There are enough issues to warrant suspension, but not enough to sound the alarm. I'm glad to learn that Saudi Arabia can now be held responsible in a civil suit. I think Obama is right, that it will open the door for the US getting sued back for its illegal military operations going back to the 50s.
There's plenty of evidence to hold Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld on trial for war crimes for misleading us to Iraq and Afghanistan. Maybe those counter civil suits will reveal what the US has been up to itself overseas and world justice can be restored that way. Either way, the Americans need to discover our role of corruption, terrorism, and flipping governments around the world, so that we can bring justice in some sort of world court. That's better than the growing alternative, to build more resentments for taking advantage overseas and to have more people around the world join Dugin's fascist revolution, because American hegemony is his central complaint.
What is your take on 9/11 and Dugin's fascist revolution?
Of course, there are great reasons to be concerned about the potential fascism that a Trump presidency could represent, and that, in fact, he was signaling in his election messaging, just as there was great reason to fear the neocons that would have been put in place in a Clinton administration. In fact, as we're seeing in picks being floated by Trump, the neocons may end up in a position of some (yet indeterminant) strength in his administration, just as I predicted before the election - in spite of his seeming disavowal of the neocon agenda during the campaign. For example, he's seriously considering a pretty clearly identified (and potentially very warlike) neocon John Bolton for the key role of secretary of state. Recent news indicates that may be shifting to Romney, a person less enthusiastically supported by neocons in 2012, and I would guess less likely to start a war. I expect we'll find that what Trump does or can do as president will be different in many respects than he indicated in the campaign, as was true for Obama as well. I also expect that Trump will accelerate corruption in our governments at all levels to an even faster pace than before, since he seems to think that combining government and personal aggrandizement is great, just like paying no taxes for decades is "smart".
In my view, the great failing of Libertarianism as a philosophy is that, by not acknowledging the crucial role of government - local to national - in defending ordinary people from the abuses of those with money and power, in protecting them from their corruption and pollution, assuring a strong community platform of education and opportunity, they abandon the center of government and create a vacuum. That vacuum will almost inevitably always be filled by wealthy strongmen like Trump, Putin (or Soros or whoever your favorite rich, powerful villain is). You see it all over the world. That's why the US was originally set up as a gov't "of, by and for the people", but we now have a gov't increasingly failing in that role as it has increasingly been taken over by the wealthy.
As the writer says in the article linked below from Yes Magazine, now instead of a wolf in sheep's clothing, we have a wolf in wolf's clothing - it's just a continuation - less of a disruption of the status quo than some think, I'd say. IMO, countries like Germany and Sweden much more embody peoples' gov'ts than this one, though they have their own corruption issues and big problems as well, given their buy-in to the neoliberal false narrative, to the infinite growth myth, etc. My friends who live in Munich, Germany and care a lot about how clean the food is they eat can go down to the river that runs nearby through the heart of this large, industrial city and drop a fishing line in the water and eat fish for dinner. I walked with them by the river in summer 2015 and the water's crystal clear. You can see the fish. In what US city can you do that? The rivers were all trashed long ago - to the point that some catch on fire from time to time. Why doesn't the US make supplying education and health care to citizens but limiting waste a priority like every other developed society in the world? Now, apparently, Trump may support privatization of education (and healthcare) via for-profit rip-offs like Trump "University" or voucher medicare. If that turns out to be true, good luck getting any value for money, America - this would quite likely be an institutionalized fraud on a grand scale.
The world's a complex place. In each country, there are people pushing in different directions and agendas, "good things" and "bad things" are happening. The world or country macro community may soon weaken and die, simply collapse - or actively self-destruct. Or its devolving, bubble-filled, out-of-touch remnant may continue way, way longer than any of us expect, but just become more and more repressive in the defense of wealth, more destructive of the environment, and less and less a government that assures the rights of ordinary people vs the transgressions of those in power.
David Korten and Yes magazine do have some interesting ideas. My friend, a documentary film maker and I have talked with him directly. Many of his ideas are very aligned with those that Chris, Adam and PP members have been articulating. For example, after the election, I posted this different article in the hope some of my more liberal friends might open their thinking a bit:
"Please Stop Thinking You're Better than Trump Supporters"
RE: Membership Cost.
I really don't think we should be giving Chris and Adam a hard time about their membership. First, almost all their content is free, second $30/mo is not a lot of money to charge IMO. If $30 seems high consider finding ways to add more value to the world and money will flow to you to the point where $30 seems like a great deal. What do I mean by add value? simply where having the product or service you are providing is more desirable to your target customer than the cash they are handing to you.
