From Joseph Sobran (1946-2010), American journalist and writer:
If you want government to intervene domestically, you’re a liberal. If you want government to intervene overseas, you’re a conservative. If you want government to intervene everywhere, you’re a moderate. If you don’t want government to intervene anywhere, you’re an extremist.
What’s the use of spending a lot of money on the military if you never go to war? That’s the tortured logic of neoconservatism. From Ron Paul at ronpaulinstitute.org:
Even President Trump admitted the bill was horrible. As he said in the signing ceremony, “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…”
This is why I often say: forget about needing a third political party – we need a second political party! Trump is admitting that to fuel the warfare state and enrich the military-industrial complex, it was necessary to dump endless tax dollars into the welfare state.
But no one “forced” President Trump to sign the bill. His party controls both houses of Congress. He knows that no one in Washington cares about deficits so he was more than willing to spread some Fed-created money at home to get his massive war spending boost.
He’s right and wrong at the same time. Yes it is another big increase in military spending. In fact the US continues to spend more than at least the next seven or so largest countries combined. But his statement is misleading. Where are these several years of decline? Did we somehow miss a massive reduction in military spending under President Obama? Did the last Administration close the thousands of military bases in more than 150 countries while we weren’t looking?
Of course not.
On militarism, the Obama Administration was just an extension of the Bush Administration, which was an extension of the militarism of the Clinton Administration. And so on. The military-industrial complex continues to generate record profits from fictitious enemies. The mainstream media continues to play the game, amplifying the war propaganda produced by the think tanks, which are funded by the big defense contractors.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is conspiracy fact. Enemies must be created to keep Washington rich, even as the rest of the country suffers from the destruction of the dollar. That is why the neocons continue to do very well in this Administration.
Posted in Debt, Geopolitics, Government, Military
Tagged Defense Spending, Neoconservatives
Tesla’s stock market valuation disagrees with Simon Black, but SLL wouldn’t bet against him. From Simon Black at sovereignman.com:
Just a few days ago, shareholders of Tesla approved an almost comical pay package for their cult leader CEO Elon Musk that could potentially put $50 BILLION in his pocket over the next decade.
Let’s put this figure in perspective: at $5 billion per year, Musk would make more than every single CEO in the S&P 500. COMBINED.
In other words, if you add up the salaries of all the CEOs of the 500 largest companies in America, it would still be less than the $5 billion per year that Mr. Musk stands to earn.
That’s pretty astounding given that Tesla’s own 2017 4th quarter financial report (page 24) states that Elon “does not devote his full time and attention to Tesla”.
Or more importantly, that under Musk’s leadership, Tesla’s chronic financial incontinence has racked up more than $4.97 billion in operating losses for its shareholders.
Or that the company has been under SEC investigation (without bothering to disclose this fact to shareholders).
Yet they saw fit to reward him with the largest CEO pay package in the history of the world.
This is precisely the type of behavior that is only seen during periods of extreme irrationality when financial markets are at their peak… and poised for a serious correction.
I’ll close this brief letter today quoting John Thompson, Chicago-based value investor and Chief Investment Officer of Vilas Capital Management.
Thompson is one of the few hedge fund managers who has consistently outperformed the market, and his fund is betting big against Tesla. What follows are some passages about Tesla from Thompson’s recent investor updates:
I think Tesla is going to crash in the next 3-6 months. . .
. . . partially due to their incompetence in making and delivering the Model 3, partially due to falling demand for the Model S and X, partially due to the extreme valuation, partially due to their horrendous financesthat will imminently require a huge capital raise, partially due to a likely downgrade of their credit rating by Moody’s from B- to CCC (default likely) which should scare their parts suppliers into requiring cash on delivery (a death knell), partially due to the market’s recent falling appetite for risk, and partially due to our suspicions of fraudulent accounting activities, evidenced by 85 SEC letters/investigations and two top finance people leaving in the last month. . .
To continue reading: “Tesla, without any doubt, is on the verge of bankruptcy.”
Insect populations are plunging, and while we may not like them, they’re essential for life on earth. From Raúl Ilargi Meijer at theautomaticearth.com:
There are numerous ways to define the Precautionary Principle. It’s something we can all intuitively understand, but which many parties seek ways to confuse since it has the potential to stand in the way of profits. Still, in the end it should all be about proof, not profits. That is exactly what the Principle addresses. Because if you first need to deliver scientific proof that some action or product can be harmful to mankind and/or the natural world, you run the risk of inflicting irreversible damage before that proof can be delivered.
