Here is a link to an infamous speech given by Charles Lindbergh in support of the America First Committee's efforts to keep us out of World War II:
http://www.charleslindbergh.com/americanfirst/speech.asp
I couldn't help noticing how his words fit well into today's dilemma - should we be waging war on Russia, Syria, Iraq, Iran ... or on anyone, for that matter?
One can argue that the Nazis HAD to be stopped (just like ISIS and al-Qaeda HAVE to be stopped), but we need to ask a very important question about all three - "why didn't we stop them in their infancy instead of HELPING them to grow into the monsters they eventually became?" None of them would have thrived without the support given to them by the powers that be in the US and UK.
If "isolationism" means not funding monsters that justify and feed our war machine, then I'm all for it.
Fix America First !!!
Tuesday, December 10, 2019
The Great American Shakedown
Here is wisdom from Chris Hedges:
The liberal class and the Democratic Party leadership have failed, even after their defeat in the 2016 presidential election, to understand that they, along with the traditional Republican elites, have squandered their credibility. No one believes them. And no one should.
They squandered their credibility by promising that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would, as claimed by President Bill Clinton, create 200,000 new, well-paying jobs per year; instead, several million jobs were lost. They squandered it by allowing corporations to move production overseas and hire foreign workers at daily wages that did not equal what a U.S. unionized worker made in an hour, a situation that obliterated the bargaining power of the American working class. They squandered it by allowing corporations to use the threat of “offshoring” production to destroy unions, suppress wages, extract draconian concessions and push millions of workers into the temp and gig economies, where there are no benefits or job security and pay is 60% or less of what a full-time employee in the regular economy receives. They squandered it by forcing working men and women to take two or three jobs to support a family, jacking up household debt to $13.95 trillion. They squandered it by redirecting wealth upward, so that during the Clinton administration alone 45 percent of all income growth went to the wealthiest 1%. They squandered it by wiping out small farmers in Mexico, driving some 3 million of them off their lands and forcing many to migrate in desperation to the United States, a human tide that saw the U.S. right wing and President Trump direct mounting rage toward immigrants. They squandered it by turning our great cities into urban wastelands. They squandered it by slashing welfare and social service programs. They squandered it by supporting endless, futile wars that have an overall price tag of between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. They squandered it by setting up a surveillance system to spy on every American and then lying about it. They squandered it by catering to the big banks and gutting financial regulations, precipitating the 2008 economic meltdown. They squandered it by looting the U.S. Treasury to bail out banks and financial firms guilty of massive financial crimes, ordering the Federal Reserve to hand over an estimated $29 trillion to the global financiers responsible for the crash. They squandered it by not using this staggering sum instead to provide free college tuition to every student or universal health care, repair our crumbling infrastructure, transition to clean energy, forgive student debt, raise wages, bail out underwater homeowners, form public banks to foster investments in our communities at low interest rates, provide a guaranteed minimum income and organize a massive jobs program for the unemployed and underemployed, whose ranks are at least double official statistics. They squandered it by cutting child assistance programs - most drastically during the Clinton administration - resulting in 16 million children going to bed hungry every night. They squandered it by leaving over half a million Americans homeless and on the streets on any given day. They squandered it by passing laws that keep students burdened by massive college loan debt that has climbed to $1.4 trillion, debt they cannot free themselves from even if they declare bankruptcy. They squandered it by militarizing police and building the world’s largest system of mass incarceration, one with 25% of the world’s prison population. They squandered it by revoking due process and habeas corpus. They squandered it by passing massive tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, many of which - such as Amazon - pay no federal income tax, ballooning the federal deficit, now at $779 billion and climbing. They squandered it by privatizing everything from intelligence gathering to public education to swell corporate bank accounts at taxpayer expense. They squandered it by permitting corporate money - an estimated $9.9 billion will be spent this presidential election cycle on political advertising - to buy politicians in a form of legalized bribery that sees corporate lobbyists write legislation and create laws. They squandered it by doing nothing to halt the looming ecocide.
The problem is not messaging. The problem is the messenger. The mortal wounds inflicted on our democratic institutions are bipartisan.
You can read the rest @
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-great-american-shakedown/
Where do we go from here? Do all paths lead down, or is there a "savior" somewhere waiting to make his appearance?
One quote keeps bouncing around in my head:
"No bankrupt nation ever escaped totalitarianism."
Seeing what is happening in DC, I can't believe there is any other possible outcome.
The liberal class and the Democratic Party leadership have failed, even after their defeat in the 2016 presidential election, to understand that they, along with the traditional Republican elites, have squandered their credibility. No one believes them. And no one should.
