Scanning the headlines in the western mainstream press, and then peering behind the one-way mirror to compare that to the actual goings-on, one can't but get the impression that America's propagandists, and all those who follow in their wake, are struggling with all their might to concoct rationales for military action of one sort or another, be it supplying weapons to the largely defunct Ukrainian military, or staging parades of US military hardware and troops in the almost completely Russian town of Narva, in Estonia, a few hundred meters away from the Russian border, or putting US “advisers” in harm's way in parts of Iraq mostly controlled by Islamic militants.
The strenuous efforts to whip up Cold War-like hysteria in the face of an otherwise preoccupied and essentially passive Russia seems out of all proportion to the actual military threat Russia poses. (Yes, volunteers and ammo do filter into Ukraine across the Russian border, but that's about it.) Further south, the efforts to topple the government of Syria by aiding and arming Islamist radicals seem to be backfiring nicely. But that's the pattern, isn't it? What US military involvement in recent memory hasn't resulted in a fiasco? Maybe failure is not just an option, but more of a requirement?
Let's review. Afghanistan, after the longest military campaign in US history, is being handed back to the Taliban. Iraq no longer exists as a sovereign nation, but has fractured into three pieces, one of them controlled by radical Islamists. Egypt has been democratically reformed into a military dictatorship. Libya is a defunct state in the middle of a civil war. The Ukraine will soon be in a similar state; it has been reduced to pauper status in record time—less than a year. A recent government overthrow has caused Yemen to stop being US-friendly. Closer to home, things are going so well in the US-dominated Central American countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador that they have produced a flood of refugees, all trying to get into the US in the hopes of finding any sort of sanctuary.
Looking at this broad landscape of failure, there are two ways to interpret it. One is that the US officialdom is the most incompetent one imaginable, and can't ever get anything right. But another is that they do not succeed for a distinctly different reason: they don't succeed because results don't matter. You see, if failure were a problem, then there would be some sort of pressure coming from somewhere or other within the establishment, and that pressure to succeed might sporadically give rise to improved performance, leading to at least a few instances of success. But if in fact failure is no problem at all, and if instead there was some sort of pressure to fail, then we would see exactly what we do see.
In fact, a point can be made that it is the limited scope of failure that is the problem. This would explain the recent saber-rattling in the direction of Russia, accusing it of imperial ambitions (Russia is not interested in territorial gains), demonizing Vladimir Putin (who is effective and popular) and behaving provocatively along Russia's various borders (leaving Russia vaguely insulted but generally unconcerned). It can be argued that all the previous victims of US foreign policy—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, even the Ukraine—are too small to produce failure writ large enough to satisfy America's appetite for failure. Russia, on the other hand, especially when incentivized by thinking that it is standing up to some sort of new, American-style fascism, has the ability to deliver to the US a foreign policy failure that will dwarf all the previous ones.
Analysts have proposed a variety of explanations for America's hyperactive, oversized militarism. Here are the top three:
1. The US government has been captured by the military-industrial complex, which demands to be financed lavishly. Rationales are created artificially to achieve that result. But there does seem to be some sort of pressure to actually make weapons and field armies, because wouldn't it be far more cost-effective to achieve full-spectrum failure simply by stealing all the money and skip building the weapons systems altogether? So something else must be going on.
2. The US military posture is designed to insure America's full spectrum dominance over the entire planet. But “full-spectrum dominance” sounds a little bit like “success,” whereas what we see is full-spectrum failure. Again, this story doesn't fit the facts.
3. The US acts militarily to defend the status of the US dollar as the global reserve currency. But the US dollar is slowly but surely losing its attractiveness as a reserve currency, as witnessed by China and Russia acting as swiftly as they can to unload their US dollar reserves, and to stockpile gold instead. Numerous other nations have entered into arrangements with each other to stop using the US dollar in international trade. The fact of the matter is, it doesn't take a huge military to flush one's national currency down the toilet, so, once again, something else must be going on.
There are many other explanations on offer as well, but none of them explain the fact that the goal of all this militarism seems to be to achieve failure.
Perhaps a simpler explanation would suffice? How about this one:
The US has surrendered its sovereignty to a clique of financial oligarchs. Having nobody at all to answer to, this American (and to some extent international) oligarchy has been ruining the financial condition of the country, running up staggering levels of debt, destroying savings and retirements, debasing the currency and so on. The inevitable end-game is that the Federal Reserve (along with the central banks of other “developed economies”) will end up buying up all the sovereign debt issuance with money they print for that purpose, and in the end this inevitably leads to hyperinflation and national bankruptcy. A very special set of conditions has prevented these two events from taking place thus far, but that doesn't mean that they won't, because that's what always happens, sooner or later.