As time goes on, I am actually becoming increasingly hopeful that Trump really is an outsider. The fact that the propaganda machine continues to go into high gear to discredit him starts to make it more believable, and this is coming from someone who was a real liberal lefty, now more of a political atheist. Thanks David Philips, your continuous ridiculous postings that Trump is controlled by Putin are helping to convince me that Trump may be the real deal, though the jury is still out. I don't know if the leak that Bolton will be in his cabinet was real, if that is in fact the case, then, of course, all bets are off.
What this election cycle has revealed to me, is how deeply and thoroughly corrupt all aspects of our government and media are. It really does feel now like we are living in the twilight zone, all the old left/right road maps really need to be discarded, there are now no trusted sources of information anywhere, everything needs to be back checked and vetted thoroughly. It used to be that you understood the bias in various sources and could generally compensate, no more. The fact that the "left" has been so heavily behind Clinton (who makes Reagan and Nixon look like a radical lefties) with her support of the war mongering empire, corruption on wall street, onerous trade deals and lip service on environmental issues has tossed everything to the wind.
HRC is part of the machine, supports the neoliberal agenda (which is neither new or liberal), which is virulent form of libertarianism, social Darwinism at it worst, which involves the destruction of sovereignty of national governments through "trade deals", privatization of everything, full support of empire and its militarism and the destabilization of any foreign government that has an independent foreign policy from Washington, through both covert (funding of ISIS and all other manner of crazy jihadist groups) and overt (outright military action like the invasion of Iraq and Libya) means. We have a thousand "NGO's" in Russia that we fund for the explicit purpose of supporting and exploiting cultural and religious differences to destabilize the country, our tax dollars hard at work. It will lead to a world run by multinational corps and a private syndicate of "banks". How Trump can be worse than that, I'm not sure. Why Bernie threw his hat in HRC ring, I'm not really sure either.
Oops, we already have a world run by a private banking syndicate.
We have always been on our own with real environmental issues, relocalization of our economy into a form that is sustainable and responsive to the people who actually live in it. If the swamp in Washington really does get drained a little, perhaps that work may get a little easier as counter intuitive as that might seem at the moment.
As a Wharton Business school grad Trump should feel confident about business. The engine that powered the US from a backwater republic to a world power was business. Trump has experienced bringing bankrupt enterprises back from the brink. He therefore has a high confidence level he can do the same for his country.
I expect there will be a short term positive response to his leadership. We may have 18 months of breeze in our favor as a leader in today’s world. After that the hurricane headwind will come up. Will he go down with the ship or grab a spot in a lifeboat? When the hubris is deflated then his deeper character will be revealed and tested.
Trump is definitely an outsider relative to the establishment in the context of neo liberal/ neo conservative economic globalism orthodoxy with respect to a narrow spectrum of issues. Specifically trade and supranational treaties, Foreign interventionism, open borders etc. I believe like Brexit and other nascent nationalist, populist movements, he embodies a collective unconscious reaction to the age of limits. Trump is a symptom if you will.
The irony is of course that as 'vulgar' as the trappings of that "Nationalism" might be to well meaning liberal humanist, environmentalist progressives of good intent those policies represent a step in the right direction with regards to many of the issues that they value.
To the extent that figures like Trump can weaken Globalism and centralized control structures of people and return decision making power to local level we force feedback loops that empower responsiveness on that more localized level. For example, eliminating "Free" trade agreements like TPP remove the supranational legal control mechanisms that empower companies like Monsanto to force roundup into the European food supply, where there is a 'local' collective consensus that that is a bad thing.
Another example would be erecting trade tariffs to equalize trade flows. This has the net effect of both relocalizing manufacturing, diminishing volume of manufacturing and energy use, emissions etc and provides a forcing function on regions where Globalist lure of wage arbitrage is a function of high population. Does anybody think that bringing more rural Chinese off their subsistence farms to fill coal powered plants that manufacture cheap disposable crap to ship all the way around the world is a good thing? It would be good to reverse that process, just as it needs to reverse here in the US and we need to have our populations move back into a different relationship with the land and production of food.
Ultimately if humanity and the biosphere is to survive, we need to reach equilibrium with human populations relative to their renewable regional resource bases without fossil fuel inputs. I believe that Moving away from Globalization towards Nationalism is an important first step in the right direction.