They squandered their credibility by promising that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would, as claimed by President Bill Clinton, create 200,000 new, well-paying jobs per year; instead, several million jobs were lost. They squandered it by allowing corporations to move production overseas and hire foreign workers at daily wages that did not equal what a U.S. unionized worker made in an hour, a situation that obliterated the bargaining power of the American working class. They squandered it by allowing corporations to use the threat of “offshoring” production to destroy unions, suppress wages, extract draconian concessions and push millions of workers into the temp and gig economies, where there are no benefits or job security and pay is 60% or less of what a full-time employee in the regular economy receives. They squandered it by forcing working men and women to take two or three jobs to support a family, jacking up household debt to $13.95 trillion. They squandered it by redirecting wealth upward, so that during the Clinton administration alone 45 percent of all income growth went to the wealthiest 1%. They squandered it by wiping out small farmers in Mexico, driving some 3 million of them off their lands and forcing many to migrate in desperation to the United States, a human tide that saw the U.S. right wing and President Trump direct mounting rage toward immigrants. They squandered it by turning our great cities into urban wastelands. They squandered it by slashing welfare and social service programs. They squandered it by supporting endless, futile wars that have an overall price tag of between $5 trillion and $7 trillion. They squandered it by setting up a surveillance system to spy on every American and then lying about it. They squandered it by catering to the big banks and gutting financial regulations, precipitating the 2008 economic meltdown. They squandered it by looting the U.S. Treasury to bail out banks and financial firms guilty of massive financial crimes, ordering the Federal Reserve to hand over an estimated $29 trillion to the global financiers responsible for the crash. They squandered it by not using this staggering sum instead to provide free college tuition to every student or universal health care, repair our crumbling infrastructure, transition to clean energy, forgive student debt, raise wages, bail out underwater homeowners, form public banks to foster investments in our communities at low interest rates, provide a guaranteed minimum income and organize a massive jobs program for the unemployed and underemployed, whose ranks are at least double official statistics. They squandered it by cutting child assistance programs - most drastically during the Clinton administration - resulting in 16 million children going to bed hungry every night. They squandered it by leaving over half a million Americans homeless and on the streets on any given day. They squandered it by passing laws that keep students burdened by massive college loan debt that has climbed to $1.4 trillion, debt they cannot free themselves from even if they declare bankruptcy. They squandered it by militarizing police and building the world’s largest system of mass incarceration, one with 25% of the world’s prison population. They squandered it by revoking due process and habeas corpus. They squandered it by passing massive tax cuts for the rich and for corporations, many of which - such as Amazon - pay no federal income tax, ballooning the federal deficit, now at $779 billion and climbing. They squandered it by privatizing everything from intelligence gathering to public education to swell corporate bank accounts at taxpayer expense. They squandered it by permitting corporate money - an estimated $9.9 billion will be spent this presidential election cycle on political advertising - to buy politicians in a form of legalized bribery that sees corporate lobbyists write legislation and create laws. They squandered it by doing nothing to halt the looming ecocide.
The problem is not messaging. The problem is the messenger. The mortal wounds inflicted on our democratic institutions are bipartisan.
You can read the rest @
https://www.truthdig.com/articles/the-great-american-shakedown/
Where do we go from here? Do all paths lead down, or is there a "savior" somewhere waiting to make his appearance?
One quote keeps bouncing around in my head:
"No bankrupt nation ever escaped totalitarianism."
-James Finney Lincoln
Seeing what is happening in DC, I can't believe there is any other possible outcome.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
Pig-Monkey Hybrids In China
China seems to have gone hog-wild (pun intended) with genetic experimentation. Here is the latest revelation:
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10500959/worlds-first-monkey-pig-hybrids/
OK, so this might allow human organs to be grown in other animals. But who will be eligible to receive these new organs? Surely not the poor among us, or those with a low social credit score.
And what will happen to these hybrids after the organs are harvested? Will their carcasses wind up down at your local Chinese restaurant? Wouldn't that be a form of cannibalism?
I shudder to think what our "brave new world" is becoming.
https://www.thesun.co.uk/tech/10500959/worlds-first-monkey-pig-hybrids/
OK, so this might allow human organs to be grown in other animals. But who will be eligible to receive these new organs? Surely not the poor among us, or those with a low social credit score.
And what will happen to these hybrids after the organs are harvested? Will their carcasses wind up down at your local Chinese restaurant? Wouldn't that be a form of cannibalism?