In one of many definitions, the 1998 Wingspread Statement on the Precautionary Principle says: “When an activity raises threats of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”
Needless to say, that doesn’t easily fly in our age of science and money. Cigarette makers, car manufacturers and oil companies, just to name a few among a huge number of industries, are all literally making a killing while the Precautionary Principle is being ignored. Even as it is being cited in many international treaties. Lip service “R” us. Are these industries to blame when they sell us our products, or are we for buying them? That’s where governments must come in to educate us about risks. Which they obviously do not.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb -of Black Swan and Antifragile fame- has made the case, in his usual strong fashion, for applying the Precautionary Principle when it comes to GMOs. His argument is that allowing genetically modified organisms in our eco- and foodsystems carries unknown risks that we have no way of overseeing, and that these risks may cause irreversible damage to the very systems mankind relies on for survival.
Taleb is not popular among GMO producers. Who all insist there is no evidence that their products cause harm. But that is not the point. The Precautionary Principle, if it is to be applied, must turn the burden of proof on its head. The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Monsanto et al must prove that their products do no harm. They can not. Which is why they have, and need, huge lobbying, PR and legal departments.
To continue reading: The Science of a Vanishing Planet
One thing that happens as you get older is you care less and less about how you’re labelled. You care more and more about what you do, and what kind of person you are. From Jeremy Egerer at americanthinker.com:
One thing I’m looking forward to as I get older is becoming more “racist.” I consider it one of the finer joys of aging. Children are averse to this kind of thing because they have no idea, for instance, that handing a kid named Terrell $150 of your hard-earned money for C.D.s, even though he has a bullet scar on his leg and an affinity for bad hash, might be a bad investment (note: I have personally done this). You have to learn these things the hard way. Putting two and two together over a lifetime has a tendency to make you generalize about people, and if you’re intelligent, most of the time you will be right.
At this point, having lived through a series of dangerous and distasteful experiences with lowlifes, I can tell the difference between a good and a bad black man within seconds, and knowing the difference between them has made me safer, richer, and happier in general – something a teenager is unlikely to understand, appreciate, or accept. The way kids are indoctrinated today makes them unlikely to ever appreciate it, and the only thing I can do for a man who places his morals over his judgment is laugh at him. To watch a smug, effeminate, and fully grown white man embrace a lowlife and then ask where his wallet went is comedy of the highest order – funnier than watching drunk people fall off their bicycles or women throwing tantrums in the grocery store.
As most of us over the age of 30 know, the things that turned us on at 20 have a tendency to become stale and boring, which means that unless we’re ready to curl up and die, we have to move on to other things. Drinking by this time has become moderated (unless you’re a drunk); drugs are severely limited or verboten (unless you’re a bum); sleeping around has led to marriage (unless nobody wants to marry you); and most of the music and television you spent your precious youth on become either corny or boring (unless you’re corny or boring). What’s left to us but to learn? To build? To construct a universe within ourselves that allows us to master the universe outside ourselves? The hallmark of manhood is a reversal of bald consumption – the desire to create, to build a home and a family and a business and a nation and ideas, to be needed by people, to dream things that not only sound good, but work well, to stand amid the chaos of the world and establish your tiny fiefdom in irreproachable order – in short, to go from having your diaper changed to changing a diaper.
To continue reading: On Getting Older and Turning into ‘a Racist’
Gina Haspel oversaw a black site torture operation. If she had been German or Japanese and done the same thing during World War II, she would have been hung. Now she’s President Trump’s pick to head the CIA. From the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity at consortiumnews.com:
Two dozen former U.S. intelligence officers urge President Trump to rescind Gina Haspel’s nomination to lead the CIA, citing torture that she oversaw while supervising a black site prison, as well as her role in destroying evidence.
MEMORANDUM FOR: The President
FROM: Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity
SUBJECT: Request to Withdraw Nomination of Gina Haspel
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
With respect, we veteran intelligence officers from CIA and other agencies urge you to withdraw the nomination of Gina Haspel for CIA director. From what is already known of her leading role in CIA torture 16 years ago, she has disqualified herself.
Gina Haspel
In 2002 Haspel supervised the first CIA “black site” for interrogation, where cruel and bizarre forms of torture were applied to suspected terrorists. And when the existence of 92 videotapes of those torture sessions was revealed, Haspel signed a cable ordering their destruction, against the advice of legal counsel at CIA and the White House.
Does Torture ‘Work?’