Before I'm accused of claiming that Trump is some sort of clueless savior for the dilemmas we face or that Nationalism is the logical end state remedy. I would hasten to add that Trumps stated goals embody a host of contradictions and his economic prescriptions require not only continuation and expansion of the debt ponzi and reliance on the private banking syndicate that runs things, but inputs that are themselves a direct product of the empire that he is putatively 'distancing' us from. How these contradictions resolve and his actions in the face of economic collapse and his response to the International Banking syndicate in the face of that, will ultimately determine his role in the de globalization dynamic. I would also say that Nationalism only represents a first step in a vector that beckons toward localism.
I understand Treebeard's shift to Political Atheism. It is almost impossible to have discussions in the political realm because of the sea of propaganda and media distortion and manipulation of emotional triggers, but it is also difficult because the distortion and evolution and manipulation of the language itself. This is true for timeworn terms like liberal and conservative but is particularly problematic for our accelerating lexicon in the internet age of new descriptors as the ptb work to co opt and control the dialog
That is why for people like David Phillips, Whose sources appear to be unipolar the meaning of Alt Right is simply the white supremacists racist cranks, and for me it represents a mixed spectrum of conservative beliefs both good and bad, true and false, that exist outside the mainstream narratives of traditional captured media. Just as I view Alt left as a spectrum with good and bad, true and false ideas outside the mainstream.
I would also note that as alternative media, these are less prone to capture by special interests but are still and increasing compromised as the powerful special interests work to capture mind share in the evolving electronic and social media universe.
One obvious example of this is the strong memetic presence and support for Israel across the spectrum in the Alt Right mediascape. It is hugely Ironic, to see the cognitive dissonance on display there, where for example currently there is unanimity in the alt right twittersphere that the lead contender for Secretary of State, Mitt Rommney is a betrayal of Trumps base and would represent a choice of a war mongering neo con.
While simultaneously there is broad support in the alt right for Guilianni, or Bolton and even today we see Patreaus floated for Sec State. Of course all of these potential secretaries of state are war mongering neo cons and ultra strong supporters of Israel and its disastrous and unethical war agenda in the ME. The Libertarian component of the alt right spectrum which is anti intervention and anti war, is largely confused about the genesis of the Middle East conflicts post 911 and has bought hook line and sinker the it's all the Radical Arab Terrorists fault and that all Muslims are radical terrorists meme that that false flag was designed to inculcate.
Which goes to another inherent non interventionist foreign policy contradiction of Trump. It is clear that he is such a strong supporter of Israel,and Zionism that any notion he won't be interventionist or one sided with regards to the ME is highly doubtful. It is clear he will reflect Iikud policy and I am particularly concerned about his future interactions and potential for disastrous outcomes in conflict with Iran.
I still am hopeful that he will follow through with a pragmatic reset of Russian relations of which really did heighten the risk of Nuclear war. As an environmentalist I much prefer trade wars to nuclear wars.
To bring all these political musing back to the a fundamental rethinking of civilization itself that is at the core of PP world view as exemplified by Daniel Quinn's treatise on takers, givers, mother culture. I believe the evolutionary evidence that our we are at our human core meant to function as tribal socialists in harmony with our local resource base is strong.
Those instincts of 'Socialism' with attributes like gift culture and sharing of resources for the good of the social unit which are natural at the tribal level, when mapped onto the large populations of industrial civilization as control structure are a complete failure. In a nutshell Socialism doesn't scale. Just as Capitalism arguably the sine qua non of Industrialism, has failed at achieving any kind of sustainable or truly meaningful existence for humanity despite it's efficiency at promoting technology in the context of a fossil fuel based energy surplus.
Having reached the age of limits and begun our energy descent, humanity will be harshly forced back into a rough equilibrium ultimately a tiny world population in a degraded environment living in some adapted tribal fashion. The discussions around Political economy as difficult as they are are important to how that descent is 'managed' to the extent that is possible. In that regard I see Nationalism as a response to Globalism as a potentially positive step, just as I see libertarianism even with it's inherent flaws (not recognizing that there is a true public commons or social 'good') as a potentially positive construct for managing descent with it's emphasis on non aggression and it's inherent vectors towards localism.