I shudder to think what our "brave new world" is becoming.
Fighting The Party Of Big Brother
Here are some excellent observations by Robert Gore:
At the end of 1984, Slavery is Freedom, two plus two equals five, and Winston Smith loves Big Brother. The Party has destroyed Smith’s mind, he embraces whatever narratives it promulgates. The fictive Party has solved the conundrum that bedevils any individual or organization seeking to exercise power: coercion can exact physical compliance and the desired verbalizations, but how do you compel the subjugated to think and believe as you want them to think and believe?
Our Party, the confederation of powerful people who promulgate the narratives that always point the same direction - more government and power for the powerful, less freedom for the subjugated - has yet to reach the mind control of Orwell’s Party, but not for want of desire or effort. We know the Party’s narratives: globalism, climate change, surveillance, incarceration, political correctness, open borders, free migration, fiat debt, central economic planning, socialized education and medical care, and wars on terrorism, drugs, poverty, any regime that refuses to toe the Party line, hydrocarbons, private firearms, individual rights, privacy, precious metals and cash, and socialized education and medical care. We know the Party’s institutions: governments, central banks and their central banks, intelligence agencies, military forces, police, permanent bureaucracies, multinational corporations, multilateral economic, political, and financial institutions, foundations, universities, nonprofits, and NGOs. We know the Party’s overlapping mouthpieces: the mainstream media, think tanks, government and intelligence agency propaganda organs, crony executives and their companies, Hollywood, and academia. And we know the figureheads who stock governments and their allied institutions, and the Party puppeteers who pull their strings.
You can read the rest @
https://straightlinelogic.com/2019/12/06/hows-that-alternative-reality-working-out-for-you-by-robert-gore/
Yes the Party can be defeated, but it will not be an easy task. They just renewed the warrantless data collection provisions of their Patriot (sic) Act, and no doubt keeping an eye on all us Winston Smiths was one of their primary motivations for doing so:
https://therealnews.com/stories/patriot-act-renewal-sneaks-through-congress-dem-support
Interestingly, there had not been a lot of "terrorist" attacks on US soil recently ... until some of our Saudi "allies" decided to shoot things up again:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/06/us/pensacola-naval-station-lockdown/index.html
Any chance the attack was green lighted by someone at the Pentagon so there would be a continued "need" to keep spying on us? I would not be surprised if that were the case.
At the very least, it should be noted that the warrantless data collection mentioned above once again did NOT help thwart this latest attack. So why keep authorizing it? What is the REAL reason for it? It definitely ain't being done to protect We the People.
At the end of 1984, Slavery is Freedom, two plus two equals five, and Winston Smith loves Big Brother. The Party has destroyed Smith’s mind, he embraces whatever narratives it promulgates. The fictive Party has solved the conundrum that bedevils any individual or organization seeking to exercise power: coercion can exact physical compliance and the desired verbalizations, but how do you compel the subjugated to think and believe as you want them to think and believe?
Our Party, the confederation of powerful people who promulgate the narratives that always point the same direction - more government and power for the powerful, less freedom for the subjugated - has yet to reach the mind control of Orwell’s Party, but not for want of desire or effort. We know the Party’s narratives: globalism, climate change, surveillance, incarceration, political correctness, open borders, free migration, fiat debt, central economic planning, socialized education and medical care, and wars on terrorism, drugs, poverty, any regime that refuses to toe the Party line, hydrocarbons, private firearms, individual rights, privacy, precious metals and cash, and socialized education and medical care. We know the Party’s institutions: governments, central banks and their central banks, intelligence agencies, military forces, police, permanent bureaucracies, multinational corporations, multilateral economic, political, and financial institutions, foundations, universities, nonprofits, and NGOs. We know the Party’s overlapping mouthpieces: the mainstream media, think tanks, government and intelligence agency propaganda organs, crony executives and their companies, Hollywood, and academia. And we know the figureheads who stock governments and their allied institutions, and the Party puppeteers who pull their strings.
You can read the rest @
https://straightlinelogic.com/2019/12/06/hows-that-alternative-reality-working-out-for-you-by-robert-gore/
Yes the Party can be defeated, but it will not be an easy task. They just renewed the warrantless data collection provisions of their Patriot (sic) Act, and no doubt keeping an eye on all us Winston Smiths was one of their primary motivations for doing so:
https://therealnews.com/stories/patriot-act-renewal-sneaks-through-congress-dem-support
Interestingly, there had not been a lot of "terrorist" attacks on US soil recently ... until some of our Saudi "allies" decided to shoot things up again:
https://www.cnn.com/2019/12/06/us/pensacola-naval-station-lockdown/index.html
Any chance the attack was green lighted by someone at the Pentagon so there would be a continued "need" to keep spying on us? I would not be surprised if that were the case.
