How low can you go?

Posted on August 2, 2024 by camelotkidd

How low can the American empire go as it wobbles and spins out of control?

Judging by the behavior of its favorite Middle-East proxy the bottom appears limitless.

While Israel carries out a savage genocide in Gaza, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu came to Washington, where he was worshipped by both Congress and the White House alike together with outright adulation from the corporate media. Netanyahu spoke for an hour in his address to the US Congress, emitting lie after lie. And the Congress critters responded with 53 standing ovations, close to one per minute. 

In his. speech Netanyahu claimed that the genocide is a “clash between barbarism and civilization. It’s a clash between those who glorify death and those who sanctify life.” Ironically, Netanyahu was right about the clash of civilization though he was wrong about who represented which side: Israel backed completely by the US is pure evil.

American complicity in the genocide in Gaza is a national disgrace. The US has done many bad things, but this whole hearted alliance with unmitigated evil taints every American.

Netanyahu’s visit to Congress was soon joined by another truly awful story that demonstrates that there is no bottom to the evil in the minds and hearts of Israel’s leaders as well as among a large majority of the Israeli people.

It turns out that genocide is not enough to satisfy the Israeli bloodlust. There are a number of detention centers run by the Israeli Army that are generally used to torture Palestinians prisoners, not in the old fashioned “intelligence” role to obtain “information,” but just for the entertainment of the soldiers who are the jailers. Sde Teiman, one such center in the southern Negev desert region, recently made the news due to a particularly outrageous bit of torture engaged in by ten of the soldiers in charge of the prisoners. Conditions in Sde Taiman reportedly included “Electric shocks, amputations due to bad conditions, severe beatings, surgery without anesthesia, playing loud music until inmates’ ears bleed, deaths due to bad sanitary conditions, systematic torture and sexual abuse.”

A Palestinian from Gaza was reported serially sodomized and otherwise raped at the detention site using various implements even including a cell phone which was inserted in the man’s rectum and turned on for the amusement of the Israeli soldiers. The victim also had a wooden stick inserted in similar fashion and it was believed that he was only one of a number of other prisoners who were treated in that same way, which appears to be systemic throughout the detention facilities run by the army. The activity was only exposed when the victim began bleeding heavily both internally and externally and was unable to walk with a “serious wound in his rectum area”, which may have occurred if or when the phone was removed from inside of him and he was taken to a hospital where what had taken place was revealed. The army, somewhat uncharacteristically, sent some military policemen to the center to detain the soldiers for questioning but the suspects fought back using pepper spray and building barriers. When nine of the men (one went AWOL) were eventually taken to a nearby military base at Beit Lid, the MPs were confronted almost immediately by an angry crowd of civilians, consisting largely of settlers and ultra-nationalists, led by several Likud party parliamentarians who demanded that the soldiers be set free. Something like a melee ensued. The unruly crowd chanted its support for torture and even called for the summary execution of the Palestinian prisoners, which has been an “option” supported by some in the Netanyahu government.

The rioters were so aggressive that they actually broke into the Israeli military base and there was considerable support for their actions even coming from Justice Minister Yariv Levin, who said he was “shocked” to see IDF troops being detained for questioning “in a way that is suitable for arresting dangerous criminals.” He added that the soldiers were doing a “holy job” at the base. Far-right Knesset member Simcha Rotman called the troops “heroes,” instead attacking Israel’s “justice and enforcement systems” for detaining them.

Later in the day, when asked by the press about the rape accusations, US State Department Deputy Spokesman Vedant Patel refused to say whether gang raping and torturing Palestinian prisoners would be considered a war crime, even if conclusively demonstrated by witnesses and other evidence. Patel explained “So the reports of abuse are deeply concerning, and we have been clear and consistent with Israel and the IDF that they need to treat all detainees humanely and with dignity in accordance with humanitarian law.” He said that the US was going to let “due process” play out in this case. The western media that is bothering to cover the story are refusing to even use the word “rape” or “sodomy” in reference to the allegations, with the BBC describing how the soldiers are accused of “severely mistreating a Palestinian prisoner” while the New York Times prefers to call it “suspected abuse”.

