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Neoliberalism as a New, More Dangerous, Form of Corporatism

Neoliberalism = Casino Capitalism = "Transnational elites, Unite!"
(It is a neoTrotskyism with the word "proletarians" substituted by the word "elites"
 in famous "Proletarians of all countries, Unite!" slogan
and "Color revolutions" instead of Communist  "Permanent revolution"  )

Version 6.1

Skepticism and Pseudoscience  > Who Rules America > Neoliberal Brainwashing

News An introduction to Neoliberalism Recommended books Recommended Links Neoliberalism war on organized labor Neoliberalism as Trotskyism for the rich Globalization of Financial Flows
Brexit as the start of the reversal of neoliberal globalization Neoliberal rationality Neoliberal "New Class" as variant of Soviet Nomenklatura Neoliberalism and Christianity Key Myths of Neoliberalism Ayn Rand and her Objectivism Cult Anti-globalization movement
Zombie state of neoliberalism and coming collapse of neoliberalism Pope Francis on danger of neoliberalism  Over-consumption of Luxury Goods as Market Failure Definitions of neoliberalism Neoliberal Brainwashing Neoclassical Pseudo Theories  US Presidential Elections of 2016 as a referendum on neoliberal globalization
Media-Military-Industrial Complex Neocons New American Militarism Casino Capitalism Neocolonialism as Financial Imperialism War is Racket Inverted Totalitarism
Financial Crisis of 2008 as the Crisis of Neoliberalism and shift to neo-fascism Neoliberal corruption Financial Sector Induced Systemic Instability of Economy Corruption of Regulators "Fight with Corruption" as a smoke screen for neoliberal penetration into host countries   Deconstructing neoliberalism's definition of 'freedom' Resurgence of neofascism as reaction on crisis of neoliberalism and neoliberal globalization
Alternatives to Neo-liberalism Elite Theory Compradors Fifth column Color revolutions  Key Myths of Neoliberalism Audacious Oligarchy and "Democracy for Winners"
If Corporations Are People, They Are Psychopaths IMF as the key institution for neoliberal debt enslavement Gangster Capitalism Neoliberalism as a Cause of Structural Unemployment in the USA Neoliberalism and inequality Blaming poor and neoliberalism laziness dogma Corporatist Corruption: Systemic Fraud under Clinton-Bush-Obama Regime
Peak Cheap Energy and Oil Price Slump The Deep State Predator state Disaster capitalism Harvard Mafia Small government smoke screen Super Capitalism as Imperialism
The Great Transformation Monetarism fiasco Neoliberalism and Christianity Republican Economic Policy  In Goldman Sachs we trust: classic example of regulatory capture by financial system hackers Ronald Reagan: modern prophet of profligacy Milton Friedman -- the hired gun for Deification of Market
Libertarian Philosophy Media domination strategy Neoliberal Brainwashing -- Journalism in the Service of the Powerful Few YouTube on neoliberalism History of neoliberalism Humor Etc


Even though I agreed with him, I warned that whenever someone tried to raise the issue, he or she was accused of fomenting class warfare. “There’s class warfare, all right, "Mr. Buffett said, “but it’s my class, the rich class, that’s making war, and we’re winning."

- New York Times

Make no mistake, the neo-Liberal fuckers are just as bad as the Stalinists

May '68 and its Afterlives [Review]

GB: once a great cultured nation, now a poorly-educated gangster mafia state, ruled by oligarchs and inhabited by soccer hooligans

The Kremlin Stooge

Neoliberalism is a very interesting social system which by-and-large defeated and replaced both New Deal capitalism and socialism (and facilitated the dissolution of the USSR). It is the only social system in which the name of the system is somehow is prohibited by MSM to mention.  It is also unstable social system which led to impoverishment of lower 80% of the society and the rise of far right nationalism. After approximately 40 years of global dominance is shows cracks. Backlash against neoliberal globalization became really strong and demonstrated itself in Brexis, election of Trump is defeat of Italian referendum.

It can be defined as "socialism for the rich, feudalism for the poor" or, more correctly "Trotskyism for the rich"("Elites of all countries unite !"  instead of “Proletarians of all countries, Unite! ...). Due to the size the introduction was moved to a separate page --  Neoliberalism: an Introduction

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(Research materials to the paper Neoliberalism: an Introduction)

Neoliberalism Bulletin, 2017 Neoliberalism Bulletin, 2016 Neoliberalism Bulletin, 2015 Neoliberalism Bulletin, 2014 Neoliberalism Bulletin, 2013 Neoliberalism Bulletin, 2011 Neoliberalism Bulletin 2009 Neoliberalism Bulletin 2008

[Aug 21, 2017] The Future Of The Third World

Aug 21, 2017 | www.zerohedge.com

The Future Of The Third World Zero Hedge Tyler Durden Aug 20, 2017 9:00 PM 0 SHARES Authored by Jayant Bhandari via Acting-Man.com, Decolonization

The British Empire was the largest in history. At the end of World War II Britain had to start pulling out from its colonies. A major part of the reason was, ironically, the economic prosperity that had come through industrialization, massive improvements in transportation, and the advent of telecommunications, ethnic and religious respect, freedom of speech, and other liberties offered by the empire.

The colors represent the colonies of various nations in 1945, and the colonial borders of that time – click to enlarge.

After the departure of the British ! as well as the French, German, Belgians, and other European colonizers ! most of the newly "independent" countries suffered rapid decay in their institutions, stagnant economies, massive social strife, and a fall in standards of living. An age of anti-liberalism and tyranny descended on these former colonies. They rightly became known as third-world countries.

An armchair economist would have assumed that the economies of these former colonies, still very backward and at a very low base compared to Europe, would grow at a faster rate. Quite to the contrary, as time went on, their growth rates stayed lower than those of the West.

Socialism and the rise of dictators were typically blamed for this ! at least among those on the political Right. This is not incorrect, but it is a merely proximate cause. Clarity might have been reached if people had contemplated the reason why Marxism and socialism grew like weeds in the newly independent countries.

Was There a Paradigm Shift in the 1980s?

According to conventional wisdom, the situation changed after the fall of the socialist ringleader, the USSR, in the late 1980s. Ex-colonized countries started to liberalize their economies and widely accepted democracy, leading to peace, the spread of education and equality, the establishment of liberal, independent institutions. Massive economic growth ensued and was sustained over the past three decades. The "third world" was soon renamed "emerging markets."

Alas, this is a faulty narrative. Economic growth did pick up in these poor countries, and the rate of growth did markedly exceed that of the West, but the conventional narrative confuses correlation with causality. It tries to fit events to ideological preferences, which assume that we are all the same, that if Europeans could progress, so should everyone else, and that all that matters are correct incentives and appropriate institutions.

The beginning and end of the Soviet communist era in newspaper headlines. The overthrow of Kerensky's interim government was the start of Bolshevik rule. To be precise, the Bolsheviks took over shortly thereafter, when they disbanded the constituent assembly in in early 1918 and subsequently gradually did the same to all non-Bolshevik Soviets that had been elected. A little more than seven decades later, the last Soviet Bolshevik leader resigned. It is worth noting that by splitting the Russian Federation from the Ukraine and Belorussia, Yeltsin effectively removed Gorbachev from power – the latter was suddenly president of a country that no longer existed and chairman of a party that was declared illegal in Russia. [PT] – click to enlarge.

The claimed liberalization in the "emerging markets" after the collapse of the USSR did not really happen. Progress was always one step forward and two steps back. In some ways, government regulations and repression of businesses in the "emerging markets" have actually gotten much worse. Financed by increased taxes, governments have grown by leaps and bounds ! not for the benefit of society but for that of the ruling class ! and are now addicted to their own growth.

The ultimate underpinnings of the so-called emerging markets haven't changed. Their rapid economic progress during the past three decades ! a one-off event ! happened for reasons completely different from those assumed by most economists. The question is: once the effect of the one-off event has worn off, will emerging markets revert to the stagnation, institutional degradation, and tyranny that they had leaped into soon after the European colonizers left?

The One-Off Event: What Actually Changed in the 1980s

In the "emerging markets" (except for China) synchronized favorable economic changes were an anomaly. They resulted in large part from the new, extremely cheap telephony that came into existence (a result of massive cabling of the planet implemented in the 1980s) and the subsequent advent of the new technology of the internet. The internet enabled instantaneous transfer of technology from the West and as a consequence, unprecedented economic growth in "emerging markets."

Meanwhile, a real cultural, political, and economic renaissance started in China. It was an event so momentous that it changed the economic structure not just of China, but of the whole world. Because China is seen as a communist dictatorship, it fails to be fully appreciated and respected by intellectuals who are obsessed with the institution of democracy.

But now that the low-hanging fruit from the emergence of the internet and of China (which continues to progress) have been plucked, the "emerging markets" (except, again, for China) are regressing to their normal state: decay in their institutions, stagnant economies, and social strife. They should still be called the "third world."

There are those who hold China in contempt for copying Western technology, but they don't understand that if copying were so easy, Africa, the Middle East, Latin America, and South Asia would have done the same. They were, after all, prepared for progress by their colonial history.

European colonizers brought in the rule of law and significantly reduced the tribal warfare that was a matter of daily routine in many of the colonies ! in the Americas, Africa, the Middle East, and Asia. Britain and other European nations set up institutional structures that allowed for the accumulation of intellectual and financial capital. Western-style education and democracy were initiated. But this was helpful in a very marginal way.

What is Wrong with the Third World

For those who have not traveled and immersed themselves in formerly colonized countries, it is hard to understand that although there was piping for water and sewage in Roman days, it still isn't available for a very large segment of the world's population. The wheel has existed for more than 5,000 years, but a very large number of people continue to carry water in pots on their heads.

Lead piping supplying water to homes already existed in Roman days, 2000 years ago.

The Ljubljana Marshes Wheel, which is more than 5,000 years old

There are easily a billion or more people today, who have no concept of either the pipe or the wheel, even if they went to school. It is not the absence of technology or money that is stopping these people from starting to use some basic forms of technology. It is something else.

Sir Winston Churchill, the war-time Prime Minister of Britain, talking about the future of Palestine said:

"I do not admit that a great wrong has been done to the Red Indians of America or the black people of Australia. I do not admit that a wrong has been done to these people by the fact that a stronger race, a higher-grade race, a more worldly wise race has come in and taken their place."

Cigar-puffing British war-time PM Winston Churchill was as politically incorrect as they come. If he were alive today, he would probably be labeled the newest Hitler by the press and spend 90% of his time apologizing. Perhaps we shouldn't mention this, but there are many Churchill monuments dotted across Europe and one can be found in Washington DC as well (alert readers will notice that a decidedly non-triggered Washington Post fondly remembered Churchill as an "elder statesman" a mere 10 months ago; rest assured that won't stop the social justice warrior brigade if they decide to airbrush him out of history). Just to make this clear, your editor is not exactly the biggest fan of the man who traded away half of Europe to Stalin because he felt he could "trust the Soviet communist government" and who was clearly a tad too enamored of war, a characteristic Robert Kaplan described in his strident, amoral pro-war screed Warrior Politics: Why Leadership Demands a Pagan Ethos as follows: "Churchill's unapologetic warmongering arose not from a preference for war, but from a breast-beating Victorian sense of imperial destiny " Neither the breast-beating nor the sense of imperial destiny are really our thing, but we tip our hat to the man's utter lack of political correctness and his associated willingness to offend all and sundry with a nigh Trumpian alacrity and determination. [PT]

On Islam, he said:

"How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries! Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy. The effects are apparent in many countries. Improvident habits, slovenly systems of agriculture, sluggish methods of commerce, and insecurity of property exist "

Talking about India he famously said:

"I hate Indians. They are a beastly people with a beastly religion."

A remark often attributed to Churchill, although this remains unverified, has certainly stood the test of time so far:

"If independence is granted to India, power will go to the hands of rascals, rogues, freebooters; all Indian leaders will be of low caliber and men of straw. They will have sweet tongues and silly hearts. They will fight amongst themselves for power and India will be lost in political squabbles. A day will come when even air and water will be taxed in India."

Europeans of that time clearly knew that there was something fundamentally different between the West and the rest, and that the colonies would not survive without the pillars and the cement European management provided.

With the rise of political correctness this wisdom was erased from our common understanding – but it is something that may well return to haunt us in the near future, as the third world fails to fulfill expectations, while people who immigrate to Europe, Canada, Australia and the US from there fail to assimilate.

The Missing Underpinnings: Reason And All That Depends On It

Until now, the hope among people in the World Bank, the IMF, and other armchair intellectuals was that once the correct incentives were in place and institutions were organized, these structures imposed from on high would put the third world on a path to perpetual growth. They couldn't have been more wrong.

The cart has been put in front of the horse. It is institutions that emerge from the underlying culture, not the other way around. And cultural change is a process taking millennia, perhaps even longer. As soon as Europeans quit their colonies, the institutional structures they left started to crumble.

Alas, it takes a Ph.D. from an Ivy League college and a quarter of a million dollar salary at the World Bank or the IMF to not understand what the key issue with development economics and institutional failures is: the missing ingredient in the third world was and is the concept of objective, impartial reason – the basis of laws and institutions that protect individual rights.

This concept of reason took 2,500 years to develop and get infused into the culture, memes, and genes of Europeans ! a difficult process that, even in Europe, was never fully completed. European institutions were at their root products of this concept.

A justly famous quote by Thomas Paine (a prolific writer with a side job as a founding father and revolutionary). Paine was deeply suspicious of self-anointed authorities, both of the secular and clerical variety, who in turn regarded him as dangerous. His writings inter alia provoked a so-called "pamphlet war" in Britain (it would be best if all wars were conducted via pamphlets). [PT]

Despite massive efforts by missionaries, religious and secular, and of institutions imposed on poor countries, reason failed to get transmitted. Whatever marginal improvement was achieved over 200 to 300 years of colonization is therefore slowly but surely undone.

Without reason, subsidiary concepts such as equality before the law, compassion and empathy won't operate. Irrational societies simply cannot maintain institutions representing the rule of law and fairness. The consequence is that they cannot evolve or even maintain institutions the European colonizers left behind.

Any institutions imposed on them ! schools, armies, elections, national executives, banking and taxation systems ! must mutate to cater to the underlying irrationality and tribalism of the third world.

Western Institutions Have Mutated

Education has become a dogma in "emerging markets", not a tool; it floats non-assimilated in the minds of people lacking objective reason. Instead of leading to creativity and critical thinking, it is used for propaganda by demagogues.

Without impartial reason, democracy is a mere tribal, geographical concept, steeped in arrogance. All popular and "educated" rhetoric to the contrary, I can think of no country in the non-western world that did well after it adopted "democracy."

The spread of nationalism (which to a rational mind is about the commonality of values) has created crises by unifying people along tribal lines. The most visible example is provided by events in the Middle East, but the basic problem is the same in every South Asian and African country and in most of South America.

India, the geographical entity I grew up in, was rapidly collectivized under the flag and the national anthem. It has the potential to become the Middle East on steroids, once Hindutava (Hindu nationalism) has become deeply rooted in society.

Assessing the Current Predicament

In Burma, a whiff of democracy does not seem to have inhibited a genocide perpetrated by Buddhists against the Muslim Rohingya. Thailand (which was not colonized in a strictly political sense) has gone silent, but its crisis continues.

Turkey and Malaysia, among the better of these backward societies, have embarked on a path of rapid regression to their medieval pasts. South Africa, which not too long ago was considered a first-world country, got rid of apartheid only to end up with something even worse.

The same happened with Venezuela, which was among the richer countries of the world in the not-too-distant past. It is ready to implode, a fate that may befall Brazil as well one day. Pakistan, Bangladesh, Nepal, and East Timor are widely acknowledged to be in a mess, and are getting worse by the day.

Indonesia took a breather for a few years and is now once again in the thrall of fanaticism. India is the biggest democracy, so its problems are actively ignored by the Western press, but they won't be for long, as India continues to evolve toward a police state.