Now, let's suppose a financial oligarchy has seized control of the country, and, since it can't control its own appetites, is running it into the ground. Then it would make sense for it to have some sort of back-up plan for when the whole financial house of cards falls apart. Ideally, this plan would effectively put down any chance of revolt of the downtrodden masses, and allow the oligarchy to maintain security and hold onto its wealth. Peacetime is fine for as long as it can placate the populace with bread and circuses, but when a financial calamity causes the economy to crater and bread and circuses turn scarce, a handy fallback is war.
Any rationale for war will do, be it terrorists foreign and domestic, Big Bad Russia, or hallucinated space aliens. Military success is unimportant, because failure is even better than success for maintaining order because it makes it possible to force through various emergency security measures. Various training runs, such as the military occupation of Boston following the staged bombings at the Boston Marathon, have already taken place. The surveillance infrastructure and the partially privatized prison-industrial complex are already in place for locking up the undesirables. A really huge failure would provide the best rationale for putting the economy on a war footing, imposing martial law, suppressing dissent, outlawing “extremist” political activity and so on.
And so perhaps that is what we should expect. Financial collapse is already baked in, and it's only a matter of time before it happens, and precipitates commercial collapse when global supply chains stop functioning. Political collapse will be resisted, and the way it will be resisted is by starting as many wars as possible, to produce a vast backdrop of failure to serve as a rationale for all sorts of “emergency measures,” all of which will have just one aim: to suppress rebellion and to keep the oligarchy in power. Outside the US, it will look like Americans blowing things up: countries, things, innocent bystanders, even themselves (because, you know, apparently that works too). From the outside looking into America's hall of one-way mirrors, it will look like a country gone mad; but then it already looks that way. And inside the hall of one-way mirrors it will look like valiant defenders of liberty battling implacable foes around the world. Most people will remain docile and just wave their little flags.
But I would venture to guess that at some point failure will translate into meta-failure: America will fail even at failing. I hope that there is something we can do to help this meta-failure of failure happen sooner rather than later.
52 comments:
It certainly looks, very sadly, just as described.
But there does seem to be some sort of pressure to actually make weapons and field armies, because wouldn't it be far more cost-effective to achieve full-spectrum failure simply by stealing all the money and skip building the weapons systems altogether? So something else must be going on.
Given the history of US weapons procurement fraud and waste, e.g. SDI aka Star Wars, Future Combat Systems, or the mega-boondoggle du jour JSF, I don't think the MIC is under any pressure at all to actually build anything.
Also consider the Yin to America's Yang: China. We couldn't have gone this far as a banker's kleptocracy if they weren't working so hard and buying our debt. And if we go down, they down, and vis-versa. That seems to be the most likely conflict that causes meta-failure to the global system.
I congratulate you on applying the only one of Rand's dictums I do find has considerable validity: I have followed it since I read of it, and it has never, ever let me down. "By the grace and nature of reality contradictions cannot exist. If you think you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You find one of them is wrong".
You did go through the premises and show how in every case at least one is wrong. And you're right. I kept for years thinking "if they're the biggest, strongest, best armed nation, how come a bunch of ragtag "rebels" always defeats them. Something just don't gel"
But that they could be so appallingly evil as to send young people to die horrible deaths, lose limbs and eyes and sanity, murder unarmed innocents in invaded countries, all to deliberately fail in their claimed endeavour and make more money, my mind just couldn't comprehend that.
Perhaps it 's time I made sure it does.
And if this post on ZeroHedge is to be believed, the U.S. will soon have a unit of "trainers" inside Ukraine. The original story is from something called Sputnik News so I don't know how credible it is. Can anyone vouch for it? But there IS an interview with the American military man where he announced it was happening.
I recall the history of America's slide into the Vietnam War, which started with trainers and advisors. As Kollapsnik said, you'd think TPTB would learn from their mistakes, unless they WEREN'T mistakes. Destabilisation, chaos and death is the intent for them, even if it's anathema to us little people. Here they go again.
