Insanity
| I should preface my remarks below by warning that I am none too pleased with those who are trying to tear our society apart. So much so that I may hurt a lot of feelings of the woke crowd. If your feeling get hurt easily, move on because I'm going to savage you here. MJN. |
In looking at the insanity going on around us, much can be explained by the spoiled nature of our society. Viktor Frankl, author of Man's Search for Meaning described in 1979 how that generation (mine in fact) were generally not challenged in life as earlier generations were (unlike his generation including himself who went through the holocaust and those who came out were stronger for it in many ways) and had everything handed to them resulting in a society of spoiled little brats. Now we are reaping what we sowed. It manifests itself most egregiously with a bunch of middle class kids who have no skills to survive in life (they think food comes from the grocery store!) and will starve if left to their own devices. Their entire reality is defined by the devices they hold in their hands. Then there are generations of black citizens whose grandparents once fought and died to achieve their rights but now sit back waiting for so called white supremacists to give them what they think they are entitled to. And then you have upper class virtue signalers who give to causes like black lives matters and antifa only to perpetuate class divisions so they can sip fine wine while the country burns outside of their gated communities.
The Real ‘Fake News’ Crisis
Everything you need to know about “fake news” happened on July 19, 2017. That was the day the media stopped in its tracks and turned like well-coiffed, bronzer-addicted lemmings to collectively hurtle themselves into the abyss of infotainment. It was a truly telling moment because they actually had to hit the pause button on the morphine drip of TrumpTV to carry the live feed of O.J. Simpson’s piddling parole hearing in a Nevada conference room.
Amazingly — or, perhaps, predictably — this utterly inconsequential event was carried by CBS, NBC, ABC, CNN, MSNBC, FOX News and ESPN. That’s right, this scandalous ghost of obsessions past received the same treatment as a spectacular terrorist attack or a deadly hurricane or a political assassination.
Don’t Participate in the Power Ritual
... the power of the modern State depends on factional animosity. As Randolph Bourne said, “War is the health of the State.” And that includes the “orderly and procedural” civil war of mutual plunder that characterizes modern democracy. That kind of war too is the health of the State.
By giving its subjects access to the mechanism of “legal plunder” and coercion, the democratic State stimulates and gives free reign to their cupidity and cowardice toward each other. They huddle into “herds” (factions, interest groups, political parties, etc) in order to gain the strength in numbers and unity of purpose necessary to plunder and persecute by proxy, and to defend against like treatment at the hands of enemy herds.
Do We Live in a Police State?
We have created a monster, a Deep State with such unchecked power, armed with such Orwellian technology, that it represents a clear and present danger to our constitutional republic. This threat is underscored not only by the latest WikiLeaks revelations, but also by the intelligence community’s intervention in our domestic politics, which has been documented in the headlines of the nation’s newspapers for the past few months.
Week Ten of the Russian Intervention in Syria
So this is the key question here: do the deep state elites which run the US Empire understand that neither Russia, nor Iran or Hezbollah believe that they can back down and accept a Daesh victory in Syria? Do the western leader realize that Russia, Iran and Hezbollah cannot let the Empire overthrow Assad? Is there anybody out there who does not realize that the “Assad must go policy” implies a war against Russia, Iran and Hezbollah? The only way to avoid a war is to finally give up, even if that is initially denied publicly, on the “Assad must go” policy.
The Empire of Chaos: An Interview With Noam Chomsky
US foreign policy in the 21st century has little to offer other than massive military power. Indeed, gone are the days when military might was used in order to "recreate the world in America's image." In the post-Cold War era, US military interventions take place in the absence of an overall strategic vision and with ideological justifications lacking force and conviction even among the United States' traditional allies. Little wonder then that military interventions, always illegal and unjustifiable, end up accomplishing nothing more than the creation of black holes, while giving rise in turn to new and ever increasing violent terrorist organizations bent on spreading their own vision of social and political order.