Botswana was seen as one of the countries with the fastest and longest-lasting economic growth. What was ignored was the fact that this rather large country has a very small population, which benefited hugely from diamonds and other natural resources. The top political layer of Botswana is still a leftover from the British. The local culture continues to corrode what was left by them, and there are clear signs that Botswana is past its peak.

Part of the central business district in Gaborone, Botswana. Long time readers may recall an article we posted about 2.5 years ago: " Botswana – Getting it Right in Africa ". We are not sure if much has changed since then, but it is worth recalling that Botswana started out as the third-poorest country in Africa when it became independent in 1966 and is today one the richest. The very small population (by African standards) combined with the large income the country obtains from diamond mining no doubt played a role in this, but being rich in natural resources means very little per se . Botswana never fell for Marxism. When the country gained independence, its political leadership adopted democracy and free markets and never looked back. Botswana is a very homogenous society in terms of religious and tribal affiliations, which differentiates the country from most other former colonial territories in Africa. From our personal – admittedly by now a bit dated – experience, we can state that Botswana is the only African country in which one is unlikely to encounter any corruption – not even the lowliest government minion will ask for bribes as far as we could tell (in many African countries, officials begin demanding bribes the moment one wants to cross the border). Considering all that, we are slightly more hopeful about Botswana, but it is not an island. Deteriorating conditions in neighboring countries may well prove contagious at some point. [PT]

Papua New Guinea was another country that was doing reasonably well before the Australians left. It is now rapidly regressing to its tribal, irrational, and extremely violent norms, where for all practical purposes rape is not even considered a crime.

Conclusion: A Vain Hope

The world may recognize most of the above, but it sees these countries' problems as isolated events that can be corrected by further impositions of Western institutions, under the guidance of the UN or some such international (and therefore "non-colonialist") organization.

Amusingly, our intellectual climate ! a product of political correctness ! is such that the third world is nowadays seen as the backbone of humanity's future economic growth. Unfortunately, so-called emerging markets are probably headed for a chaotic future. The likeliest prospect is that these countries will continue to cater to irrational forces, particularly tribalism, and that they will consequently cease to exist, disintegrating into much smaller entities.

As the tide of economic growth goes out with the final phase of plucking the free gift of internet technology nearing its end, their problems will resurface rapidly – precisely when the last of those who were trained under the colonial system are sent to the "dustbin of history".

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doctor10 , Aug 20, 2017 9:06 PM

Its all about ideas-and which ones are adopted by society.

The USA has a very poor prognosis-has yet to shed its 20th century Bolshevick Baggage.

Occident Mortal -> doctor10 , Aug 20, 2017 9:17 PM

It's mostly down to culture.

Some people are more culturally predisposed to exploring and trying new things.

If you believe the future will be better than the past then you will be prepared to work to improve things, if you believe the world is in terminal decline and that the glory days were some time ago, either when gods or prophets did all the important stuff or when your locale was more prosperous then you will not be as encouraged to work on improvements and you will thend to hoarde meagre resources and live by thrift with minimal expenditure.

Oracle of Kypseli -> Occident Mortal , Aug 20, 2017 10:00 PM

I think that colonialism is in play again as the advance societies are starving for resources and will invest in these countries in exchange. This will change the trend into better education, better jobs and everything that comes with it for the middle classes but perpetuate slave wages for the uneducated masses.

The world is not changing but morphing. It's the nomenclature that changes for the sake of political correcteness and feel good predisposition.

DjangoCat -> Oracle of Kypseli , Aug 20, 2017 10:15 PM

The history of western investment in third world resources does not make for a pretty read. Look now at what has happened just in the last months of a major silver mine being closed in a small Central American country, where the local manager has been accused of murdering protestors and objectors to the mines presence in their midst, destroying the countryside.

The CIA seems to have had, as it's primary objective, the job of clearing the way for US and British, and Canadian industrial, infrastructure and mining interests to come in and take the resources. A good payoff to the man in power greases the wheels, and the people get nothing but a degraded environment and mammoth debt.

The next step is to restructure the debt, in the process privatizing state infrastructure at cut rate prices. This is nothing but mass rape and pillage.

Wake up.

Unknown User -> DjangoCat , Aug 20, 2017 10:54 PM

England never freed its colonies. It simply changed the means of enslavement from physical to financial.

Eeyores Enigma -> DjangoCat , Aug 21, 2017 12:38 AM

Too true DC but that truth doesn't work well with "American Exceptionalism" so we get articles like this one.

Ayreos -> Eeyores Enigma , Aug 21, 2017 3:57 AM

"American exceptionalism" is just a small-time ugly consequence of the actual phenomenon: good old imperialism, taught by the British. And there's nothing wrong with it. All European countries have accepted NATO and american influence on them willingly. They have all recognized and validated American exceptionalism themselves. As subjects of an empire they now complain that the Emperor is quickly losing its clothes,

Son of Thor -> Ayreos , Aug 21, 2017 6:43 AM

I'm making over $7k a month working part time. I kept hearing other people tell me how much money they can make online so I decided to look into it. Well, it was all true and has totally changed my life. This is what I do http://disq.us/url?url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.jobproplan.com%3A68UoF1LgzM-Yo3S...

Diatom -> DjangoCat , Aug 21, 2017 8:53 AM

John Perkins books people...

Crazy Or Not -> Occident Mortal , Aug 21, 2017 5:38 AM

True you have to have "Ambition & Will" for change to stomach the difficult period of creating that change. (eg Gandhi, US independence etc).

...A major part of the reason was, ironically, the economic prosperity that had come through industrialization, massive improvements in transportation, and the advent of telecommunications, ethnic and religious respect, freedom of speech...

This however while a factor is also bias. Post WWII no weapons (other than US) were permitted in Pacific war region and a decisive factor in limiting the influence of the Brits in their pre war colonies. Post colonials also saw war as a way out of colonial rule, using US leverage to oust Brit influence.

edit - probably BritBob will go apoplectic with this? Cue "Rule Britania"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kRwj1SmPF5w

...and other jingoistic bollocks ;)

Omen IV -> Occident Mortal , Aug 21, 2017 9:10 AM

"institutions emerge from the underlying culture, not the other way around"

There is no solution to an average IQ of 70 and the culture that results from that fact.

The only solution is $1,000 in return for a tubal ligation or vasectomy - 1,000,000 per day until completed

Oh regional Indian -> doctor10 , Aug 20, 2017 9:19 PM

That zionist bastard churchill was not prognosticating about india, he was merely telling the world what they were going to do, ie., leave the country in the hands of rouges and rascals.... who have ruled and looted and destroyed India for their city of london masters ever since.

It's the joos who hate indians and of course churchill wasa closet joo...

https://aadivaahan.wordpress.com/2010/07/13/whither-india/

SethPoor -> Oh regional Indian , Aug 20, 2017 9:50 PM

Are closet Jews circumcised?

Koba the Dread -> SethPoor , Aug 21, 2017 1:41 AM

If they remain in the closet, they are certainly circumspect.

buttmint -> Oh regional Indian , Aug 21, 2017 12:41 AM

...all ZHers owe themselves trek to Mother India, quite a head turning experience. One comes to appreciate the West's "can-do philosophy."

This approach to problem solving is in small measure in India. India's fine burgeoning medical capital in Chennai (old Madraas) is a testament to talented Indians being schooled in Occidental universities and then returned to Mother India to set up shop. In many ways, India will lead the West OUT of their self-imposed medical nemesis. There is much progress in India. All Indians love to ORATE. You betcha, they stand on the corner and begin lecturing. A much better approach than USA's 535 idiots and grifters that make up the US Congress.

My own hunch is that India will eclipse the remarkable progress of China. Stay tuned as the world squirms.....

Koba the Dread -> buttmint , Aug 21, 2017 1:45 AM

Hunches are like hunchbacks: I don't want either one of them to ring my bells. After over fifty years of visiting and doing business in India, I go no more. While I love the people there, the country has become an abyss I no longer wish to stare into.

Oh regional Indian -> Koba the Dread , Aug 21, 2017 2:54 AM

Unfortunately, it has become quite the living hell....

Western model of development + rampant corruption + poor engineering standards have made this a hotch-potch of a rending screech of a marriage between east and west....

Ayreos -> Oh regional Indian , Aug 21, 2017 3:51 AM

Perhaps it's time to admit Indians got a chance to take their country back and move their society forward, seen through nationalist Gandhi, but Indians neither want nor understand the concept of moving forward.

Without the "western model of development" there would be no development in India for millennia.

Kobe Beef -> Ayreos , Aug 21, 2017 5:20 AM

Without the Aryan colonization/admixture of many millennia ago, there would never have been any civilization on the Indian Subcontinent.

The Second Aryan invasion (ie British colonialism) left barely enough behind to last more than the coming century.

The differing subspecies of hominids are neither fungible nor equal . But there is huge amount of paper profits to be derived from pretending otherwise. There is a lot of ruin to be extracted from the Commons. At home, The African Equality Racket has garnered trillions so far, with no sign of stopping. Abroad, The Afghan Equality Racket has garnered trillions so far, with no sign of stopping. No signs of progress with either hominid population. And yet, we still have people arguing that culture is somehow separate from biology.

But back to the topic at hand..

Prediction: India returns to barbarism and warring superstitions.

misnomer00 -> Kobe Beef , Aug 21, 2017 7:09 AM

Aryan is a word found only in sanskrit and no other indo euro language so you can go and suck some aryan dick

Kobe Beef -> misnomer00 , Aug 21, 2017 10:17 AM

Yes, Sanskrit is an Aryan language. There are a whole host of others, owing to The White Man's far-ranging conquest of primitive hominids. Or homos, in your case, cocksucker. Maybe your great great 15 grandmother appeared human enough to serve as a concubine.

And the Buddha had blue eyes.

Yet here you are trying to insult a White Man,

on the White Man's tech,

in the White Man's language.

Bixnood, faggot. You don't matter, and never did.

Another regiona... -> Kobe Beef , Aug 21, 2017 1:05 PM

Sanskrit is an aryan language? Then explain to me one thing. The rig veda (the oldest agreed upon text written in sanskrit) is centered around worshipping the river saraswati. And the river saraswati dried upon before/around 1900 B.C and aryans 'came' to india in 1700 B.C. Second....if sanskrit was foreign in origin, why havent we found anything equivalent to sanskrit in the 'aryan' nazi homelands? Indus valley civilisation had indoor plumbing, flush toilets, planned streets, sewage systems that took sewage away from individual homes out of the city. No civilisation that i am aware of had that at that time. Dont believe me? Read up about indus valley civilisation. They had it right until 'aryans' came. And then india went back to mud huts and shitting on streets.

As for buddha having blue eyes. turquoise was used to represent ancient famous people as it could be used to represent 'eyes' as it looked like 'eyes'. Thats why torqouise was used. And torqoise only comes in blue and white not in black and white even if it does its very rare. Blue and white is more easily available. That is why it was used. So it doesnt necessairly mean buddha or other famouse people's pictures or statues who had blue torqoise representing their eyers.....had blue eyes in real life.

asstrix -> Ayreos , Aug 21, 2017 5:21 AM

The western way of moving forward is about consuming, using up resources. Once the resources are gone, they have to find a new place to plunder, in order to again move forward.

The eastern culture is in general about living in a sustainable manner, in harmony with nature. Their way is more about trade and not war. This is why they got conquered so easily.

Now I can't say which is better. Plundering and moving forward or staying put and living in peace with nature. My only hope is that the easterners have enough of the western values already in them to not repeat the old mistakes again.

Another regiona... -> Oh regional Indian , Aug 21, 2017 4:16 AM

Have you read the email i sent you?

Another regiona... -> Oh regional Indian , Aug 21, 2017 2:50 AM

I sent a very important email to your email address 66zoltan, read it. Trust me its worth your time.

Tallest Skil -> doctor10 , Aug 20, 2017 9:40 PM

Reminder that Europe (((gave up))) the entire colored portion of the map above because Germany wanted a land corridor to East Prussia.

Radical Marijuana -> doctor10 , Aug 21, 2017 12:08 AM

The main obstacle to adopting superior memes is that those require Superior murder systems to back them up ...

Son of Captain Nemo , Aug 20, 2017 9:32 PM

"...the hope among people in the World Bank, the IMF, and other armchair intellectuals was that once the correct incentives were in place and institutions were organized, these structures imposed from on high would put the third world on a path to perpetual growth. They couldn't have been more wrong..."

Anyone who tracked the likes of Hans Adler a German/Brazilian Jew who worked for the World Bank in the 60s and 70s and who I studied under at George Mason University in the 80s knows that the "Latifundio/Minifundio" land tenure structure was the mechanism and means to exploit the gold fillings "literally" out of the mouths of the natives that owned and tended their lands throughout Latin America from the 40s through the 80s doing what the World Bank and IMF always has done it's best to get the multinationals in to take over the most important arable land for exploitation through "incentivized" loan deals that ended up robbing them of all their ownership for worthless "shit paper"!... Rinse and repeat for the "model" used everywhere else especially Middle Eastern oil.

John Perkins solidified it in his work "Confessions of an Economic Hit Man" 25 years later...

Too little too late I'm afraid. Only wish there were many more like him!

DemandSider -> Son of Captain Nemo , Aug 21, 2017 1:05 AM

I only wish Perkins had explained the role of the dollar. This book,

'The Hidden Hand of American Hegemony' 'Petrodollar Recycling and International Markets' explains that better. He does explain how The IMF and World Bank keep them in line with debt, though.

The Cooler King , Aug 20, 2017 9:23 PM

"There are easily a billion or more people today, who have no concept of either the pipe or the wheel"

But they can balance a mean jug of water on their head, which makes make them perfect candidates to GET RICH buying cryptos!

Moe Hamhead -> The Cooler King , Aug 20, 2017 9:30 PM

Obummer removed Churchill's bust from the Oval office! He was offended by his graven image. I recall that it has since been brought back.

DjangoCat -> The Cooler King , Aug 20, 2017 10:06 PM

Read em and weep.

Advoc8tr -> The Cooler King , Aug 21, 2017 12:40 AM

Make that a billion + 1 ... cryptos are the new wheel, pipe, internet.

Rebelrebel7 , Aug 20, 2017 9:31 PM

It looks like someone put the teachers in charge of Wikipedia! It used to be a very accurate source of information! I have recently been finding extreme errors on it and never have until about a month ago! I believe that universities feel threatened by It! This info please chart is correct and the Wikipedia chart is incorrect!

https://www.infoplease.com/history-and-government/us-government/composit...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Party_divisions_of_United_States_Congresses

Haitian Snackout -> Rebelrebel7 , Aug 20, 2017 10:34 PM

It is and always has been a front. But like many other things, it contains the lie and the truth together. The lie at the top of the page and the truth at the bottom. See if you can take it from there. That's the only clue I will offer today. Best of luck!

Rebelrebel7 -> Haitian Snackout , Aug 20, 2017 11:25 PM

Well, it wasn't that way previously, however, the lie on top and truth on the bottom would be congruent with the way that the establishment and media operate, without question!

Koba the Dread -> Rebelrebel7 , Aug 21, 2017 1:50 AM

Pal, if you never found errors in Wikipedia until a month ago, I must presume that you started to learn to read about a month ago.

Question: If one is dead dumb stupid and ignorant, how would one know whether a Wikipedia article is true or false?

Farmerz , Aug 20, 2017 9:30 PM

I'm making over 7k a month selling new lead free head jugs to turd worlders.

Jason T , Aug 20, 2017 9:49 PM

WOW... excellent post!

TuPhat -> Jason T , Aug 20, 2017 11:20 PM

I agree, except for the part about the internet being responsible for wealth. That part is garbage. Internet wealth is non productive and eventually a drain on any economy.

Koba the Dread -> TuPhat , Aug 21, 2017 1:53 AM

How can you say that. Some toad earlier in the comments said he is making 7k a month from the internet. Doubting him is like doubting a Wikipedia article.