It's a long way down to some sort of regional confederacy of tribes that reflect humanity in balance with natural systems. It makes sense that we'll need political constructs that work for industrial populations to help us get there.
finally a note of pessimism, though I think it worth aspiring to and working for a controlled descent, ultimately I suspect that the devolution of political economies on our path of energy descent will be mostly outside of our control and will reflect the worst of our nature. Either way the suffering will enormous
Aloha! In the early 1970s Hillary Clinton was interning for a law firm in Berkeley,CA. She wrote her college thesis on Saul Alinsky and she corresponded with him in 1971 saying she was looking forward to his next book. The next book was Rules For Radicals. Even though her thesis was against the Alinsky tactics if you read them they look very familiar. It is almost as if her campaign followed them exactly.
I had two reasons not to vote for Hillary.
#1-She is the BUSH OBAMA CLINTON DYNASTY
#2-She and her Obama CIA incursions into Syria, Libya and Yemen have resulted in the murder of 1/2 million muslims in Syria alone. This is the same playbook from the Vietnam Cambodia War that JFK took over from France! Why she was not crucified during the debates for that fact alone is beyond me! Why the media never connected her to the Aleppo child photos is testimony to the media bias. Only the Huffington Post ran a rant against Hillary entitled Hillary Clinton's Syria Bloodbath! The only liberal rag jumping on her UN speech about Syria. Trump and his team failed to capitalize as well! His Bad!
There is nothing new under the Sun, but that never stops corrupt government in any way! I believe we are seeing government public school indoctrination exposed. This corrupt two party system is only loyal to itself and its gatekeepers. It was the "hubris of the system"! How do you know the deck was stacked against Trump? Not only was the entire media biased, but so was the banking cartel, the unions, the corporations and most of all the elite Republican party members hated him. Never Trumpers! Those who could see saw at that point it had nothing to do with political parties. It was US vs THEM! It was an Orwellian theme with an Alinsky Diatribe. It was "HER TURN"! IT WAS HER HUBRIS THAT LOST HER THE THRONE! I appreciate Chris and his blog.
Michael Krieger's response to Washington Post naming his site, Liberty Blitzkrieg, as being "fake news" and Russian propaganda:
"What’s particularly interesting about this list, isn’t the fact that a bunch of anonymous whiners decided to demonize successful critics of insane, inhumane and ethically indefensible U.S. government policy, but rather the fact that the Washington Post decided to craft an entire article around such a laughably ridiculous list. This just further proves a point that is rapidly becoming common knowledge amongst U.S. citizens with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together. The mainstream media is the real “fake news.”
Let’s take Liberty Blitzkrieg for example. Despite the fact that my site is mentioned on “the list,” nobody from PropOrNot bothered to contact me while doing their “research.” They could’ve asked very simple questions about how the site is run, who owns it, and who makes decisions about editorial content. Furthermore, I doubt they did any such research with regard to any of the mentioned sites before slandering them.
Since they failed to do any real work, let me answer several of these questions. I, Michael Krieger am the 100% owner of Liberty Blitzkrieg. I, Michael Krieger am the only person who makes decisions on what to publish and when. I have absolutely no connections, financial or otherwise, to the Russian government, Russian interests, or the interests of any other government or government related group. Moreover, there is simply nobody on planet earth who has any influence on what I write or what I publish. I left a very successful and financially lucrative job to do what I do now because my passions and ethical grounding pushed me in this direction. If I was interested in making enormous sums of money, I could’ve easily stayed on Wall Street."
And:
"The fake mainstream news media is completely failing. It is failing because rather than informing the public and criticizing the powerful, it has become merely a giant public relations organ for the U.S. government. The American public clearly sees through the bullshit, in large part due to the efforts of alternative news media. Think about it. Liberty Blitzkrieg doesn’t have a single outside employee. Other than the heroic efforts of my tech person (who spends very little of his time on this site), there’s really no one else contributing in any material way to the operation of this blog. So for a website run by a relatively unknown person to have made it onto this slanderous list (subsequently highlighted by the Washington Post), is not only a great honor, but a testament to the impact one person can have in an environment dominated by a transparently fake and desperate mainstream media."
"Monsters exist, but they are too few in number to be truly dangerous. More dangerous are the common men, the functionaries ready to believe and to act without asking questions." Primo Levi
Some of the most consequential four-letter words :
F-E-A-R
H-A-T-E
D-E-B-T
J-U-S-T a limited/diminished [lower-case] "man" [or OTHER animal], OR . . . a very special and unique "just" sentient [upper-case] "Man" created in the image of the Lord, attempting honorable conduct and righteous intent in all activities and associations.
Just start a riot so no one listens to the podium. Old as Rome.
Any troll candidates here? Start a thread about big pharma aka. Vaccines or Climate Change and see what happens. People with a different point of view? really! (don't think this channel in monitored?).