The list of anarchy-inducing American operations left out Georgia. I don't know if one can count the slaughterhouse break-up of Yugoslavia as an American engineering feat. But it's not just the U.S. that has sown collapse all around. Chechenya and Armenia/Azerbaijan have had a bit to do with Russian influence. Yes, I'm aware of the gangsterism and religious dimensions of those fusterclucks. When you throw in the devolution of nations such as Somalia and Sudan, it seems like the dystopia of "each vs. all" is going to be the zeitgeist of our Afterscape future.
Many of us have tried to understand just how the USA has managed to fail so consistently both internationally and domestically. You have gone 1 step further in attempting to find a hypothesis that is consistent with all of the results.
There is 1 additional possibility, which is that the USA has been victimized by its own complete lack of cohesion among its various factions (part of cultural collapse perhaps?), so that all of its policies are little more than caricatures of themselves, pretending to have a goal but so confused and entangled with greed, lies and incompetence that it appears that some group must be trying to sabotage the nation.
Frankly I don't know. Your guess is as good as any.
John Michael Greer has actually expressed foreboding about a turn towards overt fascism of a peculiarly American variety. It does seem likely and may occur in rough simultaneity with financial collapse.
Greer also fear for the safety of the bureaucratic establishment, who will end up blamed for the collapse. My attitude is: why fear for them? Isn't their cowardice, greed and perfidy partly to blame?
I'm sorry for not translating this for you, but I am sure everyone nowadays know how to use Google Translate if needed.
Моня звонит из Израиля другу в Одессу:
- Сеня, что там у вас творится?
- Да Украина немножко воюет с Россией…
- Ну и что, есть потери?
- Да, есть... Украина потеряла Крым, пару областей, несколько самолётов и вертолётов, много танков и БМП, разного там оружия, прилично народу и...
- А что потеряли русские?
- Моня, ты не поверишь, русские на войну ещё так и не приехали...
Hey Dmitri Mahn , howzitgoin ? Dont forget us sycophantic little client states on the periphery that cant get enough of Kim amd Kanye ...we would do anything to help defeat the evildoers too ! Auatralia , NewZealand , Canada and U.k , we are the deputies for the great global sherriffs last ride , eh ? ... We love porn and reality t.v , also , and we like travel and cooking and dont forget our tattoos , Little Sanskrit symbols and things . You can find us all on Facebook , parked next to our SUVs , we all tend to feel famous ...and we understand Muslims and Russians are bad people , but thats ok because house prices will keep going up forever ! ....
Plastic surgery , anyone ?
"But there does seem to be some sort of pressure to actually make weapons and field armies, because wouldn't it be far more cost-effective to achieve full-spectrum failure simply by stealing all the money and skip building the weapons systems altogether? So something else must be going on." What makes military weapons so attractive to the MIC, is that when they are used (which is often)they are immediately destroyed. Which means that more sophisticated weapons are manufactured to replace those destroyed.
You can explain the situation best via LB Johnson's 'not-the-one-to-fail' principle, ie "I don't want to be the man who lost _____!" Certainly you used to see this back in the S&L days; Bill Black talks about it in terms of 'control fraud' -- For a bulletproof career, one does everything that leads to immediate fraudulent gains, which almost always means that the next person in the job will have to do the same or be caught holding the bag when it comes up empty.
Well, I think reason number three is still at least somewhat at play here.
History rhymes. I found this in Gibbon:
"We have now attained the utmost verge of prosperity, and have nothing left to demand of fortune, except the discord of the barbarians." These sentiments, less worthy of the humanity than of the patriotism of Tacitus, express the invariable maxims of the policy of his countrymen. They deemed it a much safer expedient to divide than to combat the barbarians, from whose defeat they could derive neither honor nor advantage."
As long as the 'barbarians' fought amongst themselves they were weakened. The policy of our American amoral, licentious, and dissolute leadership sees the appearance of wisdom in a divide and conquer strategy. Drunk with their power American leadership does not entertain the greater wisdom of considering long term consequences. Forgetting all but their own gain they are blind and deluded. Lacking a moral center all they can imagine is getting more more and more of what they already have.
A group of African American women visited Obama in The White House shortly after his first inauguration. They came out of their meeting with the O-man saying: "This man has no moral center." Usually this fact is related as coming from Noam Chomsky but I remember the original news report very well. I heard the original report before it was buried and confabulated into the 'just another day at the office' social criticism everyone expects from Noam. Noam was made a patsy of damage control; mission accomplished.
The financial oligarchy who raised Obama from relative obscurity knew he was someone who would feed their gluttonous and rapacious appetites and run America into the ground.