So, this is our bestest ally, and loyal proxy who shares all of our values.

And judging by the spate of recent Israeli assassinations seems dead set on expanding the genocide into a regional war with the US along for the ride. The most egregious was an assassination of the Hamas leader on Iranian soil that appears to be a gambit by Israel to drag the United States into a regional war. Israel knows very well it cannot win the war against Hezbollah and Iran so it’s seeking to draw the U.S. into it. This is what makes the reception Netanyahu received in Congress on July 24 so dangerous.

Economist and geopolitical analyst Michael Hudson clarifies, “Well, you say Israel, but it’s actually Israel in the United States. And all this has happened right after Netanyahu came to Congress and met in Washington with the Democratic Party leaders and then with Trump. So I think it’s really the policy of the neocons. They’ve worked hand in hand. And I’ve known these people for over 50 years…So I think that the neocons in Washington believe that war is going to be inevitable. America is fighting for control of the Near East because the Near East controls the oil. And American foreign policy has been based on control of food supplies from American farms and control of the oil trade, because if you can control the oil trade, you can turn off people’s electricity, their heating, and their power. And power use for workers is the root of productivity.

And the way that the military thinks—and again, I’ve worked with them for years—is the timing, that, are we in a better position now than we will be next year or not. And I think the American military realizes that Russia and China and the other Eurasian countries are getting together. The American ability to fight militarily is going down. And to the military, that means if we don’t have war now and wait till next year in the future, we’ll be less and less and less able to win… And I think their feeling is the Americans are doing everything they can, from Ukraine to Israel to Iran, to try to stir up a retaliation so that they can then say, ah, we’re under attack, we’re purely defending ourselves, and once you tell your population and your voters this is a war for defense, as the Nazis know, you can always get a—as Goebbels said, you can always get a population on your side if you say it’s for defense.”

All empires descend into savagery, torture and mass murder, the US prefers to outsource much of its brutality to proxies, with Israel leading the pack.

Antonio Gramsci–“The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters”

 

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Sullen Acquiescence

Posted on July 26, 2024 by camelotkidd

If neoliberal capitalism isn’t working for average Americans, how are they responding?

The neoliberal Great Transformation has massively changed the workplace, and as workers are increasingly squeezed by anxiety over personal economic prospects, they are responding with sullen acquiescence in that they just do the bare minimum, and sometimes not even that much, as they go about their “bull-shit jobs”. As the US increasingly resembles the late USSR a similar dynamic is playing out where–they pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.

Indeed, our milieu is marked by the working class’s intensifying rage in a society being pillaged by corporate interests. Whether medical bankruptcies, foreclosures, lower life spans, spikes in prices, mountains of paperwork, or endless junk fees attached to everything–life in America keeps getting more difficult, annoying, inhumane, painful, and seemingly impossible.

I know the feeling. I’ve watched the America I grew up in be demolished by neoliberal looters, cheered on by the corporate press.

Political scientist Wendy Brown assesses the damage. “Decades of neoliberal devastations of middle- and working-class prospects set the ground for our politics today. The dismantling of social states – the social provisions and social commitments that put a floor under working- and middle-class people when things go wrong – is key. That floor is gone. At the same time, wages became stagnant or worse. Unions became so severely weakened that they lost their capacity to work against capital, and states largely gave up regulating capital. The rise of finance capital which spikes the cost of everything from housing to health care made things worse.“

The science fiction I grew up with promised a future where technology provided fulfilling and meaningful jobs and a life of mostly leisure, where people, families and communities could flourish.

Looking around at our present milieu it’s amazing how naive it all sounded.

I’m not scared of technology, I’m scared of the sociopaths that wield said technology. And the same technology that could be used to ensure the sci-fi future I read about as a kid, is instead utilized to create more billionaires while workers are used up and tossed away like soiled rags.

The problem is political in that the billionaires control government and they like a desperate, surplus population that’s too cowed to rebel just fine. A big part of the blame goes to the political party that used to represents workers. The Democrats have been hemorrhaging support after abandoning nearly all of their former working class platform in favor of identity politics. The Democrats increasingly stand for neoliberal, pro-war and anti-Russia policies.