At the very least, it should be noted that the warrantless data collection mentioned above once again did NOT help thwart this latest attack. So why keep authorizing it? What is the REAL reason for it? It definitely ain't being done to protect We the People.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
USA Does In Fact Torture
Here in words and pictures are the experiences of one "detainee" at our GTMO facility:
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52657.htm
This clearly is torture. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Today we celebrate (???) the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It may indeed "live in infamy", but so will something else - our so-called war on terror and the evil things it persuaded us to do. I doubt anyone in the world will ever forget them or forgive us.
Except perhaps the Israelis, who seem to like this kind of shit.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/52657.htm
This clearly is torture. Anyone who thinks otherwise is delusional.
Today we celebrate (???) the 1941 Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. It may indeed "live in infamy", but so will something else - our so-called war on terror and the evil things it persuaded us to do. I doubt anyone in the world will ever forget them or forgive us.
Except perhaps the Israelis, who seem to like this kind of shit.
Wednesday, December 4, 2019
We've Got Enough Oxygan
Whether or not Leo DiCaprio set the Amazon on fire, the earth apparently has more than enough oxygen to support human life:
"The Amazon produces about 6 percent of the oxygen currently being made by photosynthetic organisms alive on the planet today. But surprisingly, this is not where most of our oxygen comes from. In fact, from a broader Earth-system perspective, in which the biosphere not only creates but also consumes free oxygen, the Amazon’s contribution to our planet’s unusual abundance of the stuff is more or less zero. This is not a pedantic detail. Geology provides a strange picture of how the world works that helps illuminate just how bizarre and unprecedented the ongoing human experiment on the planet really is. Contrary to almost every popular account, Earth maintains an unusual surfeit of free oxygen - an incredibly reactive gas that does not want to be in the atmosphere - largely due not to living, breathing trees, but to the existence, underground, of fossil fuels."
Source - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/amazon-fire-earth-has-plenty-oxygen/596923/
Just another little fact ignored by the climate change crazies.
This is not to say I'm in favor of burning everything up, but I do think we need better, more comprehensive analyses of what really is happening to our planet. Bogus assessments will lead to bogus "cures", and we don't need any of that.
"The Amazon produces about 6 percent of the oxygen currently being made by photosynthetic organisms alive on the planet today. But surprisingly, this is not where most of our oxygen comes from. In fact, from a broader Earth-system perspective, in which the biosphere not only creates but also consumes free oxygen, the Amazon’s contribution to our planet’s unusual abundance of the stuff is more or less zero. This is not a pedantic detail. Geology provides a strange picture of how the world works that helps illuminate just how bizarre and unprecedented the ongoing human experiment on the planet really is. Contrary to almost every popular account, Earth maintains an unusual surfeit of free oxygen - an incredibly reactive gas that does not want to be in the atmosphere - largely due not to living, breathing trees, but to the existence, underground, of fossil fuels."
Source - https://www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2019/08/amazon-fire-earth-has-plenty-oxygen/596923/
Just another little fact ignored by the climate change crazies.
This is not to say I'm in favor of burning everything up, but I do think we need better, more comprehensive analyses of what really is happening to our planet. Bogus assessments will lead to bogus "cures", and we don't need any of that.
Leave Afghanistan
Here is a discussion of why we should leave Afghanistan:
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/sisyphean-exercise-afghanistan-one-shocking-map
Back in 2013 I speculated why we really are there:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2013/04/why-is-the-united-states-really-in-afghanistan-2/
Whatever the reason, is it worth it to We the People? If not, then let the global elites pay for this phony war out of their own pockets.
I say leave ... NOW. And if Afghanistan really does have resources the USA needs, then let corporations buy them on the open market at a fair price. After all, isn't that what our propaganda claims we do?
https://www.zerohedge.com/geopolitical/sisyphean-exercise-afghanistan-one-shocking-map
Back in 2013 I speculated why we really are there:
https://dissidentvoice.org/2013/04/why-is-the-united-states-really-in-afghanistan-2/
Whatever the reason, is it worth it to We the People? If not, then let the global elites pay for this phony war out of their own pockets.
I say leave ... NOW. And if Afghanistan really does have resources the USA needs, then let corporations buy them on the open market at a fair price. After all, isn't that what our propaganda claims we do?
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