We have a divide and conquer strategy that extends from foreign to domestic policy. The official Washington narrative of confabulating Russian aggression and demonising Vladimir Putin as a horrible evil megalomaniac is no different than a gaggle of jealous high school harpies tormenting the new girl in town. It shows us that the American as well as the Russian people are both considered barbarians to our Wall Street oligarchs and the Washington royalty who ever hungry for campaign contributions indulges their every desire.
This is my first comment, although an avid reader for a number of years. For some time I have looked at world events through a similar, theoretical frame or lens. I call it "London Bridges". Through this way of perceiving world events, the rationale is basically that those leading the orchestra (a gross over-simplification) know things are not sustainable so causing it all to collapse now while they are still on top would be in their longer term best interest. Maybe this theory is better labeled "London Bridges - 9/11 Style" to be able to incorporate the controlled demolition aspects of what we are witnessing masked behind convenient vitriolic frothing and vulnerable scapegoats on the stage of world theater; all to distract and deflect attention from the actual baton wavers hidden below view down in the orchestra pit. Look out below!
Perhaps Robert Conquest's Third Law of Politics applies?
"The simplest way to explain the behavior of any bureaucratic organization is to assume that it is controlled by a cabal of its enemies".
They don't come much more bureaucratic than the US federal government.
Once you realise that the purpose of American arms procurement is to enrich the manufacturers - not to defend the nation - the huge gap between the US and Russian defence budgets appears less important.
It looks to me as though, when Russia orders a new ship, aircraft or tank, the final product is delivered fairly quickly and at a reasonable price. So each $1 billion of Russian defence spending buys a hell of a lot more actual defence than $1 billion of US defence spending.
One problem is that human beings are basically visceral engines. If we just had a Department of Hookers and Blow, where the children of the oligarchs could say a secret password, ala Skull and Bones, and get their brain stems marinated in their vice of choice, it would remove the sense of challenge. It’s cheating, as Oscar Wilde would agree. Of course, being the spawn of an oligarch is, in a way, cheating as well but it feels more like privilege than, say, dumb luck.
If the DHB could get university underlings at Harvard and Yale, working with Monsanto and Pfizer, to come up with some drugs and/or therapy to trick the brain stem into believing it actually worked for, deserved, and thoroughly enjoyed the illusion of domination, without it actually being there, we, the Eloi of the world, could live in peace. Maybe they could call it Crushitall. One dose and the world is under your foot. Imagine taking a leak and thinking that you are polluting the aquifer with fracking fluid. Or stirring up an ant hill and thinking you are ‘promoting democracy’ in a lesser country. The elite could enjoy their hallucinations of worldwide suffering, degradation, and humiliation while we could go on dancing in the meadows, garlands in our hair and revealing clothing wafting in the ever warm breeze.
This would save money, resources, suffering, and could even be entertaining. We could build Elite Zoos where we house our elites, huge feeding bottles of Crushitall hanging from the bars where the elites compete with each other, playing war games of ‘I’m here first. No, I’m here first!’ while we toss peanuts inside.
At least it would be more humanitarian than a bullet to that same brain stem somewhere in Siberia.
What a depressingly accurate analysis of life in this miserable country.
@Bukko
This source seems more reliable.
http://www.military.com/daily-news/2015/01/23/us-deploying-troops-to-ukraine-to-train-its-national-guard.html
The future certainly looks bleak. Just when you thought the neocons in the US couldn't get more vile or despicable, we read that Putin's opposition leader is shot dead. The media whores of course implicate Putin with their new obsession of demonizing Russia and creating other phantom boogey men. They are clearly getting desperate. Let's fund neo Nazis and death in the Ukraine while we cut food stamps, After all, those kids don't need to eat. Let's cut money for their school lunch programs. We have other priorities.
That against the back drop of news that the government is taking initial steps to control the internet (we knew this was coming), another homeless man is attacked and killed in Los Angeles (shot in broad daylight), and other nasty realities that are swept under the carpet (the town of Ferguson where another black man was killed gets 20% of its revenues from issuing tickets/arresting people, disproportionately targeting Afro Americans, who are seeing themselves increasingly the victims of state sanctioned racism and genocide and has prompted charges that they have returned to debtor prisons)
A huge spike in the radiation leaching into the ocean from Fukushima, video of masses of sea lions washing up on the west coast, dead or dying. Not a word in the mainstream media, but the videos are all over the internet. No wonder they want to control the free flow and exchange of information there.