You’ve heard me drone on for years about the dangers of neoliberalism and the pronounced effect on American society but it’s gotten worse. The way in which government interacts with average Americans is a case in point. Instead of providing material benefits like during the New Deal era, neoliberal governance celebrates inequality and punishes those who resist.

In An Economic Theory of the Criminal Law, 7th Circuit Judge Richard Posner states that the poor require criminal law to keep them within the confines of the “market.” “The major function of criminal law in a capitalist society is to prevent people from bypassing the system of voluntary, compensated exchange-the “market,” explicit or implicit-in situations where, because transaction costs are low, the market is a more efficient method of allocating resources than forced exchange.”

The flip-side of Posner’s theory was that unlike the poor, the wealthy required only tort law to ensure their proper behavior. “…Criminal law is designed primarily for the non-affluent; the affluent are kept in line, for the most part, by tort law.”

What’s so frustrating about American society is that it could be so much better, and we have almost everything we need to thrive. But we’re stuck in path dependence and power games, unable to imagine or build the good world our technology makes possible.

Reduce work. Let people find other, meaningful things to do with their lives. The worship of work is a relatively recent thing, coming mostly out of the Protestant revolution: virtually no one before that believed that work was a good thing: it was necessary, but the good life was about art, learning, athletics, civic involvement and so on.

To create this sort of world we need to do away with wealth humping. I can’t believe that I’m the only one to find it deeply embarrassing. You can get wealthy: say have four or five times as much as the median, but not billionaire rich and able to dominate the political space. Focus competition towards status and prestige, and towards living a good life and contributing towards others.

There is much work to be done. Meaningful work, not the least of which is fixing the environment. There will always be meaningful labour to do, just not bull-shit jobs so the rich elite can have another vacation home in Deer Valley.

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More basic shit

Posted on July 19, 2024 by camelotkidd

Neoliberal capitalism doesn’t work for average Americans.

To paraphrase James Madison, if bankers on Wall Street were angels there would be no need for government regulation, but you may have noticed that there is a distinct shortage there. And neoliberal economists are basically sock-puppets for capital, where their prescriptions always involve lowering your wages, preventing labor unionization and letting the wealthy people run our economy.

Heterodox economist Michael Hudson keeps it succinct when he explains that every economy is planned, it just depends on who gets to do the planning.

By empowering banks and corporations, we’ve put the reproduction of American society in the hands of sociopathic owners motivated purely by profit. Today instead of a government that works for the average American we have an oligarchic government that enslaves the public.

The short version is that the wealthy hated the New Deal and succeeded in overthrowing it, while building a second, high-tech Gilded Age, complete with robots, AI and total surveillance. See the Powell Memo for their assembly blueprint.

Architect of the New Deal, President Franklin D. Roosevelt warned, “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic state itself.”

Last week I wrote that “we live in a world of deceit, hypocrisy and bad faith,” and it well describes the overthrow of the New Deal. You can’t have a world of honesty and straight dealing while carrying out a vast project that’s impoverished the vast majority of Americans. You absolutely require the deceit, hypocrisy and bad faith to accomplish such a project.

Not to mention propaganda and lots of it. Edward Bernays describes the thought behind American propaganda in his 1928 book – Propaganda. “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. …“

The most detrimental (and brutally effective) propaganda sells the idea of individualism rather that the social or collective. The insidious concept of “human capital”, where you alone are responsible for literally everything with the market as the ultimate arbitrator. All of this combined with the exhortation for endless competition represents the intellectual kindling for an oligarchy rather than a republic, and has had a profound effect on American society.

High marginal tax rates, vigorous anti-trust and high corporate tax rates with laws forbidding stock options, brought about by New Deal reforms, produced the best economy in US history. But now that the US has financialized its economy there’s no way that it can somehow rebuild industry without de-financializing the economy, without getting rid of the whole debt overhead and without raising the wages and the living standards of labor.

In other words, we’re talking about a revolution, which is precisely what our feral elite are determined to prevent, as the latest revelations from Democratic insiders reveals.