In this exclusive interview for Truthout, Noam Chomsky reflects on the dynamics of US foreign policy in the 21st century and the implications of the policy of raining down destruction for world order. Chomsky also assesses the role of Russia's involvement in Syria, the rise of the Islamic State and the apparent attraction it holds for many young Muslims from Europe, and offers a grim view about the future of US foreign policy.
Erdogan, Busted! The ISIS Oil Pipeline Through Ceyhan
by ZeroHedge • November 27, 2015
Of course the most intriguing questions when it comes to Islamic State’s $400 million+ per year oil business, are: where does this oil end up and who is facilitating delivery? In an effort to begin answering those questions we wrote:
- The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking
- Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey’s President
Is Benjamin Netanyahu Clinically Insane?
by Uri Avnery
It is not very pleasant when serious people around the world – historians, psychiatrists, diplomats – ask themselves if my prime minister is completely sane.
But this is happening now. And not only abroad. More and more people in Israel are asking themselves the same question.
All this is the result of one event. But people are now looking at many other events – past and present – in a new light.
Until now, many strange actions and utterances by Benjamin Netanyahu have been seen as the manipulations of a clever politician, a talented demagogue who knows the soul of his constituents and supplies them with ample lies.
Not anymore. A troubling suspicion is getting around: that our prime minister has serious mental problems. Is he losing his marbles?
Blowback - The Washington War Party’s Folly Comes Home To Roost
by David Stockman
A needed history lesson about the hubris of Republicrats...
Needless to say, bombing wont stop them; it will just make more of them.
Ironically, what can stop them is the Assad government and the ground forces of its Hezbollah and the Iranian Republican Guard allies. Its time to let them settle an ancient quarrel that has never been any of America’s business anyway.
But Imperial Washington is so caught up in its myths, lies and hegemonic stupidity that it can not see the obvious.
And that is why a quarter century after the cold war ended peace still hasn’t been given a chance and the reason that horrific events like last week’s barbarism in Paris still keep happening.
Drones, IBM, and the Big Data of Death
by Jon Schwarz. The Intercept
LAST WEEK The Intercept published a package of stories on the U.S. drone program, drawing on a cache of secret government documents leaked by an intelligence community whistleblower. The available evidence suggests that one of the documents, a study titled “ISR Support to Small Footprint CT Operations — Somalia/Yemen,” was produced for the Defense Department in 2013 by consultants from IBM. If you look at just one classified PowerPoint presentation this year, I recommend you make it this one.
Like a good poem, the ISR study has multiple meanings, and rewards careful attention and repeated reading. On its surface, it’s simply an analysis by the Defense Department’s Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance (ISR) Task Force of the “performance and requirements” of the U.S. military’s counterterrorism kill/capture operations, including drone strikes, in Somalia and Yemen. However, it’s also what a former senior special operations officer characterized as a “bitch brief” — that is, a study designed to be a weapon in a bureaucratic turf war with the CIA to win the Pentagon more money and a bigger mandate. The study was also presumably an opportunity for IBM to demonstrate that it can produce snappy “analysis” tailored to the desires of its Defense Department clients, as well as for current Defense employees to network with a potential future employer.
White House ignored months of warnings about 9/11 to avoid leaving ‘paper trail’ of culpability
‘The Attacks Will Be Spectacular’
An exclusive look at how the Bush administration ignored this warning from the CIA months before 9/11, along with others that were far more detailed than previously revealed.
By Chris Whipple, November 12, 2015
Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S.” The CIA’s famous Presidential Daily Brief, presented to George W. Bush on August 6, 2001, has always been Exhibit A in the case that his administration shrugged off warnings of an Al Qaeda attack. But months earlier, starting in the spring of 2001, the CIA repeatedly and urgently began to warn the White House that an attack was coming.
Is Instability the Goal of U.S. Mideast Policy?
BY SHELDON RICHMAN
As soon as the 9/11 attacks occurred, the Bush administration's eyes were on Iraq, and the intelligence agencies were ordered to get the proof. Detainees were even tortured to force them implicate Saddam Hussein, and false stories about contract between al-Qaeda and Saddam's regime were floated.
Can we make any sense of this fixation on Iraq? I think we can.
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