Entitled_TD , Aug 20, 2017 9:56 PM

Patronizing views on these "3rd world" areas or whatever you may call them...Whatever you say and no matter if you are 100% right about the differences in culture, there is no escaping the fact that these people were "fine" before europeans came along and fucked them up. Cultural relativism is 100% true in this case. Doesn't matter if they were raping babies or whatever, that is their culture and has nothing to do with ours. It was our bullshit christianity and culture that gave us the bullshit rationale to destroy whatever existing cultures we found. So what if they wouldn't have come up with the wheel, plumbing, or the internet - that gave europeans no right to do whatever they wanted wherever they wanted. Hard truth for you pos ZHers to swallow, but no way around it. And the funny thing is now you have the gall to say that these other cultures are destroying ours! HAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Payback is a Bitch!

armageddon addahere -> Entitled_TD , Aug 20, 2017 11:27 PM

So you must be happy we corrected the error by leaving, more than 50 years ago. And now they have gone back to being "fine".

Advoc8tr -> Entitled_TD , Aug 21, 2017 12:49 AM

How do you figure that conclusion ? In THEIR cultures 'might makes right' so by invading and subjugating "we" were playing by their rules. It is hypocritical on our part but only because we deny our history and the reality of superiority (in terms of industrialisation and military strength etc) in preference for politically correct feel-good lies.

Yen Cross , Aug 20, 2017 9:59 PM

Hopefully Bill Gates fossilizes in his doomsday bunker.

DjangoCat , Aug 20, 2017 10:02 PM

Read "The Confessions of an Economic Hit Man". IMF, USAID and BIS have worked in unison to rape and pillage the "Third World"

This is not a problem of the colonies falling apart, it is a problem of deliberate overselling of debt with a side of mandated privatisation, followed by ruin and sale of government assets, followed by grinding povery and tax to pay the interest on the ever climbing debt.

This is a system of overt debt slavery disguised as aid.

I think this piece is white wash propaganda. Tylers??

Koba the Dread -> DjangoCat , Aug 21, 2017 2:00 AM

Well said, Cat! The occupying nations left a cadre of native criminals behind to enslave their countrymen. The cadre of native criminals take their cut and pass the rest uphill to London, Paris or New York. They call it "Independence"! Sort of like what happened in the new United States of America where farmers and artisans fought for freedom from Great Britain and New York, Massachusetts and Virginia aristocrats took over the country.

Scanderbeg , Aug 20, 2017 10:28 PM

Of course he omits the most important reason. It doesn't need to be this complicated.

They are simply dumber than whites and E. Asians. Inbreeding is common in ME countries and Pakistan for example has an average IQ of around 70. In Sub Saharan Africa it is only 65 which means they are effectively retarded.

I read a story recently that a tanker overturned on the road in Pakistan and several hundred people were blown up while trying to siphon the gas.

Now that's fucking stupid. Something like that would never happen in a Western country.

Every presumption of SJW's is based on insane lie that all groups and races are intrinsicly equal intellectually. This is clearly not the case though of course there are some exceptions.

The left wanted to crucify the geneticist James Watson merely for suggesting this was the case.

Oh regional Indian -> Scanderbeg , Aug 20, 2017 10:40 PM

You need to read up on a litle history my friend..... your post is ignorant at so many levels, it's laughable. The number of highly advanced concepts that were stolen from the east over the centuries is legion. India and the ME were the root of all great kowledge, astrology, astronomy, metallurgy (Damascus steel came from India), mathematics (ZEro came from India)......

Whites were shitting on the streets and eating their dead not 300 years ago.

Jhonny come lately with a gun, get it? And all your scientific wonders are toxic to the world and humans. All of them, including your "medicine"....

Scanderbeg -> Oh regional Indian , Aug 20, 2017 11:08 PM

We don't need any tips from people who are still figuring out how to poo in the loo dindu. Come back and complain about western medicine when you have a real problem and you'll be begging for it. The third world is lucky we humor them. The insane population growth is because of bleeding hearts supplying food and medicine to places like Africa. The west has been dominating the world and international trade since the late 1400's. Most technology is spread through diffusion and the west proved to be the best and most open society to synthesize new ideas. That being said western culture is based in the Greco Roman intellectual tradition and Christianity. It has nothing to do with the your barbaric country which the British defeated and colonized easily.

IQ differences by race and region are a scientific fact and that data is easily available. Even India which is considered "smart" by most laymen is around 80 where as the average on Western countries is around 100.

[Aug 21, 2017] The Holy Roman Empire was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806.

Aug 21, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

@Madderhatter67 | Aug 20, 2017 4:46:05 PM | 4

James

The 1648 Treaty of Westphalia dissolved the Holy Roman Empire. (H.R.E.) Including all its institutions. Replacing it with a different model. Replacing parts was solve anything. It's a systemic problem. Revolution, the process of turning over is required.

I believe the new model will come from Eurasia.

Piotr Berman | Aug 20, 2017 5:39:22 PM | 6
Wikipedia: The Holy Roman Empire (Latin: Sacrum Imperium Romanum; German: Heiliges Römisches Reich) was a multi-ethnic complex of territories in central Europe that developed during the Early Middle Ages and continued until its dissolution in 1806.

The largest territory of the empire after 962 was the Kingdom of Germany, though it also came to include the Kingdom of Bohemia, the Kingdom of Burgundy, the Kingdom of Italy, and numerous other territories.

[Aug 21, 2017] We are witness to whether multi-national corporations and their supra-national institutions will continue to rule or if mankind will survive their break up.

Notable quotes:
"... Donald Trump and his family have been contained; encircled by retired military and Goldman Sachs associates. However, Globalists and Neocons can't help themselves with their deep-seated contempt of the little people plus the need for war for profit. ..."
"... Tearing down the symbols that reunited the nation after the last Civil War is a sure bet way to start a new one. ..."
Aug 21, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

virgile | Aug 20, 2017 3:06:32 PM | 3

The Neocons Are Pushing the USA and the Rest of the World Towards a Dangerous Crisis
The Saker

VietnamVet | Aug 20, 2017 8:43:01 PM | 14

@3 Thanks.

Words do matter. The Saker is about the best observer of the emerging multi-polar world. The USA has been dumped in the trash. We are witness to whether multi-national corporations and their supra-national institutions will continue to rule or if mankind will survive their break up.

Donald Trump and his family have been contained; encircled by retired military and Goldman Sachs associates. However, Globalists and Neocons can't help themselves with their deep-seated contempt of the little people plus the need for war for profit.

Tearing down the symbols that reunited the nation after the last Civil War is a sure bet way to start a new one.

[Aug 21, 2017] If you're Canadian, bend over and grab your ankles.

Aug 21, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

spudski | Aug 20, 2017 8:25:35 PM | 13

"After years without result, with days to the deadline, Canada's negotiator, Simon Reisman, who Chrystia Freeland recalls in the fond tones Hillary Clinton uses for Henry Kissinger, walked. Why? Because the U.S. wouldn't agree to a "mechanism" that superceded U.S. law. Ottawa was grim. Without a deal, we'd perish. The U.S. negotiator said: Canada needs a "face-saving gesture." President Reagan told his team to get creative.

They did. They didn't replace the U.S.'s unilateral right to impose costs on Canadian stuff with a neutral process to decide what's fair. They created a process to decide only whether the U.S. was accurately enforcing its own rules. That left everything as it was but called it dispute resolution."

http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/08/minister-freeland-propagates-neoliberal-myth-free-trades-benefits

https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2017/08/19/us-signals-trumps-buy-american-agenda-non-negotiable-in-nafta-talks.html

John Gilberts | Aug 20, 2017 9:30:54 PM | 15

Re Spudski - 13 and the NAFTA reneg: Good thing Chrystia Freeland and Justin Trudeau have the very best advising them...

Taking Summers' Advice Defies Logic
http://www.torontosun.com/2015/04/08/taking-summers-advice-defies-logic

[Aug 21, 2017] As the crisis unfolds there will be talk about giving the UN some role in resolving international problems.

Aug 21, 2017 | www.lettinggobreath.com

psychohistorian | Aug 21, 2017 12:01:32 AM | 27

My understanding of the UN is that it is the High Court of the World where fealty is paid to empire that funds most of the political circus anyway...and speaking of funding or not, read the following link and lets see what PavewayIV adds to the potential sickness we are sleep walking into.

As the UN delays talks, more industry leaders back ban on weaponized AI

[Aug 21, 2017] The impetus to grow and gain size and influence is essential to any political party, and sustaining this inertia overrides the thinking and living of the individual in favor of the coherence of the party itself as a mass;

Simone Weil definitely does not understands dialectics.
Notable quotes:
"... "Political parties are a marvellous mechanism which, on the national scale, ensures that not a single mind can attend to the effort of perceiving, in public affairs, what is good, what is just, what is true. As a result – except for a very small number of fortuitous coincidences – nothing is decided, nothing is executed, but measures that run contrary to the public interest, to justice and to truth." ..."
Aug 21, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Charles R | Aug 20, 2017 5:44:06 PM | 7

I have used Simone Weil's " On the Abolition of All Political Parties " in a philosophy class. Her argument, as I'll try to summarize: the impetus to grow and gain size and influence is essential to any political party, and sustaining this inertia overrides the thinking and living of the individual in favor of the coherence of the party itself as a mass; thus, we must eliminate the political party.

My students found this "contradictory" or "stupid." People, they tell me, will naturally form groups, and because of this the group will operate just like she's claiming parties do, so she's not really saying how to get rid of this. I point out that she's very deliberate to talk about fluids versus crystals, between how things form associations that are fluid , and thus on some issues folks connect on on others they disconnect without the pressure to sustain these changes as a stable identity !she points to literary circles as groups that ebb and flow with members and associations that do not conform to the logic of the political party. These are distinct from associations that are crystal , where aggregation and homogeneity and stable arrangement are more important for the whole to remain itself. So, I take it my students, despite getting up in one class, walking around campus, and sitting down in another class, believe that there is little to no difference in one collection over another so long as the reason for the collection is what defines the collection . (How they take their intuition as expressed in my class and think through intersectionality as expressed in another class is something I was trying, through conversations with them, to work out, because I find it helps me when I find my own intuitions about all of this so very different from theirs.) But I think the implicit part of their reasoning was that all of this dealt with force, the force they feel inside as pressure to conform on the outside with others, who are at this point for them undeniably also undergoing these inward pressures to regulate their outward expression.

But then I point out that music, or sports, or lovemaking, or dance, or a lot of other ordinary things we do enjoyably with others, show us how to form and move through groups because we share a similar drive or interest in something outside of both of us, and they seem to get that idea. I find myself coming back to this website just to read the comments, because I find it a refreshing change of pace, a host of interesting exchanges, and a good opportunity to face the perennial challenge of sitting within conflict, finding reasonable the disagreeing voice, and owning what makes myself uncomfortable with strangers.

If enough people share the desire to talk about things from conflicting perspectives, the conversations continue, but as people move in and out, the conversation itself changes and evolves. To shut down the conversation is to lock it in place, to keep it rigid and total. To walk away from the conversation in good spirits, is to hope that it will continue, in some spirit, some form, resembling how it was going before. To walk away from the conversation in bad spirits, is to hope it will change into something that either once was !in which case it can't naturally and so only through artifice! or should be !in which case, being based on the limitations of our own perspective, won't be open for the wonderful possibility of something entirely new and inconceivable happening in a conversation.

I sometimes wish politics were just conversations. I found Hannah Arendt to be one of the few thinkers who set the terms in such a way that I was liberated. Leftist thinking taught me a lot about fashion, I didn't realize until later. Paleoconservative thinking taught me a lot about how much either gets suppressed or gathers dust in the libraries, and yet still smolders underneath the haunted foundations of our civilization. I come back to Zhuangzi over and over again. I come back to these rambling conversations under heaven, over earth, within the noosphere.

But eventually the conversation does end, and you have to hammer a nail to keep the walls up. Winter is coming. Wood needs cutting. Grains need grounding. Papers need grading.

PavewayIV | Aug 20, 2017 10:19:52 PM | 17

Charles R@7 - Well said, Charles R. I loved this quote from Weil's book in one of the reviews of On the Abolition of All Political Parties:

"Political parties are a marvellous mechanism which, on the national scale, ensures that not a single mind can attend to the effort of perceiving, in public affairs, what is good, what is just, what is true. As a result – except for a very small number of fortuitous coincidences – nothing is decided, nothing is executed, but measures that run contrary to the public interest, to justice and to truth."

Not sure I'm sold on eliminating them - this is another call to kill some of the existing victims in a futile effort to eliminate an infectious disease that permeates public affairs. It will irritate power- and control-seeking psychopaths temporarily. Political parties are just a convenient 'easy' button for them.

US society's problem is a child-like belief in some kind of magical innate integrity of organizations that feed us public affairs 'information' despite those organizations being obvious targets for exploitation. Part of psychopath's successful control and exploitation of the public is to obscure the fact that they are being controlled and exploited.

It's lonely here in tin-foil hat land, but I'm starting to see more visitors. I think our 'Taco Tuesday' promotion is starting to pay dividends!

psychohistorian | Aug 20, 2017 10:49:30 PM | 20

@ PavewayIV with his Taco Tuesday Tin Foil Hat promotion in response to Charles R@7 comment about political parties

I am reminded of the movie "Being There" with Peter Sellers as Chauncy Gardner. Chauncy Gardner has spent enough of his life inside so that when forced out on the street he carries a TV remote control and tries to change the channel when the situation starts to get dicey......Unfortunately, I see most Americans responding like Chauncy Gardner and keep banging on their TV remotes hoping the reality they see changes.

Does Waco Wednesday follow Taco Tuesday? or are you staying with a food meme?

[Aug 21, 2017] Debunking the Myth of Free Speech

Notable quotes:
"... Consider broadcast television, which was a vastly more important political force in the 1960s and 1970s than now. The three major networks, along with the two national news magazines, Time and Newsweek, shaped mass culture. And they all stayed tightly within a relatively narrow spectrum of civic views and social norms. ..."
"... Formal and informal censorship of television was extensive. By happenstance, I once met Dan Rowan of Rowan's and Martin's Laugh-In, which ran from 1968 to 1973. He described some of their regular fights with censors. I wish I recalled the details (this was over 30 years ago) but the impression I had was that Laugh-In was seen as being close enough to being transgressive that every show was reviewed before airing. Histories of censorship of television make clear that most of it was done by the broadcasters themselves, some of it presumably based on an understanding of what the FCC would tolerate, but also based on the advertisers' view of what the mass audience and mass values were. ..."
Aug 21, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com
August 20, 2017 by Yves Smith Thanks to a huge and well-organized police presence, as well as strict limits imposed on the participants, follow-up to the "Unite the Right" white supremacist event in Charlottesville, the "Boston Free Speech" rally on Saturday demonstrated that the community wasn't about to cut extreme right wing agitators much slack :

"We probably had 40,000 people out here standing tall against hatred and bigotry in our city, and that's a good feeling," [Boston Police] Commissioner [William] Evans said.

The permit covered only 100 people. The city prohibited anyone carrying weapons, bats or other potential bludgeons, such as sticks to carry posters, glass containers and cans, sharp objects, and shields from coming to Boston Common. There were some small scale skirmishes and the police arrested 33, mainly for disorderly conduct.

The far right participants did not get to finish their agenda. The event broke up early as, per the Wall Street Journal , "a huge throng of counterprotesters approached Boston Common."

Some will contend, as the organizers of the event have, that their "free speech right" was violated. Does this claim stand up to scrutiny?

Contrary to popular mythology, the right to speak has always had limits in the US. In fact, we live in what amounts to a free speech Wild West compared to what existed in my childhood, and this isn't due just to the Citizens United decision.

Consider broadcast television, which was a vastly more important political force in the 1960s and 1970s than now. The three major networks, along with the two national news magazines, Time and Newsweek, shaped mass culture. And they all stayed tightly within a relatively narrow spectrum of civic views and social norms.