When Joe Biden was running for president in 2020 he told a group of wealthy donors that if he was elected nothing would fundamentally change. At the time many of us argued that the Democratic Party was less interested in stopping a second Donald Trump term and more focused on crushing the ascent of socialist Bernie Sanders and the movement behind him. Yet now, as the president fights for his political life, centrist Democrats are just coming out and saying it.

“I’ve said this over and over again,” Rep. Adam Smith, who had days earlier publicly called for Biden to step aside, told MSNBC last week: “Joe Biden was not picked in 2020 because he was the only person that could beat Trump. He was picked because he was the only person that could beat Bernie Sanders, rightly or wrongly. … That conclusion was made, okay? “Oh my gosh, coming out of Nevada, Bernie Sanders is going to be the nominee!” And people, just like they are now, said, “Ahhh, I don’t think that’s going to work,” so they were looking for an alternative.”

As the Democrats continue to show us exactly who they are, the Republicans are posing as the party of workers (go figure) with their change in economic rhetoric and with Trump’s selection of Vance to be VP, even as they are all in on the continuation of neoliberal capitalism.

There seems to be a pattern emerging from all of the background noise. Times, as they say, are a changing. Although we’re living in a time of normalcy bias, all of the previously inconceivable scenarios have come to pass. As such, we can no longer dismiss the possibility that literally anything can happen.

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Basic shit

Posted on July 12, 2024 by camelotkidd

As the Democratic Party freaks out over Biden it’s probably a good time to review some basic shit.

Maybe the funniest thing has been how the political lemmings immediately began arguing over who should be president even as Biden’s condition demonstrates that it doesn’t matter who is. The American empire runs on autopilot, sanctioning, bombing and murdering around the world all by itself. Meanwhile liberals insist that it’s imperative that Trump not win the 2024 election because if he does America will descend into fascism–circling the planet with military bases, backing genocide and engaging in dangerous nuclear brinksmanship.

Oh, wait.

US has demonstrated its benevolence and humanitarianism for the last three decades by launching invasions and waging wars supposedly to protect the weak and vulnerable – from Kosovo to Ukraine, from Afghanistan and Iraq to Libya and Syria. What’s savagely ironic is that democracy and women’s rights have supposedly been the US’s concern in the countries it has destroyed. But in truth, as Gaza demonstrates only too clearly, those claims were always bull-shit. It was always about treating the world as the empire’s corporate playground, where “full-spectrum dominance” was the driving principle, not protection of the vulnerable.

We live in a world of deceit, hypocrisy and bad faith. We live in a world where the powerful pretend to care about human rights and international law, and where they profess to aid the weak even as they assist in their slaughter.

Meanwhile, in domestic affairs, a new study, entitled The Great Neoliberal Burden Shift (Part I) – How Corporate America Offset Liability Onto the Public, underscores how much power US corporations have over our lives, making a mockery of our noble democratic rhetoric–“land of the free,” “home of the brave”, etc. .

This is Part I of a two-part series on what we’re calling “The Great Neoliberal Burden Shift,” a process in which corporations deflect blame onto the relatively powerless. On this episode, we examine how corporations have shifted the burdens of liability onto “consumers” and other individuals, examining how the auto, fossil-fuel, and food and beverage industries have orchestrated media campaigns to frame the people they harm, whether directly or indirectly, as responsible for their own misfortunes.

Sure, everyone must bear some level of personal responsibility in matters of health and safety, obviously. But corporations from Chrysler to Nestlé, in concert with a compliant US media, have taken advantage of this truism to place a disproportionate level of obligation onto the people who work in their warehouses and buy their products. At the same time, they’ve been able to fend off even the most minor of structural changes–say, using less plastic or healthier ingredients–with often dangerous, even deadly, consequences.

“Choose the product best suited for baby,” Nestlé urged in a 1970s baby formula ad. “What size is your carbon footprint?” wondered oil giant BP in 2003. “Texting, music listening put distracted pedestrians at risk,” USA Today announced in 2012.