So look for the neocon bastards to create more enemies, use that as an excuse to silence dissent, either through martial law and generous applications of sanctified violence and/or controlling the exchange of information (one asshole supposedly tried to label RT as a "terrorist" organization), while they scale back services and do everything and anything they can to steal your money as your plunge into third world helldom. But not to worry, they will distract people by focusing on Bruce Jenner, Justin Bieber, Vladimir Putin (if they don't assassinate him first) or whatever fictitious enemy they can concoct and brainwash and distract people with the media they control.
Maybe, just maybe, enough people will wake up and realize that they are the enemy and that we can't afford them anymore and we will not go along with their dastardly, deadly games anymore.
Hi Dmitry, regarding "It can be argued that all the previous victims of US foreign policy—Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Syria, even the Ukraine—are too small to produce failure writ large enough to satisfy America's appetite for failure."
President Putin recently said something to the effect that maybe the reason the Ukrainians are saying that they are fighting Russian Army forces is because it is less humiliating than being defeated by farmers and miners. The same might apply here.
Also, do you think that the current Ukrainian government is already trying out the war forever track? Because what you describe seems to fit with what is happening in the Ukraine at the moment.
Bukko, its a little worse, a battalion.
here's a link to an article in Zerohedge with a video of the officer in charge discussing the role of the land forces in Europe:
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-03-02/despite-russian-warnings-us-will-deploy-battalion-ukraine-end-week
I saw the interview is about 50 minutes long, and is done through one of the neocon (non)think tanks; so it would have blown-up my brain to watch it. I took the article's word for what he said.
In Soviet America, cop shoots YOU.
Posted the response below to propaganda published by the Financial Times and got a boatload of "likes" smile emoticon
In my mind, it is useful to look at positions of relative strength. EVERYTHING US is almost 100% dependent on maintaining the US dollar payment system. No other country is in an equally desperate position like the USA is. Least of all Russia. Consequently, all the incentives to create trouble belong to the USA. Pretty much, every other nation have very real reasons to want to move away from the US dollar system, exactly like Russia.
"And then, strangest of all to relate, there is Putin. Our guys are moving heaven and earth to jam him into a red-hot Satan suit but it’s not working. The pitchfork they want him to brandish looks strangely like a sword of justice. Even Americans of modest intelligence, when not locked into the Kardashian trance, can detect something false in all our official hand-wringing over Ukraine — the made-in-the-USA failed state now eating itself alive on Russia’s border. Before February 2014, Ukraine was just a struggling, marginal demi-nation still economically dependent on Russia, of which it had effectively been a province for centuries. Mr. Obama and his haircut-in-search-of-a-brain Secretary of State, Mr. Kerry, thought it would be a good idea to make Ukraine our client state instead. They couldn't have botched the operation more completely. I have to say, Vlad Putin’s composure in the face of this perfidious idiocy is really something to behold, regardless of the roughness of the polity he rules. Our guys, in contrast, look like something less than sheer clueless rogues. They look like empty suits."
Don't fall so easily for the official narrative from a state in full collapse, struggling to project the power of a bygone era.
The latest neocon stunt http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2015/02/27/nemtsovs-assassination-propaganda-attack-putin/
You knew they weren't going to go down gracefully.
Now for the cops on steroids. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CksSslF5j8Y
Who are the real terrorists? They are in Washington and in blue costumes hiding in radar traps or beating and killing homeless people when they are not finding ways to steal people's money.
Good try at making sense of things. Presuming a plan or a long term goal. Think of Fed, no exit plan. Think fall 2008, no plan. Think CO2 and climate change, peak oil. No plan, just lies, playing for time. A junky running around trying to get a fix. One thing leads to another, violence escalates, chaos here, there, everwhere till it somehow is stopped by overdose or enemy attack.
The next thing that they may find as a perpetual enemy, could be aliens from space, planning to take over the world. People might believe this. i mean look at orson wells broadcast in the 1930s. The funding for weapon development could limitless.
Orlov:"The US has surrendered its sovereignty to a clique of financial oligarchs"
Before the US became a sovereign nation it was taken over by a small clique of oligarchs.
The founding fathers were all oligarchs,of one form or another.
I think of the the US as the bastardized child of the so called 365 year old Western European enlightenment.
Regarding the development of civilization I consider Western European culture to be in the late stages of childhood development and their bastard US child still in the early early stages of childhood.