Broadcast spectrum has always been explicitly recognized to be a commons, yet it has never been a "free speech" zone. From Michael O'Malley, Associate Professor of History and Art History, George Mason University:

Like radio broadcasters, television broadcasters operated under the authority of the FCC, the Federal Communications Commission. The FCC was established by Franklin Roosevelt with the assumption that the airwaves, the broadcast "bandwidth," belonged to the people, much in the same way as, for example, federal forest land belongs to the people. Broadcasters applied for a license to use a section of that public property, a specific frequency.

Formal and informal censorship of television was extensive. By happenstance, I once met Dan Rowan of Rowan's and Martin's Laugh-In, which ran from 1968 to 1973. He described some of their regular fights with censors. I wish I recalled the details (this was over 30 years ago) but the impression I had was that Laugh-In was seen as being close enough to being transgressive that every show was reviewed before airing. Histories of censorship of television make clear that most of it was done by the broadcasters themselves, some of it presumably based on an understanding of what the FCC would tolerate, but also based on the advertisers' view of what the mass audience and mass values were.

But what about "free speech" in the context of the Boston right-wing rally? Let us turn over the mike to Neil W, who weighed in via e-mail:

Charlottesville was not an exercise in free speech. There's no such thing as free speech. Seriously. It's a myth. An absolute tolerance for speech is neither defined in our Constitution nor our jurisprudence. There's protected speech. And there's speech that is not protected. Look at the list of types of speech defined in law as not being protected.

Do you see the commonality in there? It's harm . Speech that is not protected by law ultimately creates or perpetuates harm . Hate speech creates harm . Stanley Fish, discussing a Jeremy Waldron thesis:

"The very point of hate speech, [Waldron] says, "is to negate the implicit assurance that a society offers to the members of vulnerable groups ! that they are accepted as a matter of course, along with everyone else." Purveyors of hate "aim to undermine this assurance, call it in question, and taint it with visible expressions of hatred, exclusion and contempt." What the Vice video, and most of the other Charlottesville coverage, shows is an exercise in hate speech.

Hate speech creates harm that is arguably more egregious than any related to the types of speech in the above list. And yet, our political mythology demands that hate speech be tolerated regardless of the obvious and well documented harm it causes because there is some mysterious greater harm awaiting us should we act to extend to all of our citizens the implicit assurance incorporated into our Constitution and protections from harm found in our jurisprudence. Other countries have hate speech laws. The United States is long past due.

We don't know what might have been said at the Boston event, particularly since the roster of speakers was changing up to right before the event. But we have clues.

Even though one of the six organizers, John Medlar, said he was a libertarian and denounced hate groups, at a minimum, scheduling this event as a follow-up to Charlottesville wasn't consistent with that branding. Even the people planning protests on a clearly unrelated issue, the firing of Google's James Damore, postponed demonstrations that were also originally set for this weekend to distance them from Charlottesville.

And it looks like the "Boston Free Speech" leaders, whether intentionally or not, were trying to have it both ways. From Boston.com last week :

John Medlar, who says he is an organizer for Boston Free Speech, the group behind the rally, told Boston.com that his group is not associated with the white supremacists who marched with tiki torches in Charlottesville last weekend. But the group has said in comments on a Facebook post that there would be "overlap" in attendance between the two rallies .

Boston Free Speech posted an updated list Friday of the rally's speakers, which includes Joe Biggs, who worked until recently for Infowars, the website founded by conspiracy theorist Alex Jones; and Kyle Chapman, known on the internet as "Based Stickman" and founder of the Fraternal Order of Alt-Knights, which is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as a "new Alt-Right group of street fighters."

Some speakers initially billed for the rally, such as Gavin McInnes, a former Vice Media co-founder and founder of the Proud Boys, a far-right group, dropped out following a Monday press conference by Boston officials condemning the event.

As Micheal Olenick pointed out, both France and Germany have laws against hate speech, yet they are not stymied robust political debate, nor the rise of far-right candidates like Marine Le Pen.

Although US exceptionalism means we are loath to look overseas and crib from successful policies implemented elsewhere, the time is overdue for us to catch up here. City officials implemented an anti-hate-speech standard in Boston in a clumsy manner. We might as well do it right.

[Aug 20, 2017] Bannon Was Set for a Graceful Exit. Then Came Charlottesville.

Aug 20, 2017 | www.msn.com

With little process to speak of, tensions over policy swelled. Ideological differences devolved into caustic personality clashes. Perhaps nowhere was the mutual disgust thicker than between Mr. Bannon and Mr. Trump's daughter and son-in-law.

Mr. Bannon openly complained to White House colleagues that he resented how Ms. Trump would try to undo some of the major policy initiatives that he and Mr. Trump agreed were important to the president's economic nationalist agenda, like withdrawing from the Paris climate accords. In this sense, he was relieved when Mr. Kelly took over and put in place a structure that kept other aides from freelancing.

"Those days are over when Ivanka can run in and lay her head on the desk and cry," he told multiple people.

Mr. Bannon made little secret of the fact that he believed "Javanka," as he referred to the couple behind their backs, had naïve political instincts and were going to alienate Mr. Trump's core coalition of white working-class voters.

[Aug 20, 2017] The chattering political classes have converged on the belief that Trump is not only incompetent, but dangerous. They use identity politics to discredit his base.

The USA started to imitate post-Maydan Ukraine: another war with statues... "Identity politics" flourishing in some unusual areas like history of the country. Which like in Ukraine is pretty divisive.
McAuliffe was co-chairman of Hillary Clinton's 2008 presidential campaign, and was one of her superdelegates at the 2008 Democratic National Convention.
Notable quotes:
"... The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation. WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. ..."
"... It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor the Democrats. ..."
"... Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However, the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general. ..."
"... So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms with the expectation they will then control Congress. ..."
"... Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat, slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive. ..."
"... From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses in the first person). ..."
"... I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people are left with Hope). ..."
"... Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with the "for all" emphasized frequently. ..."
"... There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]... ..."
"... I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a fair number of converts. ..."
"... But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations of old communists who have fallen out of favor. ..."
"... The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor. ..."
"... On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing the 2016 election. ..."
"... The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves. After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing out what is really happening. ..."
"... What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment who are viewed as completely self-serving. ..."
"... I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even claim that they were equally at fault. ..."
"... There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation. ..."
"... CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly, but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area. ..."
"... The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will vote" in every election. ..."
"... As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers). ..."
"... It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with fairness. ..."
"... But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's going to happen. ..."
Aug 20, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

doug , 17 August 2017 at 04:54 PM

The media, and political elite, pile on is precisely what I expect. The chattering political classes have converged on the belief that Trump is not only incompetent, but dangerous. And his few allies are increasingly uncertain of their future.

The thrust appears to be to undercut components of his base while ratcheting up indignation. WaPo and the Times dribble out salacious "news" stories that, often as not, are substance free but written in a hyperbolic style that assumes a kind of intrinsic Trump guilt and leaps from there. They know better. No doubt they rationalize this as meeting kind with kind. Trump is the epitome of the salesman that believes he can sell anything to anyone with the right pitch. Reporters that might normally be restrained by actual facts and a degree of fairness simply are no longer so constrained.

It reminds me of the coverage in the run up to Nixon's resignation. Except this one's on steroids. I believe the DC folks fully expect Trump to be removed and now are focusing on the strategy that accrues the maximum benefit to their party. Unfortunately, things strongly favor the Democrats.

Democrats want to drag this out as long as possible and enjoy the chipping away at segments of the Republican base while the Republicans want to clear the path before the midterms. However, the Republican officials, much as many or most can't stand Trump, have to weave a thin line because taking action against Trump would kill them in the primaries and possibly in the general.

So the Democrats are licking their chops and hoping this can continue until the midterms with the expectation they will then control Congress. After that they will happily dispatch Trump with some discovered impeachable crime. At that point it won't be hard to get enough Republicans to go along.

The Republicans can only hope to convince Trump to resign well prior to the midterms. They hope they won't have to go on record with a vote and get nailed in the elections.

In the meantime the country is going to go through hell.

turcopolier , 17 August 2017 at 05:19 PM
kerim,

Yes, we are staring into the depths and the abyss has begun to take note of us. BTW the US was put back together after the CW/WBS on the basis of an understanding that the Confederates would accept the situation and the North would not interfere with their cultural rituals.

There was a general amnesty for former Confederates in the 1870s and a number of them became US senators, Consuls General overseas and state governors.

That period of attempted reconciliation has now ended. Who can imagine the "Gone With the Win" Pulitzer and Best Picture of the Year now? pl

Tyler , 17 August 2017 at 05:30 PM
Some of you still don't get it. Trump isn't our last chance. Its your last chance. Yet still so many of you oxygen thieves still insist RUSSIA is the reason Hillary lost. You guys are going to agitate your way into a CW because you can't accept you lost. Many of you agitating are fat, slow, and stupid, with no idea how to survive.
Murali -> LeeG... , 17 August 2017 at 05:38 PM
I totally disagree with you LeeG. From day one after the unexpected (for the punditry class and their media coherts) elections results everybody was piling on Trump. The stories abound about his Russia Collusion (after one year of investigation not even a smoke signal) or his narcistic attitudes (mind you LeeG Trump always addresses people as We where as Humble Obama always addresses in the first person).

I get this feeling the Swamp doesn't want a President who will at least try to do something for the American people rather than promises (Remember Hope and Change ala Obama, he got the Change quite a bit of it for him and his Banker Pals from what is left of the treasury and we the people are left with Hope). I hope he will succeed but I learnt that we will always be left with Hope!

AK -> Dr.Puck... , 17 August 2017 at 06:27 PM
Dr. Puck,

The calls have begun:

That last tweet is from the Green Party candidate for VP. Those are just a few examples from a quick Google search before I get back to work. Those of you with more disposable time will surely find more.

BillWade , 17 August 2017 at 06:47 PM
Someone on the last thread said in a very elegant way that what binds us Americans together is one thing, economic opportunity for all. I believe that was Trump's election platform, with the "for all" emphasized frequently.

I believe Charlottsville was a staged catalyst to bring about Trump's downfall, there seems now to be a "full-court press" against him. If he survives this latest attempt, I'll be both surprised and in awe of his political skills. If he doesn't survive I'll (and many others, no matter the "legality of the process") will consider it a coup d'etat and start to think of a different way to prepare for the future.

A.I.Schmelzer , 17 August 2017 at 07:20 PM
There is quite the precedent for the media treating trump as they do, Putin has been treated quite similarly, as well as any other politician the media cars disagree with [neocons/neolibs]...

I think, during the election campaign, the negative media coverage may have well be a boon to him. Anyone who listened to the media, and then actually turned up at a Trump rally to see for himself, immediately got the idea that the media is full of shit. I think this won Trump a fair number of converts.

But I think by now they are just over the top. It almost reminds me of Soviet denunciations of old communists who have fallen out of favor.

As far as statue removal goes: There should be legal ways of deciding such things democratically. There should also be the possibility of relocating the statues in question. I imagine that there should be plenty of private properties who are willing to host these statues on their land. This should be quite soundly protected by the US constitution.

That these monuments got, iirc, erected long after the war is nothing unusual. Same is true for monuments to the white army, of which there are now a couple in Russia.

As far as the civil war goes, my sympathies lie with the Union, I would not be, more then a 100 years after the war, be averse to monuments depicting the common Confederate Soldier.

I can understand the statue toppler somewhat. If someone would place a Bandera statue in my surroundings, I would try to wreck it. I may be willing to tolerate a Petljura statue, probably a also Wrangel or Denikin statue, but not a Vlassov or Shuskevich statue. Imho Lees "wickedness", historically speaking, simply isn't anything extraordinary.

Haralambos -> turcopolier ... , 17 August 2017 at 07:29 PM
Col., thank you for this comment. I grew up in the "North" and recall the centenary of the Civil War as featured in _Life_ magazine. I was fascinated by the history, the uniforms and the composition of the various armies as well as their arms. I would add to that the devastating use of grapeshot. I knew the biographies of the various generals on both sides and their relative effectiveness. I would urge others to read Faulkner's _Intruder in the Dust_ to gain some understanding of the Reconstruction and carpetbagging.

I believe the choice to remove the monument as opposed to some other measure, such as the bit of history you offer, was highly incendiary. I also find it interesting that the ACLU is taking up their case in regard to free-speech: http://tinyurl.com/ybdkrcaz

I was living in Chicago when the Skokie protest occurred.

Fred -> Lars... , 17 August 2017 at 07:36 PM
Lars,

"They came to Charlottesville to do harm. They came armed and were looking for a fight."

I agree. This means Governor McAuliffe failed in his duty to the people of the Commonwealth and so did the Mayor of Charlottesville and the senior members of the police forces present in the city. Congradulations to the alt-left.

They - the left - previously came to DC to do harm - on flag day no less. Namely the Bernie Bro James Hodgkinson, domestic terrorist, who attempted to assasinate Steve Scalise and a number of other elected representatives. The left did not denounce him nor his cause. Sadly they did not even denounce the people who actually betrayed him - those who rigged the Democratic primary: Donna Brazile and Debbie Wasserman-Schultz.

Seamus Padraig -> Dr.Puck... , 17 August 2017 at 07:40 PM
"I know of no call by anybody to remove all statues of the slaveholders. Please edify."

Well, it appears that Al Sharpton is now in favor of defunding the Jefferson Memorial. That's close, isn't it? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gg4XKIX1bs4&feature=youtu.be&t=5

VietnamVet , 17 August 2017 at 08:32 PM
PT

The one clear thing is that there is a coup attempt to get rid of Donald Trump led by globalist media and supra-national corporate intelligence agents. Charlottesville may well be due to the total incompetence of the democratic governor and mayor.

On the other hand, the razing of Confederate Memorials started in democrat controlled New Orleans and immediately spread to Baltimore. This is purposeful like blaming Russia for losing the 2016 election.

The protestors on both divides were organized and spoiling for a fight.

The unrest here at home is due to the forever wars, outsourcing jobs, tax cuts for the wealthy and austerity. Under stress societies revert to their old beliefs and myths. John Brennon, Lindsey Graham, John McCain, George Soros and Pierre Omidyar are scorpions; they can't help themselves. After regime change was forced on Iraq, Libya, Syria and Ukraine; a color revolution has been ignited here in the USA; damn the consequences. We are the only ones that can stop it by pointing out what is really happening.

James , 17 August 2017 at 09:32 PM
It seems to me that this brouhaha may work in Trump's favor. The more different things they accuse Trump of (without evidence), the more diluted their message becomes.

I think the Borg's collective hysteria can be explained by the "unite the right" theme of the Charlottesville Rally. A lot of Trump supporters are very angry, and if they start marching next to people who are carrying signs that blame "the Jews" for America's problems, then anti-Zionist (or even outright anti-Semitic) thinking might start to go mainstream. The Borg would do well to work to address the Trump supporters legitimate grievances. There are a number of different ways that things might get very ugly if they don't. Unfortunately the establishment just wants to heap abuse on the Trump supporters and I think that approach is myopic.

Jack , 17 August 2017 at 09:56 PM
There will always be an outrage du jour for the NeverTrumpers. The Jake Tapper, Rachel Maddow, Morning Joe & Mika ain't gonna quit. And it seems it's ratings gold for them. Of course McCain and his office wife and the rest of the establishment crew also have to come out to ring the obligatory bell and say how awful Trump's tweet was.

What I see in my Democrat dominated county is that the blue collar folks are noting this overt coup attempt and while they didn't vote for Trump are beginning to become sympathetic towards him. I sense this is in part due to the massive mistrust of the MSM and the political establishment who are viewed as completely self-serving.

Cvillereader -> turcopolier ... , 17 August 2017 at 10:17 PM
It is illegal in the Commonwealth of Virginia to wear a mask that covers one's face in most public settings.

LEOs in Central Va encountered this exact requirement when a man in a motorcycle helmet entered a Walmart on Rt 29 in 2012. Several customers reported him to 911 because they believed him to being acting suspiciously. He was detained in Albemarle County and was eventually submitted for mental health evaluation.