These headlines and ad copy all offer a glimpse into a longstanding strategy among corporations: place the burdens of safety, health, and wellbeing on individuals, in order to deflect responsibility and regulation. Whether in the areas of transportation, climate, or nutrition and food safety, individuals, namely “consumers,” are increasingly expected to assume full responsibility for their own wellbeing, and are blamed, shamed, and punished–or worse, made ill or injured–when they can’t live up to these unrealistic expectations.

All of this is a reminder not to get distracted by clickbait headlines and stay laser focused on the basic shit. Don’t let Whoopie Goldberg or George Clooney or Nancy Pelosi gaslight you into giving two shits about the presidential circus. To make sense of our modern world–follow the money, weapons and resources while ignoring the propaganda.

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Who’s minding the launch codes?

Posted on July 5, 2024 by camelotkidd

Democrats are rightly freaking out over Biden’s debate performance but I want to know who’s minding the launch codes?

The bigger question is who has the authority to launch the nukes?.

If it is Biden, then, God forbid.

And if it’s a deep state apparatchik, then who gave them the authority?

The person who debated Trump absolutely does not seem capable of going through such a launch procedure. 

 All of this raises a great many questions, starting with: why did the Democratic Party and the corporate media pretend that Joe Biden was capable of serving another 4 year term?

More importantly, Biden appears to be a figure head that has little affect on policy, while the alphabet agencies and their many intel blob subsidiaries conducted a silent coup and have been running the US’s affairs disastrously behind the “Joe Biden” wooden Indian. Going further, it’s become obvious that Biden’s rule is at the behest of an oligarch class, who are now in a panic. All we hear is that the donors have decided this or are going to replace Biden, and it becomes clear that the so-called democracy story we’ve been subjected to is nothing but an elaborate con.

Meanwhile, all the concern over Biden’s fitness to run against Trump raises a larger question. Is Joe Biden competent to serve out his term which ends in January 2025?

What’s infuriating is that Biden’s condition was obvious to anyone not ensconced in the “Blue bubble”. Yet after Biden’s debate performance everyone seems to be shocked. I’ve come to believe that Biden was chosen as the Democrats’ candidate in 2020 precisely because he was already senile and therefore completely controllable. The Democratic Party, deep state and shadowy oligarch cabal that calls the shots wanted someone who’d do whatever they demanded on domestic and foreign policy fronts. 

 Of course they’re circling the wagons. The elite will do everything to cover up for their knowledge of Biden’s senility. Acknowledging that they knew about this would leave little doubt in the minds of many that the 2020 election was actually the elite’s latest coup.

And what about the other branches of government? Well Congress, if Representative Thomas Massie is to to be believed, has an AIPAC babysitter ensuring their compliance with Israeli interests. And the Supreme Court’s latest rulings should leave little doubt as to their subservience to capital.

So much for the myths we learned in civics class about separation of powers and the virtues of a representative republic.

In light of Biden’s debate performance the deep state conspiracy theory seem way more plausible. If the president and congress aren’t running things, then who is?

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Gunboat Diplomacy

Posted on June 28, 2024 by camelotkidd

The US doesn’t do diplomacy. Instead we send in the gunboats or, to be precise, the aircraft-carrier-battle-groups.

Like everything else these days the price of a modern aircraft carrier is astronomical. America’s latest carrier class, the Gerald R. Ford, costs $13 billion per unit. And so far, the entire Ford program has cost taxpayers $120 billion.

Due to the cost of the Ford-class carriers and the rest of America’s gold-plated weapon systems this imperial behavior has reached its pull-by-date. Advances in missile and drone technology allow a poor country like Yemen to essentially close the Red Sea to Israeli bound traffic. Conflict is, at the base level, about bang-for-the-buck, and when adversaries like the Houthis can fire hypersonic missiles and suicide drones that cost a fraction of expensive American carriers, the sort of gunboat force projection is a thing of the past.

Another reason is due to our Middle East proxy–Israel. The balance of forces in the world is shifting in favor of the Axis of Resistance as the entire Global South is appalled by this genocide and appalled by the American empire’s collusion in that genocide.  