Reference:http://www.institute4learning.com/stages_of_life.php
Unfortunately for the rest of humanity these children have nuclear weapons and have yet to learn the consequence of their actions.
The only thing at which we have to fail is failure itself.
Now just add to the self-evidence of a Wall Street controlled neocon gov't the fact that they are militantly pro-Zionist, and you will get the full picture.
“Once we squeeze all we can out of the United States, it can dry up and blow away.” ~ Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 2002.
Corporate profits is the only success that matters to the U.S. The disaster we've created for the people of central America is perfectly acceptable as long as we profit from it. The 2003 invasion of Iraq was intended to result in the privatization of Iraqi oil industry. Mission accomplished, although we are still tryng to reap the profits from Iraqi oil. Note that the U.S. seems perfectly happy to bomb Syrian (nationalized oil industry) oil fields and refineries while those facilities in Iraq (privatized oil industry) seem to be relatively untouched.
I'm at a loss to think of a single country in which the U.S. has meddled or invaded where things have turned our well for the people of that country. There was a recent Gallup poll [Suffering in Afghanistan Hits Record High -- for Any Country] of people in Afghanistan showing once again the U.S. interference does not result in Paradise. Orlov has listed the other most notable disaster. I fear that Iran may be next.
Could you please tell me how they will impose martial law etc, in the midst of WWIII while the population is righting and things are collapsing allaround us.
How can they maintain that for long periods? Please someone answer me that?
More on the US deployment to Ukraine at Defense News: http://www.defensenews.com/story/defense-news/blog/intercepts/2015/03/03/ukraine-russia-putin-war/24327263/
FYI:
The long citation in Ivar Laegreid's post above is from James Kunstler's Clusterfuck Nation blog entry of March 2, 2015.
To sum it up, corporate America has bought Uncle Sam much in the same way the latter has bought corrupt third-world governments/militaries and sadly EU, New Zealand, Australia and Japan.
In the process, however, they also ( wittingly or not) transformed the U.S. into a third world country.
US has what could be described as inverted totalitarianism, where the corporations and a small group of vested interests effectively hijacked any sort of people democracy.
Its going to come to a bloody confrontation with possibly China. Russia currently is too smart to fall for these traps. The question is if the Chinese leadership is crafty enough to avoid a collision of tankers. Otherwise an economic collapse will just happen if there isn't any big confrontation on the horizon.
Orlov: You are still looking at the Yankees through their Narratives!
"Failure" is in the eye and pocketbook of the beholder. These Yankee "failures" in Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Ukraine, Yugoslavia, Libya, etc. are not failures! The end results are as designed and engineered from the get-go.
You need to study up on what's called the "US National Security State": bit.ly/1AbKjKa
And the real history of the USA: bit.ly/1zKPDSd
Success is defined as getting paid. Those cheerleading for the wars [media] and ginning up the wars [lobbyists and Congress-animals] get paid by those who profit from the wars [Merchants of Death]. One big happy circle-jerking family.
I have read somewhere that in his farewell address , Eisenhower warned us about this perils:
(17 january 1961)
« In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together. »
He understimated the financial roots of this evil powers, who control money and debt also controls politic and military power.
"The inevitable end-game is that the Federal Reserve (along with the central banks of other “developed economies”) will end up buying up all the sovereign debt issuance with money they print for that purpose, and in the end this inevitably leads to hyperinflation and national bankruptcy."
Historically there are only two examples where hyperinflation signaled the end of the country -- Weimar Republic, Zimbabwe. All other collapses since before the Roman Republic were deflationary collapses.
I am not so sure there is an 'end game' or even a coherent plan for US foreign policy. The fact that in the USA, government policies are controlled by money (especially today, when foreign entities can fund national campaigns) means that money drives all policy.
As every oligarch wants something different, and every smaller 'oligarch wannabe' also wants something different, this easily accounts for the crazy-quilt of both US laws and foreign policy. This has infiltrated and filtered down into even local politics, where foreign interests are plying money into candidates to land local projects or local changes in laws.
The MIC and the alphabet soup agencies all have agendas that change according to where the money is coming from, as does foreign policy, congress and the executive branch. If money is the driver at all levels, the competition is quite fierce and hence policies change rapidly and illogically, with little bearing on reality. It becomes about paying your favors back while you are still in the game and able to do so. And this is just considering US laws and policies, not other countries.
It is not coincidental that ex-military here in the US are disgusted or that the Pentagon has been purged of anyone with dissenting opinions through NSA/DHS/FBI blackmail from unceasing data gathering.
