the level of economic, social and political degradation impacting the country. With a daily commute along the crumbling, crummy, gridlocked deathtrap roadways into West Philadelphia, the squalor and decomposition of our civilization is self-evident.

I live in a corrupt state with the highest gasoline taxes, highest tolls, massively underfunded government pension liability, failing government run public schools, suburban sprawl dotted with ghost malls, vacant industrial parks, and urban ghetto shitholes plagued by drugs, murder, welfare mentality, excessive taxes, and left wing politicians.

Politically, the state is virtually split down the middle, with the urban enclaves of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh dominated by Democrats, rural areas dominated by Republicans, and suburbs capable of going either way – but leaning left. Trump won the state mostly due to the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary in Philly and Pittsburgh. If the Democrats weren’t so dysfunctional and beholden to the far left, a moderate Democrat would win the state easily.

The governor is a Democrat and the legislature is Republican controlled, so budgets are virtually impossible to pass, with the only predictable outcome being higher taxes, fees, tolls, and deferral of essential actions to address the billions in underfunded government pensions. The Federal prison has a wing just for corrupt PA politicians. At least life is predictable.

Living in the northwest suburbs, 30 miles from the City of Philadelphia, and commuting into the city on a daily basis for the last 12 years, has given me a good vantage point in assessing the state of the infrastructure, economic trends, and societal decay in my part of this exponentially delusional, debt dependent, chaotic country. The U.S. and my corner of PA. have supposedly been in the midst of an economic recovery for the last nine years.

To continue reading: The Future is Uncertain and the End is Always Near

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Posted in Collapse, Crime, Governments, Labor, Pensions, Society

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