And we’re also seeing that due to the stupidity of the managers of the U.S. empire, which of course is dominated by Zionists, that the war in Ukraine is actually playing out in favor of Palestine. As they attack Russia with long-range weapons, Russia is going to be offering similar long-range weapons to other forces, including presumably the Axis of Resistance. And there have been some reports along those lines. The Houthis, who are happily messing with Israel-related Red Sea shipping and even US naval vessels, have proven that insurgents, armed with drones and missiles can deny the effective use of carrier-battle-groups.

But, of course, the Pentagon hasn’t gotten the memo, or if they did they are resistant to change because the US military/industrial/complex (MIC) doesn’t do defense they do corporate enrichment and stock buybacks.

What’s ironic is that advances in missile technology is nothing new. By the 1980’s Soviet missile development had changed the calculus of Cold War conflict. US naval doctrine mandated carrier-battle-groups staying well away from Europe in the event of conflict due to the lethality of Soviet anti-shipping missiles.

And here we are, back to the essential conflict between neoconservatism and neoliberalism. The American (MIC) was originally conceived as a make-work program to prevent a recurrence of the Great Depression after WWII ended. However, beginning in the 1980s, private equity was used by MIC insiders to buy Federal assets for pennies on the dollar and load them up with debt to resell them to the public in order to enrich insiders. Wages were cut and production processes ‘streamlined’ in the companies bought by private equity, thereby erasing the public benefit of the MIC, such as it was. Neoliberal myopia went so far as to outsource military production to China, (go figure). And now, the same neocon politicians and intellectuals who thought outsourcing a great idea are today declaring China to be enemy number one.

And now the chicken have come home to roost. A new report warns that the United States is incapable of producing essential, high-tech weapons without continuing support from China: “If we were in a war with China and it stopped providing parts, we wouldn’t be able to build the planes and weapons we needed,’ he said.

A startling report released earlier this year revealed Chinese firms have a stranglehold across 12 critical technologies that are vital to US national security, including nuclear modernization, hypersonic and space technologies.“

The problem for gunboat diplomacy is that it’s impossible to manage an empire with neoliberalism as your operating system.

Update: Heterodox economist Michael Hudson writes–“Wars could only be financed by running into debt, because populations would not support wars if they had to pay immediately the taxes needed to defray their full costs on a pay-as-you-go basis. But the commercial consequences of war debts would burden the economy and slow its economic growth, ultimately driving the nation bankrupt.”

Sound familiar?

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Source Documents

Posted on June 20, 2024 by camelotkidd

I’m fascinated by the history of ideas and ideologies, and no ideology has captivated me quite like neoliberalism. In our secular era, ideologies, like neoliberalism, with its admonishment that there is no alternative, take on articles of faith. Indeed, neoliberalism’s technocrats, market fundamentalists, and liberal authoritarians have all the trappings of religious deities.

Similar to the study of religions the best way to examine the history of ideas and ideologies is by reading source documents, articles and books. A lot of reading. The internet makes sleuthing far easier than poring over dusty religious manuscripts in the catacombs.

Thanks to the erudite and prolific Alastair Crooke, I have new insights into neoliberalism. “In 1970, Zbig Brzezinski (who was to become National Security Adviser to President Carter) published a book entitled: Between Two Ages: America’s Role in the Technetronic Era.

In it, Brzezinski wrote: “The technetronic era involves the gradual appearance of a more controlled society. Such a society…dominated by an élite, unrestrained by traditional values…[and practicing] continuous surveillance over every citizen … [together with] manipulation of the behavior and intellectual functioning of all people … [would become the new norm].”

Sound familiar?

Brzezinski further argued that “the nation-state as a fundamental unit of man’s organized life has ceased to be the principal creative force: International banks and multinational corporations are acting and planning in terms that are far in advance of the political concepts of the nation-state”. 

David Rockefeller and the rest of the Trilateral Commission, a loose confederation of national security and financial elite, seized on Brzezinski’s insight to represent the third leg to ensuring the hegemony of the American empire. The other two legs were control of oil resources and dollar supremacy.