This is not a law that Charlottesville police would be unfamiliar with.

luxetveritas , 17 August 2017 at 10:45 PM
Chomsky: "As for Antifa, it's a minuscule fringe of the Left, just as its predecessors were. "It's a major gift to the Right, including the militant Right, who are exuberant."

"what they do is often wrong in principle – like blocking talks – and [the movement] is generally self-destructive."

"When confrontation shifts to the arena of violence, it's the toughest and most brutal who win – and we know who that is. That's quite apart from the opportunity costs – the loss of the opportunity for education, organizing, and serious and constructive activism."

Bill H , 18 August 2017 at 02:02 AM
I read a transcript of the entirety of Trump's news conference upon which CBS and others are basing their claims that Trump is "defending white supremacists," and at no point did he come within hand grenade distance of doing anything of the sort. What he did do is accuse the left wing group of being at fault along with the right wing group in causing the violence, and he did not even claim that they were equally at fault.

There is no doubt whatever that his statement was entirely accurate, if in no other respect in that the left's decision to engage in proximate confrontation was certain to cause violence and was, in fact, designed to do so regardless of who threw the first punch. CBS and other media of its caliber are completely avoiding mentioning that aspect of the confrontation.

CBS et. al. have been touting the left's possession of not one but two permits for public assembly, but they carefully do not point out that the permits were for two areas well removed from the area where the conflict occurred, and that they did not have a permit to assemble in that area. A pundit on CBS claimed that "if they went" to the park in question, which of course they did, "they would not have been arrested because it was a public park." He failed to mention that large groups still are required to have a permit to assemble in a public park.

The media is flailing with the horror of Trump's advocacy of racial division, but it is the Democratic Party which has for more than a decade pursued the policy of "identity politics," and the media which has prated endlessly about "who will get the black vote" or "how Hispanics will vote" in every election.

Old Microbiologist -> Lars... , 18 August 2017 at 03:53 AM
Lars, but they came with a legal permit to protest and knew what they would be facing. The anti-protestors including ANTIFA had a large number of people being paid to be there and funded by Soros and were there illegally. The same mechanisms were in place to ramp up protests like in Ferguson which were violent and this response was no different.

However, the Virginia Governor a crony of the Clintons, ordered a police stand down and no effort was made to separate the groups. I remind you also that open carry is legal in Virginia.

So, IMHO this was deliberately set up for a lethal confrontation by the people on the left. I will also remind you that the American Nazi Party and the American Communist Party among others, are perfectly legal in the US as is the KKK. Believing and saying what you want, no matter how offensive, is legal under the First Amendment. Actively discriminating against someone is not legal but speech is. Say what you want but that is the Constitution.

AK -> Richardstevenhack ... , 18 August 2017 at 04:02 AM
Richardstevenshack,

Your last paragraph is a suitably Leftist post-modern ideological oversimplification of an infinitely complex phenomenon. It also reveals a great deal of what motivates the SJW Left:

" As for the notion that this is a 'cultural issue', I quote: 'Whenever I hear the word culture, I reach for my revolver.' 'Culture' is the means by which some people oppress others. It's much like 'civilization' or 'ethics' or 'morality' - a tool to beat people over the head who have something you want. "

First, it is a cultural issue. It's an issue between people who accept this culture as a necessary but flawed, yet incrementally improvable structure for carrying out a relatively peaceful existence among one another, and those whose grudging, bitter misanthropy has led them to the conclusion that the whole thing isn't fair (i.e. easy) so fuck it, burn it all down. In no uncertain terms, this is the ethos driving the radical Left.

Second, I don't know exactly which culture created you, but I'm fairly sure it was a western liberal democracy, as I'm fairly certain is the case with almost all Leftists these days, regardless of how radical. And I'm also fairly certain the culture you decry is the western liberal democratic culture in its current iterations. But before you or anyone else lights the fuse on that, remember that the very culture you want to burn down because it's so loathsome, that's the thing that gave you that shiny device you use to connect with the world, it's the thing that taught you how to articulate your thoughts into written and spoken word, so that you could then go out and bitch about it, and it even lets you bitch about it, freely and with no consequences. This "civilization" is the thing that gives rise to the "morals" and "ethics" that allow you to take your shiny gadgets to a coffee shop, where the barista makes your favorite beverage, instead of simply smashing you over the head and taking your shiny gadgets because he wants them. These principles didn't arise out of thin air, and neither did you, me, or anyone else. This culture is an agreed-upon game that most of us play to ensure we stand a chance at getting though this with as little suffering as possible. It's not perfect, but it works better than anything else I've seen in history.

Old Microbiologist -> FourthAndLong... , 18 August 2017 at 04:12 AM
Not as significant but along a similar trend to re-write history is this pastor asking Chicago mayor Emmanuel to rename parks named for Presidents because they were also slave owners. http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/08/inevitable-chicago-pastor-demands-washington-name-be-removed-from-park-because-of-slavery-ties/
AK -> Tyler... , 18 August 2017 at 04:33 AM
In his inimitable fashion, I'll grant Tyler (and the Colonel, as well) the creditable foresight to call this one. Those of you who find yourselves wishing, hoping, agitating, and activisting for an overturn of the election result, and/or of traditional American culture in general would do well to take their warnings seriously.

If traditional American culture is so deeply and irredeemably corrupt, I must ask, what's your alternative? And how do you mean to install it? I would at least like to know that. Regardless of your answer to question one, if your answer to question two is "revolution", well then you and anyone else on that wagon better be prepared to suffer, and to increase many fold the overall quotient of human suffering in the world. Because that's what it will take.

You want your revolution, but you also want your Wi-Fi to keep working.
You want your revolution, but you also want your hybrid car.
You want your revolution, but you also want your safe spaces, such as your bed when you sleep at night.

If you think you can manage all that by way of shouting down, race baiting, character assassinating, and social shaming, without bearing the great burden of suffering that all revolutions entail, you have bitter days ahead. And there are literally millions of Americans who will oppose you along the way. And unlike the kulaks when the Bolsheviks rode into town, they see you coming and they're ready for you. And if you insist on taking it as far as you can, it won't be pretty, and it won't be cinematic. Just a lot of tragedy for everyone involved. But one side will win, and my guess is it'll be the guys like Tyler. It's not my desire or aim to see any of that happen. It's just how I see things falling out on their current trajectory.

The situation calls to mind a quote from a black radical, spoken-word group from Harlem who were around in the early to mid 60s, called the Last Poets. The line goes, "Speak not of revolution until you are willing to eat rats to survive." Just something to think about when you advocate burning it all down.

johnklis56@gmail.com -> rick... , 18 August 2017 at 07:19 AM
Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe (D) has added his name to a growing list of public officials in state governments encouraging the removal of Confederate statues and memorials throughout the South. Late in the day on Wednesday McAuliffe released an official statement saying monuments of Confederate leaders have now become "flashpoints for hatred, division and violence" in a reference to the weekend of violence which shook Charlottesville as white nationalists rallied against the city's planned removal of a Robert E. Lee statue. McAuliffe further described the monuments as "a barrier to progress" and appealed to state and local governments to take action. The governor said:

As we attempt to heal and learn from the tragic events in Charlottesville, I encourage Virginia's localities and the General Assembly – which are vested with the legal authority – to take down these monuments and relocate them to museums or more appropriate settings. I hope we can all now agree that these symbols are a barrier to progress, inclusion and equality in Virginia and, while the decision may not be mine to make...

It seems the push for monument removal is now picking up steam, with cities like Baltimore simply deciding to act briskly while claiming anti-racism and concern for public safety. Of course, the irony in all this is that the White nationalist and supremacist groups which showed up in force at Charlottesville and which are even now planning a major protest in Lexington, Kentucky, are actually themselves likely hastening the removal of these monuments through their repugnant racial ideology, symbols, and flags.

Bishop James Dukes, a pastor at Liberation Christian Center located on Chicago's south side, is demanding that the city of Chicago re-dedicate two parks in the area that are named after former presidents George Washington and Andrew Jackson. His reasons? Dukes says that monuments honoring men who owned slaves have no place in the black community, even if those men once led the free world.

Just a few I've seen....

James F , 18 August 2017 at 07:29 AM
Salve, Publius. Thanks for the article. Col. Lang made an excellent point in the comments' section that the Confederate memorials represent the reconciliation between the North and the South. The same argument is presented in a lengthier fashion in this morning's TAC http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/when-confederate-monuments-represent-reconciliation/ . That reconciliation could have been handled much better, i.e. without endorsing Jim Crow. I wish more monuments were erected to commemorate Longstreet and Cleburne, JB Hood and Hardee. I wish there was more Lee and less Forrest. Nonetheless, the important historical point is that a national reconciliation occurred. Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national reconciliation. The past which is being erased is not the Civil War but the civil peace which followed it. That is tragic.
Ishmael Zechariah -> Dr.Puck... , 18 August 2017 at 08:14 AM
Dr. Puck,
Do you agree w/ this elected representative's statement: ""I hope Trump is assassinated!" Missouri state Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, wrote during a morning Facebook exchange, referring to Republican President Donald Trump."
http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/chappelle-nadal-posts-deletes-facebook-post-hoping-for-trump-s/article_406059d6-1aa4-52fc-89ee-2a6a69baaf2e.html
Ishmael Zechariah
Kooshy -> Richardstevenhack ... , 18 August 2017 at 09:21 AM
IMO, most of the problems majority of people (specially the ruling class) have with Donald Trump' presidency is that, he acts and is an accidental president, Ironically, everybody including, him, possibly you, and me who voted for him knows this and is not willing to take his presidency serious and act as such. IMO, he happens to run for president, when the country, due to setbacks and defeat on multiple choice wars, as well as national economic misfortunes and misshapes, including mass negligence of working class, was in dismay and a big social divide, as of the result, majority decided to vote for some one outside of familiar cemented in DC ruling class knowing he is not qualified and is a BS artist. IMO that is what took place, which at the end of the day, ends of to be same.
Croesus -> doug... , 18 August 2017 at 09:52 AM
Netanyahu is under pressure for failing to speak out forcefully against Trump

https://www.cbsnews.com/news/benjamin-netanyahu-resists-calls-to-denounce-trumps-response-to-charlottesville/

Bibi has keen political skills. He hasn't lasted this long based on his mastery of judo.

Fred -> James F... , 18 August 2017 at 10:03 AM
James F,

" Removing the statues is a symbolic act which undoes the national reconciliation."

That is the intent. The coalition of urban and coastal ethnic populists and economic elites has been for increased concentration and expansion of federal power at the expense of the states, especially the Southern states, for generations. This wave of agitprop with NGO and MSM backing is intended to undo the constitutional election and return the left to power at the federal level.

TV , 18 August 2017 at 10:18 AM
I agree with most of Trump's policy positions, but he is negating these positions with his out-of-control mouth and tweets.
As much as I have nothing but contempt and loathing for the "establishment" (Dems, Republicans, especially the media, the "intelligence" community and the rest of the permanent government), Trump doesn't seem to comprehend that he can't get anything done without taming some of these elements, all of whom are SERIOUSLY opposed to him as a threat to their sinecures and riches.
"Who is this OUTSIDER to come in and think that he in charge of OUR government?"
blowback , 18 August 2017 at 10:33 AM
What seems like a balanced eyewitness account of Charlottesville that suggests that although the radicals on both sides brought the violence, it was the police who allowed it to happen.

https://newrepublic.com/article/144365/cops-dropped-ball-charlottesville

The need to keep protesters away from counter-protesters particular when both are tooled should be obvious to anyone, but not so with the protest in Charlottevlle.

doug -> Tyler... , 18 August 2017 at 10:40 AM
-"Trump isnt our last chance. Its your last chance."

Reminds me of the 60's and the SDS and their ilk. A large part of the under 30 crowd idolized Mao's Little Red Book and convinced themselves the "revolution" was imminent. So many times I heard the phrase "Up Against the Wall, MFs." Stupid fools. Back then people found each other by "teach-ins" and the so called "underground press." In those days it took a larger fraction to be able to blow in each other's ear and convince themselves they were the future "vanguard."

These days, with the internet, it is far easier for a smaller fraction to gravitate to an echo chamber, reinforce group think, and believe their numbers are much larger than what, in reality, exists. This happens across the board. It's a rabbit hole Tyler. Don't go down it.

turcopolier , 18 August 2017 at 10:45 AM
Booby

Yes, Forts Bragg, Hood, Lee, AP Hill, Benning, etc., started as temporary camps during WW1 and were so named to encourage Southern participation in the war. The South had been reluctant about the Spanish War. Wade Hampton, governor of SC said of that war, "Let the North fight. the South knows the cost of war." pl

ISL , 18 August 2017 at 10:53 AM
I would like to share my viewpoint. As a firm believer in the media efforts to sabotage Trump and a former supporter (now agnostic, trending negative - Goldman Sachs swamp creatures in the Oval Office????), he greatly disappointed me. First, i will state, that I do not believe Trump is antisemitic (no antisemite will surround himself with rich Jewish Bankers).

But violence on all sides is absolute BS. Nazi violence gets its own sentence and language at least as strong as the language he has no trouble hitting ISIS with. Didn't hear that. So I guess in his mind, the threat the US faced from Nazis during WW2 was less than a ragtag, 3rd world guerilla force whose only successes are because of 1. US, Saudi, and other weapons, and their war on unstable third world countries. Give me a break - did he never watch a John Wayne movie as a kid?

When I discuss nazi's, F-bombs are dropped. I support the right of nazi's to march and spew their vitriolic hatred, and even more strongly support the right of free speech to counter their filth with facts and arguments and history.

I am sorry, but Antifa was not fighting against the US in WW2. If one wants to critique Antifa, or another group, that criticism belongs in a separate paragraph or better in another press conference. Taking 2 days to do so, and then walking it back, is the hallmark of a political idiot (or a billionaire who listens to no one and lives in his own mental echo chamber).

If Trump gets his info and opinions from TV news, despite having the $80+ billion US Intel system at his beck and call, he is the largest idiot on the planet.

sid_finster , 18 August 2017 at 11:29 AM
It doesn't matter whether Trump is getting a raw deal or not. Politics has nothing to do with fairness.

But when you've lost Bob Corker, and even Newt Gingrich is getting wobbly, when Fox News is having a hard time finding Republicans willing to go on and defend Trump, you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's going to happen.