We are confident that if you set aside some time to read the unredacted portions of the Senate Intelligence Committee report of 2014 on the torture ordered and supervised by Haspel and other CIA managers, you will change your mind about her nomination. The five-year Senate investigation was based primarily on original CIA cables and other sensitive documents.
In addition to revealing clear violations of the UN Convention Against Torture, the Senate investigation shows that claims by senior CIA officials that torture is effective are far from true. The US Army — in which many of us have served — has been aware of the ineffectiveness of torture for decades.
General John Kimmons, head of Army Intelligence, drove home that point on September 6, 2006 — approximately an hour before President George W. Bush publicly extolled the virtues of torture methods that became known as “enhanced interrogation techniques.” Gen. Kimmons stated: “No good intelligence is going to come from abusive practices. I think history tells us that. I think the empirical evidence of the last five years — hard years — tell us that.”
We believe that Defense Secretary James Mattis’ lack of enthusiasm for torture reflects lessons drawn from the historical experience of the Marine Corps, as well. Not to mention the twin reality that torture brutalizes the brutalizer, and that US use of torture puts our own troops in serious jeopardy when captured. Moreover, there is no more effective recruitment tool than torture to attract more terrorists.
To continue reading: Trump Should Withdraw Haspel Nomination, Intel Vets Say
Defense policy generally has less to do with defense of the US proper, which could be achieved at a fraction of what’s currently spent playing global cop, and more with lining the pockets of military and intelligence contractors. It’s one reason the US can’t seem to win any of its wars. Winning would stop the gravy train. From Eric Zuesse at strategic-culture.org:
Unlike corporations that sell to consumers, Lockheed Martin and the other top contractors to the US Government are highly if not totally dependent upon sales to governments, for their profits, especially sales to their own government, which they control — they control their home market, which is the US Government, and they use it to sell to its allied governments, all of which foreign governments constitute the export markets for their products and services. These corporations control the US Government, and they control NATO. And, here is how they do it, which is essential to understand, in order to be able to make reliable sense of America’s foreign policies, such as which nations are ‘allies’ of the US Government (such as Saudi Arabia and Israel), and which nations are its ‘enemies’ (such as Libya and Syria) — and are thus presumably suitable for America to invade, or else to overthrow by means of a coup. First, the nation’s head-of-state becomes demonized; then, the invasion or coup happens. And, that’s it. And here’s how.
Because America (unlike Russia) privatized the weapons-industry (and even privatizes to mercenaries some of its battlefield killing and dying), there are, in America, profits for investors to make in invasions and in military occupations of foreign countries; and the billionaires who control these corporations can and do — and, for their financial purposes, they must — buy Congress and the President, so as to keep those profits flowing to themselves. That’s the nature of the war-business, since its markets are governments — but not those governments that the aristocracy want to overthrow and replace. The foreign governments that are to be overthrown are not markets, but are instead targets. The bloodshed and misery go to those unfortunate lands. But if you control these corporations, then you need these invasions and occupations, and you certainly aren’t concerned about any of the victims, who (unlike those profits) are irrelevant to your business. In fact, to the exact contrary: killing people and destroying buildings etc., are what you sell — that’s what you (as a billionaire with a controlling interest in one of the 100 top contractors to the US Government) are selling to your own government, and to all of the other governments that your country’s cooperative propaganda will characterize as being ‘enemies’ — Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Yemen, etc. — and definitely not as being ‘allies’, such as are being characterized these corporations’ foreign markets: Saudi Arabia, EU-NATO, Israel, etcetera. In fact, as regards your biggest foreign markets, they will be those ‘allies’; so, you (that is, the nation’s aristocracy, who own also the news-media etc.) defend them, and you want the US military (the taxpayers and the troops) to support and defend them. It’s defending your market, even though you as the controlling owner of such a corporation aren’t paying the tab for it. The rest of the country is actually paying for all of it, so you’re “free-riding” the public, in this business. It’s the unique nature of the war-business, and a unique boon to its investors.
To continue reading: How the Military Controls America
The British government has decided that there are just certain opinions its citizens are better off not hearing. From Robbie Travers at zerohedge.com:
Would you want your government to decide who can and cannot enter your country based on how popular their political views?
Would you trust any individual to police on your behalf what speakers are “conducive to the public good?”
The UK Home Office feels it is absolutely the organisation to fulfill this role. It also apparently feels there are certain opinions that you are far better never hearing.
Like those of Lauren Southern, who on the 12th of March was “banned for life” from entering the United Kingdom, after being detained under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act (2000).