With the money door thrown open, and the country set up as a police state, the only way out is for the money to evaporate and the oligarchs to go elsewhere, or else civil insurrection on a massive scale. Government going broke would produce both, methinks...
And I have agreed with George Carlin decades before he passed through the veil...RIP
Currently big screen TV presents 'House of Cards', a series which had the prescience to depict their Russian president as a brutish thug with a brilliant mind. A K.G.B background is mentioned in setting the scene. Entertainment dogma and patriotic precepts at the same time. Thats entertainment!
The Great Game goes on. And it entertains and makes money too.
Note: The dogma described above is not the same kind of DOG-ma you get from me.
One interesting comparison I have found was that these people are like Salmonella infection.
http://variable-variability.blogspot.ch/2014/03/climate-dissenters-like-climate-change.html
I am totally against calling people parasites, etc., but it explains the mechanism: Salmonella attacks your gut top provoke an immune response, which will hurt against it, but also against other bacteria in your intestins that are unprepared.
So they are ready to suffer, because others will suffer even more, which gives them an evolutionary advantage (and you a terrible diarrhea).
I think there is the same mechanism in place here: the super-rich do not need a working infrastructure to get along, they can buy what they need. When I want to go swimming, I have to go to the public bath, because I do not own a large enough swimming pool. And it is folks like me who need roads and public transportation, because I do not own a helicopter and private jet. The collapse would hurt the 99% like me more than the 1%.
The links that other commenters have kindly provided about U.S. military deployment to "train" Ukrainian soldiers do seem to back up the ZeroHedge/Sputnik News stories. Feels like Vietnam circa 1961 to me. Substitute the Orwellian-named "International Peacekeeping and Security Center" for whatever air base it was that the first U.S. trainer was killed at in South Vietnam back then... Will there be a Gulf of Tonkin incident, perhaps when an RPG hits one of the troop transport buses the Americans are soliciting bids for in Ukraine? I wonder whether the soldiers who are being sent give any thought about being expendable human tripwires?
The scant specifics cited in those stories seem strange, too. The U.S. is going to be shuffling 300 "trainer" troops in and out for two-month stints, according to the DefenseNews.com story:
"The Army will rotate 300 troops at a time it appears, with March, May, July, August and October being the relief dates for each group."
Given that there's a learning curve for any job, and it takes a while for co-workers to get accustomed to each other, how much effective "training" of Ukrainians is going to take place? I doubt that every one of those 300 soldiers on each rotation is going to be fluent in Ukrainian, and I'm not sure how proficient in English the average Ukie conscript will be. Is this a cover for something else? A boondoggle for someone/some corporation to skim money from the $19 million contract, in keeping with Kollapsnik's cynical view in Point #1?
Suppose Putin announced that Russia was going to send 300 troops into eastern Ukraine to "help train civil defence authorities in on how to build better bomb shelters and repair the military equipment they recovered from dead Kiev government soldiers"? How would that be regarded in the Western media? How is the news of American soldiers in Ukraine (which is not a NATO member) playing in Russia?
The more one contemplates this, the more paranoid conspiracy theories one can come up with. I don't like being one of those "the moon landing was a fake" types who believe EVERYTHING is a lie, though.
Creepiest quote from those links: "Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Martin Dempsey told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he believes the US 'should absolutely consider providing lethal aid" to Ukraine if the Moscow-backed separatists continue to make gains and gobble up territory."
It's like the Gen. Turgidsons want to put even MORE matches and Bic lighters into a room that's full of petrol and dynamite. I'm glad I live at the ass end of the Earth. (Although that would actually be Tasmania, not the part of Oz where I am.) Not that I mind dying. I've had a hell of a good life. I just don't want to meet my end in a hydrogen fireball because of some miscalculation by a military maniac. Let me commit suicide on my own terms when the food is running out and the radiation sickness is upon us, as the last good Aussies did in "On the Beach"!
Keep it simple. The goal is to besiege any country, great or small, weak or strong, whose government is not on board with the NWO agenda and destroy it. Destroy it with death, chaos and destruction- and then plunder the hell out of it. That's a win. It's as simple as that.
It's a point of view thing. We use words like "success" and "failure", but this begs the question, WHOSE success or failure.