[Aug 20, 2017] The Saker

Although he speaks about the USA being occupied, looks like Saker does not understand that that the US empire is actually a global neoliberal empire where multinationals and financial oligarchy have political control. And without a viable alternative it probably will not collapse, as any collapse presuppose the withdrawal of support. The necessary level of isolation is possible only if a an alternative is present
Now like in befor the World War Ii there is struggle for "spheres of influence", in which the USA is gradually losing as both Germany and Japan restored their industrial potential and China is a new powerful player on the world scene, which now is allied with Russia with its formidable nuclear deterrent that now anti-missile defense can neutralize"
Also the USA venture into Ukraine means the completion of revision of the results of WWII, which opened a new can of worms for the USA making Russia essentially a hostile power (which neocon admit and try to exploit via the current neo-McCarthism witch hunt)
Notable quotes:
"... In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka "the basket of deplorables") the Neocons have had to show their true face. By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people. ..."
"... And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce. So yes, the Neocons have won. But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse. ..."
"... Externally, the US foreign policy is basically "frozen" and in lieu of a foreign policy we now only have a long series of empty threats hurled at a list of demonized countries which are now promised "fire and brimstone" should they dare to disobey Uncle Sam. ..."
"... This bizarre, and illegal, form of a "vote of no-confidence" further hammers in the message that Trump is either a madman, a traitor, or both. ..."
"... Organizationally, it is clear that Trump is surrounded by enemies as illustrated by the absolutely outrageous fact that he can't even talk to a foreign head of state without having the transcript of his conversation leaked to the Ziomedia . ..."
"... I believe that these all are preparatory steps to trigger a major crisis and use it to remove Trump, either by a process of impeachment, or by force under the pretext of some crisis. Just look at the message which the Ziomedia has been hammeing into the brains of the US population. ..."
"... just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles! ..."
"... when the cat is gone, the mice dance ..."
"... The mouse dreams dreams that would terrify the cat ..."
"... Third, for all the encouraging statistics about the Dow Jones, unemployment and growth, the reality is that the US society is rapidly transforming itself in a three-tired one: on top, a small number of obscenely rich people, under them, a certain amount of qualified professionals who service the filthy rich and who struggle to maintain a lifestyle which in the past was associated with the middle-class. And then the vast majority of Americans who basically are looking at making "minimal wage plus a little something" and who basically survive by not paying for health insurance, by typically working two jobs, by eating cheap and unhealthy "prolefeed" and by giving up on that which every American worker could enjoy in the 1950s and 1960s (have one parent at home, have paid holidays, a second vacation home, etc.). Americans are mostly hard workers and, so far, most of them are surviving, but they are mostly one paycheck away from seriously bad poverty. A lot of them only make ends meet because they get help from their parents and grand-parents (the same is true of southern Europe, by the way). A large segment of the US population now survives only because of Walmart and the Dollar Store. Once that fails, food stamps are the last option. That, or jail, of course. ..."
"... No wonder that when so many Americans heard Hillary's comment about the "basket of deplorables" they took that as declaration of war. ..."
"... vide supra. ..."
"... Whatever may be the case, by their manic insistence, on one hand, to humiliate and crush Trump and, on the other, to repress millions of Americans the Neocons are committing a double mistake. First, they are showing their true face and, second, they are subverting the very institutions they are using to control and run this country. ..."
"... What makes the gradual collapse of the AngloZionist Empire so uniquely dangerous is that it is by far the biggest and most powerful empire in world history. No empire has ever had the quasi monopoly on power the USA enjoyed since WWII. By any measure, military, economic, political, social, the US came out of WWII as a giant and while there were ups and downs during the subsequent decades, the collapse of the USSR only reaffirmed what appeared to be the total victory of the United States. ..."
"... And if Obama was probably the most incompetent President in US history, Trump will be the first one to be openly lynched while in office. As a result, the AngloZionist Empire is now like a huge freight train which has lost its locomotive but still has an immense momentum pushing it forward even though there is nobody in control any more. The rest of the planet, with the irrelevant exception of the East Europeans, is now scrambling in horror to get out of the path of this out of control train. So far, the tracks (minimal common sense, political realities) are more or less holding, but a crash (political, economic or military) could happen at any moment. And that is very, very scary. ..."
"... The US has anywhere between 700 to 1000 military bases worldwide, the entire international financial system is deeply enmeshed with the US economy, the US Dollar is still the only real reserve currency, United States Treasury securities are held by all the key international players (including Russia and China), SWIFT is politically controlled by the US, the US is the only country in the world that can print as much money as it wants and, last but not least, the US has a huge nuclear arsenal. As a result, a US collapse would threaten everybody and that means that nobody would want to trigger one. The collapse of the Soviet Union threatened the rest of mankind only in one way: by its nuclear arsenal. In contrast, any collapse of the United States would threaten everybody in many different ways. ..."
"... This is the irony of our situation: even though the entire planet is sick and tried of the incompetent arrogance of the AngloZionists, nobody out there wants their Empire to catastrophically collapse. And yet, with the Neocons in power, such a collapse appears inevitable with potentially devastating consequences for everybody. ..."
"... This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness, infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization: how did we ever let things get that far?! ..."
"... My biggest hope with Trump was that he would be willing to sacrifice the Empire for the sake of the US (the opposite of what the Neocons are doing: they are willing to sacrifice the US for the sake of their Empire) and that he would manage a relatively safe and hopefully non-violent transition from Empire to "normal country" for the US. Clearly, this is ain't happening. Instead, the Neocons are threatening everybody: the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Venezuelans of course, but also the Europeans (economically), the entire Middle-East (via the "only democracy in the Middle-East"), all the developing countries and even the American people. Heck, they are even threatening the US President himself, and in not-so-subtle ways! ..."
"... my overwhelming sense is that Trump will be removed from office, either for "high crimes and misdemeanors" or for "medical reasons" (they will simply declare him insane and unfit to be the President). ..."
"... The evil hand of the "Russian KGB" (yes, I know, the KGB was dissolved in 1991) will be found everywhere, especially amongst US libertarians (who will probably the only ones with enough brains to understand what is taking place). The (pseudo-) "Left" will rejoice. ..."
"... Should this course of action result in an unexpected level or resistance, either regional or social, a 9-11 false flag followed by a war will the most likely scenario (why stray away from something which worked so well the first time around?!). ..."
"... in 1991 when the US sent the 82nd AB to Iraq there was nothing standing between this light infantry force and the Iraqi armored divisions. Had the Iraqis attacked the plan was to use tactical nuclear weapons. Then this was all quickly forgotten ..."
"... There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem, especially when they are the ones who triggered the mayhem in the first place. This means that as long as the Neocons are anywhere near in power they will never, ever, allow peace to suddenly break out, lest the spotlight be suddenly shined directly upon them. Chaos, wars, crises – this is their natural habitat. Think of it as the by-product of their existence. Eventually, of course, they will be stopped and they will be defeated, like all their predecessors in history. But I shudder when I think of the price mankind will have to pay this time around. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | www.unz.com

First, my writing on the wall

In October of last year a wrote an analysis I entitled The USA are about to face the worst crisis of their history and how Putin's example might inspire Trump and I think that this is a good time to revisit it now. I began the analysis by looking at the calamities which would befall the United States if Hillary was elected. Since this did not happen (thank God!), we can safely ignore that part and look at my prediction of what would happen if Trump was elected. Here is what I wrote:

Trump wins. Problem: he will be completely alone. The Neocons have a total, repeat total, control of the Congress, the media, banking and finance, and the courts. From Clinton to Clinton they have deeply infiltrated the Pentagon, Foggy Bottom, and the three letter agencies. The Fed is their stronghold. How in the world will Trump deal with these rabid " crazies in the basement "? Consider the vicious hate campaign which all these "personalities" (from actors, to politicians to reporters) have unleashed against Trump – they have burned their bridges, they know that they will lose it all if Trump wins (and, if he proves to be an easy pushover his election will make no difference anyway). The Neocons have nothing to lose and they will fight to the very last one. What could Trump possibly do to get anything done if he is surrounded by Neocons and their agents of influence? Bring in an entirely different team? How is he going to vet them? His first choice was to take Pence as a VP – a disaster (he is already sabotaging Trump on Syria and the elections outcome). I *dread* the hear whom Trump will appoint as a White House Chief of Staff as I am afraid that just to appease the Neocons he will appoint some new version of the infamous Rahm Emanuel And should Trump prove that he has both principles and courage, the Neocons can always "Dallas" him and replace him with Pence. Et voilà !

I went on to suggest that Trump's only option would be to follow Putin's example and do the the Neocons what Putin did to the oligarchs. Clearly that did not happen. In fact, one month after the election of Trump I wrote another analysis entitled " The Neocons and the "deep state" have neutered the Trump Presidency, it's over folks! ".

Less than a month ago I warned that a 'color revolution ' was taking place in the USA . My first element of proof was the so-called "investigation" which the CIA, FBI, NSA and others were conducting against President Trump's candidate to become National Security Advisor, General Flynn. Tonight, the plot to get rid of Flynn has finally succeeded and General Flynn had to offer his resignation . Trump accepted it. Now let's immediately get one thing out of the way: Flynn was hardly a saint or a perfect wise man who would single handedly saved the world. That he was not. However, what Flynn was is the cornerstone of Trump's national security policy . ( ) The Neocon run 'deep state' has now forced Flynn to resign under the idiotic pretext that he had a telephone conversation, on an open, insecure and clearly monitored, line with the Russian ambassador. And Trump accepted this resignation. Ever since Trump made it to the White House, he has taken blow after blow from the Neocon-run Ziomedia, from Congress, from all the Hollywood doubleplusgoodthinking "stars" and even from European politicians. And Trump took each blow without ever fighting back. Nowhere was his famous "you are fired!" to be seen. But I still had hope. I wanted to hope. I felt that it was my duty to hope. But now Trump has betrayed us all. Again, Flynn was not my hero. But he was, by all accounts, Trump's hero. And Trump betrayed him. The consequences of this will be immense. For one thing, Trump is now clearly broken. It took the 'deep state' only weeks to castrate Trump and to make him bow to the powers that be . Those who would have stood behind Trump will now feel that he will not stand behind them and they will all move back away from him. The Neocons will feel elated by the elimination of their worst enemy and emboldened by this victory they will push on, doubling-down over and over and over again. It's over, folks, the deep state has won.

I then concluded that the consequences of this victory would catastrophic for the United States:

In their hate-filled rage against Trump and the American people (aka "the basket of deplorables") the Neocons have had to show their true face. By their rejection of the outcome of the elections, by their riots, their demonization of Trump, the Neocons have shown two crucial things: first, that the US democracy is a sad joke and that they, the Neocons, are an occupation regime which rules against the will of the American people. In other words, just like Israel, the USA has no legitimacy left. And since, just like Israel, the USA are unable to frighten their enemies, they are basically left with nothing, no legitimacy, no ability to coerce. So yes, the Neocons have won. But their victory is removes the last chance for the US to avoid a collapse.

I think that what we are seeing today are the first signs of the impending collapse.

The symptoms of the agony

Externally, the US foreign policy is basically "frozen" and in lieu of a foreign policy we now only have a long series of empty threats hurled at a list of demonized countries which are now promised "fire and brimstone" should they dare to disobey Uncle Sam. While this makes for good headlines, this does not qualify as a "policy" of any kind (I discussed this issue at length during my recent interview with SouthFront ). And then there is Congress which has basically stripped Trump from his powers to conduct foreign policy . This bizarre, and illegal, form of a "vote of no-confidence" further hammers in the message that Trump is either a madman, a traitor, or both. Internally, the latest riots in Charlottesville now being blamed on Trump who, after being a Putin agent is now further demonized as some kind of Nazi (see Paul Craig Roberts' first and second warnings about this dynamic) Organizationally, it is clear that Trump is surrounded by enemies as illustrated by the absolutely outrageous fact that he can't even talk to a foreign head of state without having the transcript of his conversation leaked to the Ziomedia .

I believe that these all are preparatory steps to trigger a major crisis and use it to remove Trump, either by a process of impeachment, or by force under the pretext of some crisis. Just look at the message which the Ziomedia has been hammeing into the brains of the US population.

The psychological preparation for the forthcoming coup: scaring them all to death Here are three very telling examples taken from Newsweek's front page:

... ... ...

Ask yourself, what is the message here? Trump is a traitor, he works for Putin, Putin wants to destroy democracy in the United States and these two men together are the most dangerous men on the planet . This is a " plot against America ", no less! Not bad, right? "They" are clearly out there go get "us" and "we" are all in terrible danger: Kim Jong-un is about to declare nuclear war on the US, Xi and Putin are threatening the world with their armies, and "our" own President came to power courtesy of the "Russian KGB" and "Putin's hackers", he now works for the Russians, he is also clearly a Nazi, a White supremacist, a racist and, possibly, a " new Hitler " ( as is Putin , of course!).

And then, there are those truly scary Mooslims and Aye-rabs who apparently want only two things in life: destroy "our way of life" and kill all the "infidels". This is why we need the TSA, 16 intelligence agencies and militarized police SWAT teams everywhere: in case the terrorists come to get us where we live.

Dangerous international consequences

This would all be rather funny if it was not also extremely dangerous. For one thing, the US is really poking at a dangerous foe when it constantly tries to scare Kim Jong-un and the DPRK leadership. No, not because of the North Korean nukes (which are probably not real nuclear capable ICBMs but a not necessarily compatible combination of nuclear 'devices' and intermediate range ballistic missiles) but because of the huge and hard to destroy conventional North Korean military. The real threat are not missiles, but a deadly combination of conventional artillery and special forces which present very little danger to the US or the US military, but which present a huge threat for the population of Seoul and the northern section of South Korea. Nukes, in whatever form, are really only an added problem, a toxic "icing" on an already very dangerous 'conventional cake'.

[Sidebar - a real life nightmare : Now, if you *really* want to terrify yourself and stay awake all night then consider the following. While I personally believe that Kim Jong-un is not insane and that the main objective of the North Korean leadership is to avoid a war at all costs, what if I am wrong? What if those who say that the North Korean leaders are totally insane are right? Or, which I think is much more likely, what if Kim Jong-un and the North Korean leaders came to the conclusion that they have nothing to lose, that the Americans are going to kill them all, along with their families and friends? What could they, in theory, do if truly desperate? Well, let me tell you: forget about Guam; think Tokyo! Indeed, while the DPRK could devastate Seoul with old fashioned artillery systems, DPRK missiles are probably capable of striking Tokyo or the Keihanshin region encompassing Kyoto, Osaka and Kobe including the key industries of the Hanshin Industrial Region . The Greater Tokyo area (Kanto region) and the Keihanshin region are very densely populated (37 and 20 million people respectively) and contain an immense number of industries, many of which would produce an ecological disaster of immense proportions if hit by missiles. Not only that, but a strike on the key economic and financial nodes of Japan would probably result in a 9-11 kind of international economic collapse. So if the North Koreans wanted to really, really hurt the Americans what they could do is strike Seoul, and key cities in Japan resulting in a huge political crisis for the entire planet. During the Cold War we used to study the consequences of a Soviet strike against Japan and the conclusion was always the same: Japan cannot afford a war of any kind. The Japanese landmass is too small, too densely populated, to rich in lucrative targets and a war lay waste to the entire country. This is still true today, only more so. And just imagine the reaction in South Korea and Japan if some crazy US strike on the DPRK results in Seoul and Tokyo being hit by missiles! The South Koreans have already made their position unambiguously clear , by the way. As for the Japanese, they are officially placing their hopes in missiles (as if technology could mitigate the consequences of insanity!). So yeah, the DPRK is plenty dangerous and pushing them into their last resort is totally irresponsible indeed, nukes or no nukes]

What we are observing now is positive feedback loop in which each move by the Neocons results in a deeper and deeper destabilization of the entire system. Needless to say, this is extremely dangerous and can only result in an eventual catastrophe/collapse. In fact, the signs that the US is totally losing control are already all over the place, here are just a few headlines to illustrate this:

Iran could quit nuclear deal in 'hours' if new U.S. sanctions imposed: Rouhani Israel: Netanyahu declares support for a Kurdish state Syrian forces take 3 more towns en route to Deir ez-Zor in first airborne operation Maduro calls for nationwide 'anti-imperialist' drills after Trump's threat of 'military option' Soldiers of the 201st (Russian) base in Tadjikistan have been put on high alert as part of a military exercise Confirmed: Turkey to end support for anti-government terrorists in Syria Russia Plans Huge Zapad 2017 Military Exercises With Belarus

A French expression goes " when the cat is gone, the mice dance ", and this is exactly what is happening now: the US is both very weak and basically absent. As for the Armenians, they say " The mouse dreams dreams that would terrify the cat ". Well, the "mice" of the world are dancing and dreaming and simply ignoring the "cat". Every move the cat makes only makes things worse for him. The world is moving on, while the cat is busy destroying himself.

Dangerous domestic consequences

First on my list would be race riots. In fact, they are already happening all over the United States, but they are rarely presented as such. And I am not talking about the "official" riots of Black Lives Matter, which are bad enough, I am talking about the many mini-riots which the official media is systematically trying to obfuscate. Those interested in this topic should read the book here ). The simple truth is that no regime can survive for too long when it proactively supports the exact opposite of what it officially is supposed to stand for. The result? I have yet to meet an adult American who would sincerely believe that he/she lives in the "land of the free and the home of the brave". Maybe infants still buy this stuff, but even teenagers know that this is a load of bull.