Southern was told that “by her own admission” she had distributed “racist material.” It is important to note that actually, Southern, however, did not at all admit to the material being distributed being “racist” in nature, she simply admitted to distributing it.
But she, of course, was forbidden to dispute whether her material was truly racist, the mere suggestion that Southern was racist proved ample enough for her right to speak freely being expunged.
What material led to Southern being banned from entering the United Kingdom? A UK Home Office official explained that Southern was“refused [entry] on policy grounds that their presence in the UK was not conducive to the public good.” It leaves anyone who believes in free discourse, without the trappings of state oversight with the question: Should the state really be the arbiter of what is “conducive” to the public good? No, is the answer most sensible individuals will conclude.
You may like the idea of a state you agree with having this power, but what happens when it becomes a state you disagree with?
This decision is far better left to the people of the United Kingdom and any other nation.
But this isn’t just censorship, this is using the potent force of counter-terrorism legislation to silence. An examination is needed. We must inspect the alleged possible ways in which Miss Southern could potentially have posed a terrorist threat and breached the Terrorism Act of (2000).
Southern was served a notice that she was detained under counter-terrorism laws, specifically under Schedule 7 of the Terrorism Act (2000). A reminder: when detained under this serious counter-terrorism tool, it is a serious offence to remain silent. Does this really seem like a fitting use of counter-terrorism legislation when we have IS fighters returning in their 100s to the UK? Only 54 of said fighters have even been prosecuted.
To continue reading: UK Thought Police: Detaining Opponents “For The Public Good”
John Bolton has never let facts stand in the way of his warmongering. From Gareth Porter at theamericanconservative.com:
In my reporting on U.S.-Israeli policy, I have tracked numerous episodes in which the United States and/or Israel made moves that seemed to indicate preparations for war against Iran. Each time—in 2007, in 2008, and again in 2011—those moves, presented in corporate media as presaging attacks on Tehran, were actually bluffs aimed at putting pressure on the Iranian government.
But the strong likelihood that Donald Trump will now choose John Bolton as his next national security advisor creates a prospect of war with Iran that is very real. Bolton is no ordinary neoconservative hawk. He has been obsessed for many years with going to war against the Islamic Republic, calling repeatedly for bombing Iran in his regular appearances on Fox News, without the slightest indication that he understands the consequences of such a policy.
His is not merely a rhetorical stance: Bolton actively conspired during his tenure as the Bush administration’s policymaker on Iran from 2002 through 2004 to establish the political conditions necessary for the administration to carry out military action.
More than anyone else inside or outside the Trump administration, Bolton has already influenced Trump to tear up the Iran nuclear deal. Bolton parlayed his connection with the primary financier behind both Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump himself—the militantly Zionist casino magnate Sheldon Adelson—to get Trump’s ear last October, just as the president was preparing to announce his policy on the Iran nuclear agreement, the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA). He spoke with Trump by phone from Las Vegas after meeting with Adelson.
To continue reading: The Untold Story of John Bolton’s Campaign for War With Iran
Posted in Foreign Policy, Geopolitics, Governments
Tagged Iran, Iranian nuclear deal, Iraq, John Bolton
This is dedicated to Holly O and all those who know that civilization and savagery are not equivalent, refuse to overlook or excuse the latter, and will not be silenced. Let the voices of those silenced by threats or force strengthen the voices of those who can still speak.
Mendacity keeps breaking out to new highs. What’s behind the bull market in bullshit? A large group of small people clinging to a status quo that has enriched and empowered them like no status quo has ever enriched and empowered any cabal or coterie before. A much larger group—host and prey—so bamboozled they don’t recognize their own anemic decomposition as their lifeblood is sucked away. Many of the few who recognize the peril pin self-defeating hopes on the rube’s game of politics.
The purpose of the lies is astonishingly tawdry: to preserve a failing system for another few days, months, years, or best case, until those currently milking it are dead. That’s it, the only point: to keep the grift going just a little longer.
Find a threat, be it Islam, Russia, China, or creatures from Mars, to justify enormous expenditures on useless armaments and wars. Pretend that the ever-dwindling ranks of the productive can continue to support the ever-expanding ranks of the unproductive. Ignore the deadly inflection point, now reached, on the debt graph where the inevitable accretion of compounding interest wreaks its mathematically certain havoc. Pray that tax cuts or tariffs or central banks will make things all better. Allow intelligence agencies that ignore the Constitution and can’t explain why they need the information they have to collect even more of it. Invite people into your country that want to destroy it and hope for the best. Blame unapproved outcomes in the putrid political playpen on nefarious foreign machinations.