And, here we are. What Brzezinski, Rockefeller and the rest of the technocratic neoliberal elite plotted has become our reality, and average citizens are not thrilled about it. (See Brexit, Trump’s surprise 2016 election, the rise of the “populist Right” the Yellow Vests, and the latest European election results, etc.)

Kind of how the average Catholic wasn’t all that thrilled about the Spanish Inquisition.

Brzezinski’s book, a valuable source document, confirms the basic dishonesty of neoliberalism’s promise. Neoliberalism has been disastrous for America’s political economy, as austerity, privatization, and deregulation have led to crippling wealth and political inequality. More insidious though equally damaging, neoliberalism has also created a sort of cultural sickness; hyper-individualism and the ever-present narratives of deservedness, productivity, and merit have infiltrated our psyches, warping our sense of self, how we view others, and how we move through the world. It’s no surprise that we are facing loneliness and suicide epidemics, that overwork and burnout are commonplace, and that our society has become atomized.

 Brzezinski’s, Between Two Ages, like Lewis Powell’s infamous Memo, provides a clear window into elite thinking. After the turmoil of the 60’s with multiple demands for democratic participation there was a “crisis of democracy”. These documents demonstrate that democracy was for the oligarchy and freedom was to be reserved for capital.

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The Hundred Year War

Posted on June 14, 2024 by camelotkidd

The US has been at war with Russia for over a hundred years. Technically it started out as a war against the Soviet Union, but the enmity remained after we defeated the godless communists.

There was a brief interlude during WWII when we joined forces against Hitler and the Nazi’s but even before the war was over US officials like Alan Dulles were already plotting further conflict. Today we treat Russians worse than the Soviets during the darkest days of the Cold War. We ban Russian musicians, artists, athletes, literature, impose sanctions, insult the President of Russia, and foment war. 

Like many observers, Putin was under the illusion that the US were against the USSR for ideological reasons. He thought, “Sure, they dislike communism, like any good capitalist would.” He believed they would be happy now that Russians are enjoying the fruits of private ownership. But it turns out that the Brits and Yanks were never interested in theory. They hated the communists because they kept Russian commodities out of Western bankers greedy hands. Now that it is Putin who is defending the Russian state, the global banking system has declared him to be the man of evil. 

Russian author, Israeli Shamir contends that the antipathy towards Russia can be traced to the City of London and British bankers, specifically Lord Rothchild. In my study of history, I’ve come around to that point of view, in that when the US assumed the British empire at the end of WWII, England and especially the bankers in the City of London, were secretly controlling it.

The main problem for the capitalists in the US and Great Britain was that the Soviet Union and the communist bloc prevented them from accessing their resources, labor and markets. Thus when the Wall came down the West wasted little time pilfering post USSR Russia. Its enterprises were intact even if suffering from underinvestment. And not only did the Yeltsin government enable the plunder, but many well-placed Russians believed the con that neoliberal shock therapy would be salutary, so there was no pushback.

Another reason for the support for privatization was the fact that well placed Russian oligarchs were poised to plunder Russia. And, who were the Russian oligarchs who seized all of the state controlled wealth in the aftermath of the Soviet Union’s demise? Shamir call them the “Dirty Seven [semiboyarshina] oligarchs who seized control of Russia during Yeltsin’s feeble rule. They all were more or less Jewish, and their solidarity and destructiveness could only compete with their ruthlessness and greed. These seven men practically destroyed millennium-old Russia. They pauperized its people, reduced its industry to ashes, they sold the factories for scrap; they stole all private bank holdings. They even ruined Russian democracy when they shelled Parliament in 1993 using Yeltsin’s tanks, and then, with the assistance of American advisors, by faking the re-election of President Yeltsin in 1996.”

The dirty little secret behind all of the hatred for Russia and Putin is that losing all that fabulous Russian wealth outraged the oligarchs and their western banker allies. This is why they call Vladimir Putin “the bloody tyrant”, because he took away the Russian oil and gas, gold and wheat that they felt they deserved. It’s nothing personal, it’s just business, similar to other countries and rulers who thwart US designs for imperial control.