Third, for all the encouraging statistics about the Dow Jones, unemployment and growth, the reality is that the US society is rapidly transforming itself in a three-tired one: on top, a small number of obscenely rich people, under them, a certain amount of qualified professionals who service the filthy rich and who struggle to maintain a lifestyle which in the past was associated with the middle-class. And then the vast majority of Americans who basically are looking at making "minimal wage plus a little something" and who basically survive by not paying for health insurance, by typically working two jobs, by eating cheap and unhealthy "prolefeed" and by giving up on that which every American worker could enjoy in the 1950s and 1960s (have one parent at home, have paid holidays, a second vacation home, etc.). Americans are mostly hard workers and, so far, most of them are surviving, but they are mostly one paycheck away from seriously bad poverty. A lot of them only make ends meet because they get help from their parents and grand-parents (the same is true of southern Europe, by the way). A large segment of the US population now survives only because of Walmart and the Dollar Store. Once that fails, food stamps are the last option. That, or jail, of course.

Combine all this and you get a potentially extremely explosive situation. No wonder that when so many Americans heard Hillary's comment about the "basket of deplorables" they took that as declaration of war.

And how do the Neocons plan to deal with all this? By cracking down on free speech and dissent, of course! What else? Their only response – repression of course!

YouTube, Google, Facebook, Twitter – they are all cracking down on "bad" speech which includes pretty much any topic a garden variety self-described 'liberal' frowns upon. GoDaddy and Google are even going after domain names. Oh sure, nobody gets thrown in jail for, say, defending the 2nd Amendment, but they get "demonetized" and their accounts simply closed. It's not the cops cracking down on free speech, it's "Corporate America", but the effect is the same. Apparently, the Neocons do not realize that censorship is not a viable strategy in the age of the Internet. Or maybe they do, and they are deliberately trying to trigger a backlash?

Then there is the vilification campaign in the media: unless you are some kind of 'minority' you are assumed to be nefarious by birth and guilty of all the evils on the planet. And your leader is Trump, of course, or maybe even Putin himself, vide supra. Christian heterosexual White males better run for cover

Whatever may be the case, by their manic insistence, on one hand, to humiliate and crush Trump and, on the other, to repress millions of Americans the Neocons are committing a double mistake. First, they are showing their true face and, second, they are subverting the very institutions they are using to control and run this country. That, of course, only further weaken the Neocons and the United States themselves and that further accelerates the positive feedback loop mentioned above which now threatens the entire international system.

Us and Them

What makes the gradual collapse of the AngloZionist Empire so uniquely dangerous is that it is by far the biggest and most powerful empire in world history. No empire has ever had the quasi monopoly on power the USA enjoyed since WWII. By any measure, military, economic, political, social, the US came out of WWII as a giant and while there were ups and downs during the subsequent decades, the collapse of the USSR only reaffirmed what appeared to be the total victory of the United States. In my admittedly subjective opinion, the last competent (no, I did not say 'good', I said 'competent') US President was George Herbert Walker Bush who, unlike his successors, at least knew how to run an Empire. After that, it is all downhill, faster and faster. And if Obama was probably the most incompetent President in US history, Trump will be the first one to be openly lynched while in office. As a result, the AngloZionist Empire is now like a huge freight train which has lost its locomotive but still has an immense momentum pushing it forward even though there is nobody in control any more. The rest of the planet, with the irrelevant exception of the East Europeans, is now scrambling in horror to get out of the path of this out of control train. So far, the tracks (minimal common sense, political realities) are more or less holding, but a crash (political, economic or military) could happen at any moment. And that is very, very scary.

The US has anywhere between 700 to 1000 military bases worldwide, the entire international financial system is deeply enmeshed with the US economy, the US Dollar is still the only real reserve currency, United States Treasury securities are held by all the key international players (including Russia and China), SWIFT is politically controlled by the US, the US is the only country in the world that can print as much money as it wants and, last but not least, the US has a huge nuclear arsenal. As a result, a US collapse would threaten everybody and that means that nobody would want to trigger one. The collapse of the Soviet Union threatened the rest of mankind only in one way: by its nuclear arsenal. In contrast, any collapse of the United States would threaten everybody in many different ways.

So the real question now is this: can the rest of the planet prevent a catastrophic collapse of the AngloZionist Empire?

This is the irony of our situation: even though the entire planet is sick and tried of the incompetent arrogance of the AngloZionists, nobody out there wants their Empire to catastrophically collapse. And yet, with the Neocons in power, such a collapse appears inevitable with potentially devastating consequences for everybody.

This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness, infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization: how did we ever let things get that far?!

And the next obvious question: can we still stop them?

I honestly don't know. I hope so, but I am not sure. My biggest hope with Trump was that he would be willing to sacrifice the Empire for the sake of the US (the opposite of what the Neocons are doing: they are willing to sacrifice the US for the sake of their Empire) and that he would manage a relatively safe and hopefully non-violent transition from Empire to "normal country" for the US. Clearly, this is ain't happening. Instead, the Neocons are threatening everybody: the Chinese, the Russians, the North Koreans and the Venezuelans of course, but also the Europeans (economically), the entire Middle-East (via the "only democracy in the Middle-East"), all the developing countries and even the American people. Heck, they are even threatening the US President himself, and in not-so-subtle ways!

So what's next?

Truly, I don't know. But my overwhelming sense is that Trump will be removed from office, either for "high crimes and misdemeanors" or for "medical reasons" (they will simply declare him insane and unfit to be the President). Seeing how weak and spineless Trump is, he might even be "convinced" to resign. I don't see them simply murdering him simply because he is no Kennedy either. After that, Pence comes to power and it will all be presented like a wonderful event, a group-hug of the elites followed by an immediate and merciless crackdown on any form of political opposition or dissent which will immediately be labeled as racist, homophobic, anti-Semitic, terrorist, etc.

The evil hand of the "Russian KGB" (yes, I know, the KGB was dissolved in 1991) will be found everywhere, especially amongst US libertarians (who will probably the only ones with enough brains to understand what is taking place). The (pseudo-) "Left" will rejoice.

Should this course of action result in an unexpected level or resistance, either regional or social, a 9-11 false flag followed by a war will the most likely scenario (why stray away from something which worked so well the first time around?!). Unless the US decides to re-invade Grenada or give Nauru a much deserved thrashing, any more or less real war will result in a catastrophic failure for the US at which point the use of nukes by the Neocon crazies might become a very real risk, especially if symbolic US targets such as aircraft carriers are hit ( in 1991 when the US sent the 82nd AB to Iraq there was nothing standing between this light infantry force and the Iraqi armored divisions. Had the Iraqis attacked the plan was to use tactical nuclear weapons. Then this was all quickly forgotten ).

There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem, especially when they are the ones who triggered the mayhem in the first place. This means that as long as the Neocons are anywhere near in power they will never, ever, allow peace to suddenly break out, lest the spotlight be suddenly shined directly upon them. Chaos, wars, crises – this is their natural habitat. Think of it as the by-product of their existence. Eventually, of course, they will be stopped and they will be defeated, like all their predecessors in history. But I shudder when I think of the price mankind will have to pay this time around.

This analysis was written for The Unz Review

[Aug 20, 2017] Trump used the neocon expression "drain the swamp" on the campaign trail. He was talking about washington while the neocons were referring to the near Mid-East. Both he they were full of hubris. The swamp dwellers in DC can not be extricated short of revolution.

Notable quotes:
"... I don't think the neocons want Trump out. They want him to stay as their puppet. If he fights back and start to win then they will do everything to replace him. ..."
"... Now with the departure of the strong anti-neocon Steve Bannon, Trump is loosing more chances to resist. Getting back his strength would be a miracle. If Trump realizes that he has lost all power and all ways to regain it, he may want to resign and be replaced by Pence who is a weak leader. Yet Pence may object to more wars that the neocons will promote and he could pose a problem for them. ..."
"... This is why I think the neocons and the zionists want to keep a powerless Trump in 'power' ..."
"... any more or less real war will result in a catastrophic failure for the US at which point the use of nukes by the Neocon crazies might become a very real risk, especially if symbolic US targets such as aircraft carriers are hit ..."
"... Coincidentally, I was just thinking the very same thing today. US conventional forces are basically worthless and would be quickly destroyed if put to the test in any general mobilization. Our nuclear deterrence is everything. Nobody will lay a finger on our aircraft carriers for fear of provoking Armageddon, so these lumbering hunks of expensive horseshit get to float around the world "projecting force" when, without the nuclear cover, they would be sent to the bottom without much ado. ..."
"... This last 6 months has been, in my opinion, a classic case of the result of cognitive dissonance that occurs when prophecy fails. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails ..."
"... The whole Russia-Gate thing is slowly being exposed as a hoax but we may still have a case of "some stories are true that never happened." A huge number of people will never think of Trump anyway other than how they do now no matter what he does or what happens – as evil, or incompetent, or immoral, or whatever. ..."
"... I think we have been in a very slow, shallow decline since about 1969. Barely noticeable. Bursts of innovation and growth have distracted the country from the fact that the standard of living for 80% of everybody has not really improved. It is unlikely that Trump will reverse this. ..."
"... There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem ..."
"... Trump might be a clown show but he will be in the WH on January 1 2021. The political and legal obstacles for his removal are substantial. Perhaps he hasn't drained the swamp but he stopped funding for the Jihadis in Syria, which has essentially ended the war there. He has dramatically improved border security and he obtained a SC nominee who is not left wing crazy as the previous two. ..."
"... Not all neo-cons are Jewish and not all Jewish people are neo-cons. Similarly, not all Zionists are Jewish and not all Jewish persons are Zionists. ..."
Aug 20, 2017 | www.unz.com

Robert Magill , August 18, 2017 at 10:07 am GMT

This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness, infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization: how did we ever let things get that far?!

And the next obvious question: can we still stop them?

Stalin found a way to stop the prototype Neocon Leon Trotsky.

http://robertmagill.wordpress.com

Seamus Padraig , August 18, 2017 at 6:32 pm GMT

@Robert Magill

This is really amazing, think of it: everybody hates the Neocons, not only a majority of the American people, but truly the entire planet. And yet that numerically small group of people has somehow managed to put everybody in danger, including themselves, due to their ugly vindictiveness, infinite arrogance and ideology-induced short-sightedness. That this could ever have happened, and at a planetary scale, is a dramatic testimony to the moral and spiritual decay of our civilization: how did we ever let things get that far?!

And the next obvious question: can we still stop them?

Stalin found a way to stop the prototype Neocon Leon Trotsky.

True enough. But then, Stalin had control of the party and the country. Alas! Trump does not.

Sean , August 18, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMT

America throws its weight about but that won't lead to war. No danger at all of anyone taking on the unbeatable US with nuclear or conventional force. Russia's doctrine stresses asymmetrical war because the understand shadow boxing is safer. And while the world economic system is dependent on America, it isn't going to collapse because of a few riots–especially with the massive police apparatus that is in reserve.

There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem, especially when they are the ones who triggered the mayhem in the first place. This means that as long as the Neocons are anywhere near in power they will never, ever, allow peace to suddenly break out, lest the spotlight be suddenly shined directly upon them. Chaos, wars, crises – this is their natural habitat. Think of it as the by-product of their existence. Eventually, of course, they will be stopped and they will be defeated, like all their predecessors in history. But I shudder when I think of the price mankind will have to pay this time around.

Neocons are not different to anyone in history who had to take care of a state's business. It would be irrational for a state like the US not to lead with its strengths and be aggressive with because no one knows what other state's intentions are – or might become in the future.

WorkingClass , August 18, 2017 at 6:48 pm GMT

@WorkingClass

"The Neocons" is too vague. The people need an authoritative list with names, addresses and photographs."

Here is the closest thing to a list of names that google turned up:

http://www.ronpaulforums.com/showthread.php?450257-The-Neoconservative-Reference-List

Johnny Rico , August 18, 2017 at 7:44 pm GMT

Sure.

You may be simply be reaching a personal tipping-point from all the fear-mongering and apocalyptic race-war/civil-war nonsense that has had its ups-and-downs the last year-and-a-half, but which has hit record heights after Charlottesville. Hysterical group-think.

You have always been a "predictor." Laying out various scenarios and then going back every few months to try to fit what you said to what happened. This can quickly become self-deluded back-patting.

You have been correct I think in certain respects and your analysis has usually been top-notch even if it doesn't always cover all angles.

But your record forecasting or predicting is just as bad as everybody else's. We can't predict. Not the price of oil. Not the lottery. Not the Super-bowl. Not the weather more than 5 days out. Not war. And not war's unintended consequences.

Three weeks ago nobody cared about Southern statues or White Supremacists. Two weeks from now nobody will care anymore again. Two weeks ago we were going to nuke North Korea. Now they are not in the news.

Imagine if that one girl hadn't been killed by that one guy at the protest or counter-protest. It doesn't even matter. Nobody will remember her name in a month. But everybody knows who Kim Kardashian is.

This last 6 months has been, in my opinion, a classic case of the result of cognitive dissonance that occurs when prophecy fails. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

The prophecy in this case was that Trump was the next Hitler. This and the lingering, very strong sour grapes.

The whole Russia-Gate thing is slowly being exposed as a hoax but we may still have a case of "some stories are true that never happened." A huge number of people will never think of Trump anyway other than how they do now no matter what he does or what happens – as evil, or incompetent, or immoral, or whatever.

I am rather partial to Andrew Bacevich's analysis that suggests Trump is actually apolitical and non-ideological.

I think we have been in a very slow, shallow decline since about 1969. Barely noticeable. Bursts of innovation and growth have distracted the country from the fact that the standard of living for 80% of everybody has not really improved. It is unlikely that Trump will reverse this. People have been predicting collapse for decades. Read James Howard Kunstler. http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/total-eclipse/. It kind of happened in 2008-2009. Look at the current collapse of large parts of the retail sector.

Not surprisingly, few are predicting Trump will be in office in 2020 and that the world will look a lot like 2007 at that point. But that is where my money is.

If "Antifa" continues to wear wear black ninja outfits and masks and continues to use violence, the State will have to crush them.

Same old, same old. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Something like that.

I live in Boston. I was 100 yards away from the first bomb that went off at the 2013 Marathon. I saw the National Security State response over the next week. The State Police with a LOT of support did not mess around. Over the years I have seen how the Boston and State police deal with protests and gatherings of all types. Boston is a very safe city. It is difficult to envision what happened in Charlottesville happening here.

Lawrence Fitton , August 18, 2017 at 7:55 pm GMT

Trump used the neocon expression 'drain the swamp' on the campaign trail. he was talking about washington while the neocons were referring to the near & mid-east. both he & they were full of hubris.

The swamp dwellers in d.c. can't be extricated short of revolution. the mid-east is in chaos thanks to the neocons and the swamp is getting, well, swampier. trump has no plans to get us out of the mess the neocons got us in even if he could. this adds to trump's incompetence, which when applied to his mental cardboard jungle, bodes ill for america under his term – if he serves it out.

I tend to agree with everything the saker wrote. we are in trouble folks. obama & bush left trump with a mess. trump has not the wherewithal to get us out. but, realistically, who can?

There is a middle eastern expression that goes something like this: one fool can create problem that 100 wise men can't solve.
trump is a clown show. he's gotta go. the problem is, then we get pence.

DFH , August 19, 2017 at 8:54 am GMT

Has any empire ever had a ruling class as stupid (I'm talking about the gentiles in particular) as the current one?

virgile , August 19, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMT

I don't think the neocons want Trump out. They want him to stay as their puppet. If he fights back and start to win then they will do everything to replace him.

Now with the departure of the strong anti-neocon Steve Bannon, Trump is loosing more chances to resist. Getting back his strength would be a miracle. If Trump realizes that he has lost all power and all ways to regain it, he may want to resign and be replaced by Pence who is a weak leader. Yet Pence may object to more wars that the neocons will promote and he could pose a problem for them.