When lies are all you’ve got, truth is the enemy. Successful governments, if that’s not an oxymoron, don’t need repression. They are small and unobtrusive. Repression wouldn’t serve their limited purposes and would strain their limited resources. There’s an inverse relationship between success and repression. The best marker for the merit of a society is how it treats the truth. Those that seek the truth and honor their truth-finders and truth-tellers have earned the approbation “civilized.” Those that do the opposite, at the intellectual and invariably the physical level of degenerative violence, garner the condemnation “savage.”
It’s telling the names given to humanity’s epochs. Europe emerged from the Dark Ages and the names of subsequent ages—the Renaissance, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, the Age of Reason, the Industrial Revolution—denote the ascendance of truth-seeking. It’s a chore for second-rate nag historians to tally those ages’ imperfections. Directing one’s gaze upwards, one sees a roughly six-century efflorescence of inquiry, science, invention, thought, knowledge, art, literature, music, political philosophy, and human freedom, overall a single Age of Civilization.
In a tedious nod to politically correct nag historians, it’s hereby noted that one imperfection was slavery. A necessary rejoinder: slavery was virtually eliminated in those nations that embarked towards civilization, but flourishes still in lands of the savage. Under much of Islam today, women are chattel. There’s a global black market in children who are forced into servitude and sexual submission. In many parts of the world, human beings own other human beings outright, the definition of slavery.
It’s intellectual depravity to maintain that civilization and savagery are equivalent, overlook or excuse the latter, or silence those who refuse to equilibrate, overlook, or excuse. Project Silence is most advanced in Europe. Under “hate speech” laws, notably in Great Britain, France, Germany, and Sweden, public opposition to Middle Eastern and Northern African immigration and public notice of immigrant crime have been criminalized.
Often, the crimes themselves—through lax or nonexistent enforcement of existing laws—have been decriminalized. In further appeasement of the immigrants, law and its enforcement have been ceded to them. In some districts the horrors of Sharia reign. Only recently have European leaders began to concede that there are places in their countries where non-Muslims dare not go.
Every epoch contains the fruits of prior epochs and the seeds of future ones. While there are usually no bright historical lines demarcating one epoch from the next, the transition from the Age of Civilization to the Age of Savagery is an exception. The years 1913 and 1914 mark that transition.
With the Sixteenth, or Income Tax, Amendment, ratified February 3, 1913, the US government asserted first claim on the products of its people’s labor. The Federal Reserve Act, enacted December of the same year, allowed the government to replace gold-backed currency with fiat units backed by nothing but promises and the legal tender mandate. The two enactments legitimized government and government-central bank theft (through the hidden tax of currency depreciation) and fraud. The freest nation in history had reversed course.
As if to provide tangible confirmation that it had entered an Age of Savagery, in 1914 the world embarked on its second bloodiest war ever. World War I killed 18 million and wounded another 23 million, split about two-thirds and one-third between military and civilian casualties.
It was a fitting kickoff to the new age, and would be followed by the horrors and death tolls of Nazi Germany, communist Soviet Union and China, another, even deadlier world war, and countless smaller scale wars and genocides. The twentieth century was easily the bloodiest in human history, but its savagery proceeds apace in the twenty-first, which may come to rival its predecessor.
Theft using violence or its threat is the quintessence of traditional savagery, but fraud, especially in modern societies, shouldn’t be underestimated. Savages wear Brioni suits, have diplomas from the best schools, and fill the highest positions in business and government. It is the belief that others’ lives are the means to one’s own ends, and the willingness to employ whatever means necessary–from lies to slavery to murder–to achieve those ends, that distinguishes the savage.
Savages are savages wherever you find them. Destruction and death are their means and only ends. Those who would tell the truth are in a pincer between primitives. Truth threatens the primitives above who are imposing their version of order, and the primitives below imposing their version of chaos. The unifying element is hatred of human freedom, progress, and greatness, hallmarks of the Age of Civilization now passed.
Three steps forward, two steps back appears to be humanity’s course. After six centuries forward, it’s stepping backward. Savagery waxes and wanes, but never wins. The lives savages most desperately want to end are their own. Those who rightfully resist savagery in the name of self-defense, honor, the truth, and freedom have the right and the responsibility to give them what they want.
Posted in Civil Liberties, Education, Government, Horseshit, Morality, Philosophy, Politics
Tagged Civilization, Savagery