The foreign policy establishment in the US always saw the present proxy war in Ukraine war (which can be traced to 2014) as a way to bleed Russia of resources. They only understand a unipolar world which revolves around Washington, Wall Street and the City of London. The goal in Ukraine was less to take back the Russian speaking territories for the fascist regime in Kiev and more to unite Europe in a single goal of endless war while establishing a repressive regime in both the USA and Europe for the foreseeable future.

It appears that George Orwell was correct in that–“Oceania had always been at war with Eastasia.”

But, but, the idea that Jewish bankers in the City of London control the world is just a conspiracy theory, like lizard people, right?

Right?

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A declining empire run by bad people

Posted on June 7, 2024 by camelotkidd

In a recent poll young Americans were pessimistic about their future, describing the US as a declining empire led by bad people. “Young voters overwhelmingly believe that almost all politicians are corrupt and that the country will end up worse off than when they were born,” according to new polling from Democratic firm Blueprint obtained exclusively by Semafor.

They are not wrong, and it’s surprising how fast the American empire is melting, almost like the Wicked-Witch of the West in the Wizard of Oz when Dorthy doused her with water.

And as far as bad people, the Biden Administration is chock full of them. Maybe the Israeli genocide in Gaza caused glitch in the Matrix? Or that the Biden administration has reset the doomsday clock to 90 seconds to midnight through their deranged Ukrainian proxy war? Or that this type of delusional thinking is virtually universal among US foreign policy elite? 

And Trump seems to have been educated by the deep state on the realities of the American empire. The best thing about his 2016 presidential campaign was his harsh and all too accurate criticism of the neocon loons and their deranged foreign policies but Russia-gate and two impeachment attempts later he seems to have gotten the message. His new hat might as well be spelled MAEGA for make American empire great again.

So the young-un’s are right to be concerned. The only problem is that the maniacs mismanaging the American empire did not get the memo, or if they did they are disregarding it and doubling-down.

Here’s President Biden’s recent interview with Time. “Is America still able to play the role of world power that it played in World War Two, and in the Cold War?” Biden: “Yes, we’re planning even more. We are, we are the world power.”

See what I mean?

Furthermore, the powers-that be are past any sort of accountability and I’m increasingly concerned that they will resort to violence inherent in the latest police crack-down on the college protests. Then there’s the creeping censorship, surveillance and heavy-handed authoritarianism. In the latest manifestation, on June 3rd the State Department forced former Marine intelligence officer, Chief UN weapons inspector, journalist and author Scott Ritter off a plane headed to Russia by way of Istanbul and confiscated his passport. His crime? Ritter has been an activist who calls for dialogue, negotiation and diplomacy to avoid wars. He’s a fervent critic of Israel’s genocide in Gaza and US proxy war against Russia in Ukraine, and was planning on speaking at the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum, in Russia.

What gives me hope is that more and more young Americans are seeing through the propaganda narrative of the US as a “bright shining city on the hill”, spreading democracy and freedom. The US empire needs us to consent to nonstop militarism and war, so it propagandizes us into thinking this is normal and anyone who questions them is un-American or some kind of freak. It appears that young Americans have now grasped that instead the US is a murderous empire directly aiding Israeli genocide in Gaza while risking a nuclear war with Russia so that a small segment of plutocrats can maintain power.

How much loyalty should young Americans, or any Americans have for such an empire?

In the months ahead we’re about to find out.

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Neoliberal Realism

Posted on May 28, 2024 by camelotkidd

It’s become apparent that the pious rhetoric about “liberal democracy” and “rule based international order” is simply a cover story for the promotion and ferocious defense of neoliberal capitalism. And, to paraphrase Mark Fisher–“It’s easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of neoliberalism.” In fact, the maniacs who manage the empire appear prepared to end our world rather than surrender to a multi-polar one.

Update: I’m off on a mountain biking adventure. Here’s couple articles that elaborate on my thesis.

The Brink of Dissolution: Neurosis in the West as the Levee Breaks, by the inimitable Alastair Crooke.

And, Craig Murray’s: The Drive for War, where he states: “In the West, any deviation from any point in the architecture of neoliberal beliefs is a challenge to the entire system, and thus must be eradicated.”

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