A prime example is government schooling. If you are a parent, and have been told (indoctrinated) that the government schools are for educating children, then it looks like the government schools are failing. But if you are a member of the ruling class, and you believe the reason government schools exist is to indoctrinate the peons and to keep them stupid, government schooling looks like a huge success, like they are working exactly as they were designed to - even if your own propaganda keeps maintaining that schools are crucially needed for education.
I also agree with Mark Bernstein - there are scores of factions among the rulers and the bureaucracy, often working at cross purposes. It's not a monolithic conspiracy. I keep having the suspicion that most of them, though, do not have the long view, and will be surprised and end up dead when the house of cards economy collapses. There is not much use for bureaucrats when SHTF...
Hi Isabella, after researching for Campaign Against Arms trade last year I also couldn't comprehend the profiting on industrialised slaughter, but I had to take it in to write it up! Here's a glimpse of this terrible industry, written many years back: http://www.scribd.com/doc/24390792/Arms-and-the-Men-Fortune-1934 and our UK researching efforts on the British and international arms trade in WW1 and the interwar period: http://armingallsides.on-the-record.org.uk/ It's a long merciless madness!
Wonderful comments and good points by Orlov. I do disagree a tad though about anyone "taking over" anything in the U.S. government. The Deep State in Washington is an emergent network that acts as if there is a central strategy--it is much more chaotic than that. There are many competing interests and forces involved in formulating U.S. policy. As someone who has spent most of his life in the Washington milieu I know power is gathered around several nodes and is not centralized. Marc L Bernstein above made a similar comment.
As for war with Russia--it simply is not going to happen because the military officers who actually evaluate the military situation oppose it. They are happy to gesture and dance and not complain about propaganda and all that--they are used to that but everyone knows that the U.S. military cannot possibly stand up to a real army particularly one that is highly motivated. The U.S. and it's puppet regimes in Europe will continue to nibble but all that is to keep their captive populations in check not seriously challenge Russia. The U.S. strategy at present is focused on bribing/tricking Russian oligarchs into challenging Putin-the "war" will be in Russia using intel assets and covert ops only. My understanding is that the U.S. wants to maintain the pressure and strategy of tension that keeps the National Security State thriving and making money hand over fist and whether Russia succumbs or not--it is not important. They killed Kennedy, in part, because he was about to come to an agreement with Khrushchev to begin to end the Cold War.
Beautiful!
And here's what the Western Media will never, ever want you to know about: "http://journal-neo.org/2015/03/09/russia-s-remarkable-renaissance-2/"
It makes lovely reading, in the face of so much going wrong with the dying Empire we live in - or close enough to to be adversely affected by!
My only thought - amid my wish that I could be there too - is to wonder that you stay in the dying Police State known as America, Dmitry, when you have the opportunity few of us do, to return to your country of birth and be a part of the wonderful renaissance there.
It's our hope for the future, who knows, after the West collapses, maybe it will grow again like Russia.
In my attempted to understand recent history, I had to wonder the classic question: qui bono?
At first I thought of a more sordid reason: the American foreign policy is actually domestic policy, specifically to prop up the popularity of unpopular presidents. Ever since Elizabeth I, this has worked like a charm to quiet the opposition and tame a subservient populace.
But scent memory has indicated to me another possibility: since the latest wars of choice have been in or near oil producing countries, therefore competitors of Saudi Arabia, the US has surrendered its sovereignty in exchange for the backing of the petrodollar.
When Nixon defaulted on the convertibility of the dollar into gold, he sought the support of the Saudis to sell oil exclusively in dollars and offered in exchange the military to defend Saudi Arabia. Now the Saudis use the US to defend their interests in the region, namely its dominance in the oil market.
All those oil producing countries which challenged the Saudis and the petrodollar ended up bombed: Iraq decided to sell its oil in euros and was invaded; Iran decided to sell its oil in anything but in dollars and was inflicted with evolving warfare; Libya decided to create a good currency in which to sell its oil and was bombed; Russia decided to sell its oil in the currency of its partners and was inflicted a proxy war and an economic war. No American interest was defended in any such wars, but always the Saudi ones.
Look no further than the fawning over the death of the tyrant Saudi King by all Western leaders subservient to America and its own.
In a way, the whole world is at the mercy of the most despicable culture on the face of the earth: the Muslim Wahhabi Saudi Arabian culture. And that's four strikes against it. Nothing could be less Western.
Richard Martin just read this essay verbatim on his latest "Wake-Up Call" podcast. He didn't give credit where credit is due though. On his April 12th podcast.
Iliyan Добрев - ВО-ВО, анекдот в самую точку:))
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