This is why I think the neocons and the zionists want to keep a powerless Trump in 'power'

Fran Macadam , August 19, 2017 at 7:39 pm GMT

You'd think the neocons were – shudder – Trotskyists, or something.

Priss Factor , August 19, 2017 at 8:15 pm GMT

I think I know what the globalist capitalists are doing. It's not that they like Antifa. I think they despise them. But they do fear the antifa and far-'left' thugs. And they also fear BLM.

After all, NY Libs fear blacks. NY libs got so tired of black crime that they elected Clinton to lock up record number of blacks. They elected Giuliani twice to get tough on black crime. And three times they elected Bloomberg of 'stop and frisk' fame. And San Fran and other cities did a lot of gentrification, which is codeword for pushing blacks out.

The fact is the capitalists have NOTHING to fear from Alt Right or 'nazis' or white identitarians. White Identitarians don't rob white yuppies. They don't do knockout games. They don't smash windows or burn down buildings. They don't protest businesses. They didn't even do the 'antisemitic hate hoaxes'. It turns out a black guy and Jews carried out those hoaxes. (When Trump truthfully said Jews may be behind some of those bomb threats, the media went ballistic until the truth came out. Same with Charlottesville. Trump's crime was noticing that the Antifa scum attacked first, a fact.)

But capitalists do fear blacks who loot, riot, and turn cities into hell. Capitalists fear antifa bottom-feeders who create havoc in places like San Fran and Seattle. If Capitalists really really feared Alt Right and White Identitarians, they would NOT be purging them. Purging is done to the weak, not to the strong. Capitalists appease whom they fear, not whom they have nothing to fear from.

So, capitalists wanna do something about antifa and BLM constantly barking at them.

Now, why can't the globo-cappers just use their wealth and power to harshly clamp down on antifa and black thugs? After all, they got all the power whereas most antifa are bottomfeeding scum and most blacks are just street thugs. If the rich and powerful wanted to crack antifa skulls and lock up more blacks, they could. So, why don't they? Because PC dogma rules over America, and it romanticizes the 'left' in media and academia and pop culture. And blacks have been so sacralized to prop up 'white guilt' that it's difficult to move harshly against them. We have to indulge their idiocies and use more roundabout ways to control them.

And this is where 'nazi' and 'confederacy' are very useful to the Capits or Cappers. If Capits yell, "Look, a Nazi" or "Look, a racist", the very antifa and BLM who were growling at the capits suddenly go charging at the 'nazis'.
This is why Jewish supremacists also find the South so useful. Jewish Supremacists pull every dirty trick in the book to lock up blacks and use extra-policing to control black crime and violence. Also, Jews are no longer for class conflict favoring the proles against the rich and instead for elite global capitalism where Jews get richer. So, Jewish Power is the natural target of blacks and far-leftists. To prevent these people from coming at Jews, Jews create hysteria about KKK and the Sooooouth as diversionary tactic.

It's like, if a mad dog is barking at you, it's smart to toss a bone so that the dog will go after the bone, not you.

So, this isn't really so much a Capit war on Alt Right. It is the Capitalists using the Alt Right as a bone to throw at the dogs(blacks and far-left scum) so that the dogs won't bark and bite at Capitalists.

... ... ...

DFH , August 19, 2017 at 9:15 pm GMT

@Priss Factor I think I know what the globalist capitalists are doing. It's not that they like Antifa. I think they despise them. But they do fear the antifa and far-'left' thugs. And they also fear BLM.

After all, NY Libs fear blacks. NY libs got so tired of black crime that they elected Clinton to lock up record number of blacks. They elected Giuliani twice to get tough on black crime. And three times they elected Bloomberg of 'stop and frisk' fame. And San Fran and other cities did a lot of gentrification, which is codeword for pushing blacks out.

The fact is the capitalists have NOTHING to fear from Alt Right or 'nazis' or white identitarians. White Identitarians don't rob white yuppies. They don't do knockout games. They don't smash windows or burn down buildings. They don't protest businesses. They didn't even do the 'antisemitic hate hoaxes'. It turns out a black guy and Jews carried out those hoaxes. (When Trump truthfully said Jews may be behind some of those bomb threats, the media went ballistic... until the truth came out. Same with Charlottesville. Trump's crime was noticing that the Antifa scum attacked first, a fact.)

But capitalists do fear blacks who loot, riot, and turn cities into hell. Capitalists fear antifa bottom-feeders who create havoc in places like San Fran and Seattle. If Capitalists really really feared Alt Right and White Identitarians, they would NOT be purging them. Purging is done to the weak, not to the strong. Capitalists appease whom they fear, not whom they have nothing to fear from.

So, capitalists wanna do something about antifa and BLM constantly barking at them.

Now, why can't the globo-cappers just use their wealth and power to harshly clamp down on antifa and black thugs? After all, they got all the power whereas most antifa are bottomfeeding scum and most blacks are just street thugs. If the rich and powerful wanted to crack antifa skulls and lock up more blacks, they could. So, why don't they? Because PC dogma rules over America, and it romanticizes the 'left' in media and academia and pop culture. And blacks have been so sacralized to prop up 'white guilt' that it's difficult to move harshly against them. We have to indulge their idiocies and use more roundabout ways to control them.

And this is where 'nazi' and 'confederacy' are very useful to the Capits or Cappers. If Capits yell, "Look, a Nazi" or "Look, a racist", the very antifa and BLM who were growling at the capits suddenly go charging at the 'nazis'.

This is why Jewish supremacists also find the South so useful. Jewish Supremacists pull every dirty trick in the book to lock up blacks and use extra-policing to control black crime and violence. Also, Jews are no longer for class conflict favoring the proles against the rich and instead for elite global capitalism where Jews get richer. So, Jewish Power is the natural target of blacks and far-leftists. To prevent these people from coming at Jews, Jews create hysteria about KKK and the Sooooouth as diversionary tactic.

It's like, if a mad dog is barking at you, it's smart to toss a bone so that the dog will go after the bone, not you.

So, this isn't really so much a Capit war on Alt Right. It is the Capitalists using the Alt Right as a bone to throw at the dogs(blacks and far-left scum) so that the dogs won't bark and bite at Capitalists.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dIlOAWsh-A

Now, the Jewish supremacists are far nastier. If Capitalists just wanna distract the mad barking dogs, Jewish supremacists want to use Antifa and State terror as hunting dogs to kill the wolves of White Independent Movement.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIwWa-WkCak

So, what is the solution? If Alt Right doesn't want the cappers to treat it so shabbily, it has to make the cappers FEAR the Alt Right? How?

Alt Right should write up a BLACK BOOK on every capper that goes after Alt Right.

Write a BLACK BOOK ON GOOGLE like Black Book on Communism. Expose how Google has worked with every thuggish and tyrannical regime around for profit.

Write a BLACK BOOK ON PAYPAL that details how this organization serves all kinds of terrorists, tyrants, extremists, and etc.

Expose the cappers. March on capper headquarters.

If Alt Right goes after the cappers, Antifa will have to defend them.. and this will discredit Antifa as stooges of Globalism.

It's like when Alt Right opposed Trump's attack in Syria, Antifa made fools of themselves by attacking Alt Right than opposing the Missile strike on trumped-up charges. (The media were totally swooning about the naked act of US imperialist aggression. Zakaria said, 'Trump became president tonight', and Brian Williams was yammering about 'beautiful missiles' and quoting Leonard Cohen.) Sickos. That thesis doesn't make any sense. If they were afraid of antifascists then why would they create and finance them? Why does their media stoke up black resentment if that is what they wish to avoid?

Why should they be afraid of them? Black crime doesn't affect rich whites. Even if it did, blacks are criminals for prosaic reasons that have nothing to do with BLM. Black riots have no effect on billionaire capitalists either. Its not rich white communities they burn down.

jilles dykstra , August 20, 2017 at 6:13 am GMT

Indeed, the present Cold Civil War in the USA has world wide ramifications. But what would have happened had FDR's policies been continued ?

The USA is in the midst of a political revolution, revolutions seldom improve living conditions. A political revolution in the power that led the world since the Casablanca conference, where Churchill discovered he had ran into a trap, is a political revolution in the world.

Intelligent Dasein , • Website August 20, 2017 at 7:03 am GMT

The evil hand of the "Russian KGB" (yes, I know, the KGB was dissolved in 1991) will be found everywhere, especially amongst US libertarians (who will probably the only ones with enough brains to understand what is taking place).

I found this line to be a somewhat mystifying exception to an otherwise fine article, unless The Saker is referring specifically to Ron Paul, whose criticisms of the administration have been spot on lately. But in the main, "US libertarians" have about as much brains as a puddle of dog drool (cf. Gary "And what is Aleppo" Johnson for illumination on this point).

any more or less real war will result in a catastrophic failure for the US at which point the use of nukes by the Neocon crazies might become a very real risk, especially if symbolic US targets such as aircraft carriers are hit

Coincidentally, I was just thinking the very same thing today. US conventional forces are basically worthless and would be quickly destroyed if put to the test in any general mobilization. Our nuclear deterrence is everything. Nobody will lay a finger on our aircraft carriers for fear of provoking Armageddon, so these lumbering hunks of expensive horseshit get to float around the world "projecting force" when, without the nuclear cover, they would be sent to the bottom without much ado.

This cannot help but infuriate anybody who has been the target of a US intervention. I can begin to imagine how this obscene pageantry must appear to non-Western eyes -- perhaps something like having a gun held to your head whilst an ill-mannered, fat princeling trashes your house for amusement. I can imagine the bitter resentment they must feel, tempered by the certain knowledge that they will overcome through time and patience as the Empire destroys itself with its hubris. Their retribution, when it comes, will be terrible. This is why we should have made every effort to withdraw from the word stage and defend our limes while we still could.

white noise , August 20, 2017 at 11:09 am GMT

@WorkingClass "The Neocons" is too vague. The people need an authoritative list with names, addresses and photographs.

Yeah, and then publish the list in CNN, Fox, Washington Post, et al Sure, tomorrow morning, they all will be happy to comply. They may even agree to start a massive vilification campaign against themselves.

white noise , August 20, 2017 at 11:27 am GMT

@Johnny Rico Sure.

You may be simply be reaching a personal tipping-point from all the fear-mongering and apocalyptic race-war/civil-war nonsense that has had its ups-and-downs the last year-and-a-half, but which has hit record heights after Charlottesville. Hysterical group-think.

You have always been a "predictor." Laying out various scenarios and then going back every few months to try to fit what you said to what happened. This can quickly become self-deluded back-patting.

You have been correct I think in certain respects and your analysis has usually been top-notch even if it doesn't always cover all angles.

But your record forecasting or predicting is just as bad as everybody else's. We can't predict. Not the price of oil. Not the lottery. Not the Super-bowl. Not the weather more than 5 days out. Not war. And not war's unintended consequences.

Three weeks ago nobody cared about Southern statues or White Supremacists. Two weeks from now nobody will care anymore again. Two weeks ago we were going to nuke North Korea. Now they are not in the news.

Imagine if that one girl hadn't been killed by that one guy at the protest or counter-protest. It doesn't even matter. Nobody will remember her name in a month. But everybody knows who Kim Kardashian is.

This last 6 months has been, in my opinion, a classic case of the result of cognitive dissonance that occurs when prophecy fails. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/When_Prophecy_Fails

The prophecy in this case was that Trump was the next Hitler. This and the lingering, very strong sour grapes.

The whole Russia-Gate thing is slowly being exposed as a hoax but we may still have a case of "some stories are true that never happened." A huge number of people will never think of Trump anyway other than how they do now no matter what he does or what happens – as evil, or incompetent, or immoral, or whatever.

I am rather partial to Andrew Bacevich's analysis that suggests Trump is actually apolitical and non-ideological.

I think we have been in a very slow, shallow decline since about 1969. Barely noticeable. Bursts of innovation and growth have distracted the country from the fact that the standard of living for 80% of everybody has not really improved. It is unlikely that Trump will reverse this.

People have been predicting collapse for decades. Read James Howard Kunstler. http://kunstler.com/clusterfuck-nation/total-eclipse/

It kind of happened in 2008-2009. Look at the current collapse of large parts of the retail sector.

Not surprisingly, few are predicting Trump will be in office in 2020 and that the world will look a lot like 2007 at that point. But that is where my money is.

If "Antifa" continues to wear wear black ninja outfits and masks and continues to use violence, the State will have to crush them.

Same old, same old. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss. Something like that.

I live in Boston. I was 100 yards away from the first bomb that went off at the 2013 Marathon. I saw the National Security State response over the next week. The State Police with a LOT of support did not mess around. Over the years I have seen how the Boston and State police deal with protests and gatherings of all types. Boston is a very safe city. It is difficult to envision what happened in Charlottesville happening here. It may not be an accurate prediction, but this article by The Saker is excellent in that it gives a very accurate, penetrating portrait of the decadence of America, and the main culprits, the predator, parasitic Jews, and their minions: the American politicians, and other assorted traitors.

And so, are you saying that a repressive police state is good? It's certainly going that way, but no, it's not good at all for the people of America. What America needs is repression against the invader Jews that have hijacked the government, not repression against the American people.

jacques sheete , August 20, 2017 at 11:40 am GMT

A bit windy, but every point excellent.

There is a reason why the Neocons thrive in times of crisis: it allows them to hide behind the mayhem

True, but it's astonishing how so many people still don't get it.

jacques sheete , August 20, 2017 at 11:44 am GMT

@WorkingClass "The Neocons" is too vague. The people need an authoritative list with names, addresses and photographs.

"The Neocons" is too vague. The people need an authoritative list with names, addresses and photographs.

Damn. I've said this before, but you make the best damned comments on UR, and you hit the nail squarely on the head once again with that one.

white noise , August 20, 2017 at 11:58 am GMT

@Felix Keverich

"How come a president, who won 65 million votes, cannot get a single man in his administration who shares his political views?"

...because weak people sell their souls easily in exchange of money and goods. And there are a lot of weak people.

jacques sheete , August 20, 2017 at 12:16 pm GMT

@WorkingClass A list should be easy to develop.

In Jacques' Paradise anyone still living who's ever run for political office, and their staffs and advisers would be rounded up, they and any offspring spayed, and sent to Abu Ghraib for lifelong "treatment." This goes for anyone who's ever been connected, in any way, with the Federal Reserve or any other large bank or corporation especially one that's been bailed out. Ditto for any foreign "leader" who's ever accepted a penny in foreign "aid," or who's ever had a standing ovation or any other sort of positive recognition from the US government.

Anyone who ever worked for any government past the age of thirty ( some allowance should be made for youthful ignorance and indiscretion, no?) and anyone who ever contributed so much as a nickel to a political party gets rounded up, spayed, and sent to Guantanamo for life with no chance for parole.

That oughta buy the rest of us a couple of days of peace and quiet.

Si1ver1ock , August 20, 2017 at 12:30 pm GMT

This is a very good article. I would quibble on a minor thing about North Korea. They could definitely cause problems with their nukes via the old "Death Shroud" technique from Dr. Strangelove.

North Korea doesn't need ICBMs.http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-34797252

On more humorous note:

The world is moving on, while the cat is busy destroying himself.

WJ , August 20, 2017 at 12:51 pm GMT

@Lawrence Fitton

Trump might be a clown show but he will be in the WH on January 1 2021. The political and legal obstacles for his removal are substantial. Perhaps he hasn't drained the swamp but he stopped funding for the Jihadis in Syria, which has essentially ended the war there. He has dramatically improved border security and he obtained a SC nominee who is not left wing crazy as the previous two.

I am not convinced he will substantially escalate Afghanistan but we will find out perhaps this week. He is vastly superior to at least three of predecessors in the job and he is most certainly preferable to the horrendous Clinton/Kaine, open borders neocon clan.

Blake , August 20, 2017 at 2:22 pm GMT

George W. Bush once asked his father to define Neoconservatism. "'What's a neocon?' 'Do you want names, or a description?' answered [the elder Bush]. 'Description.' 'Well,' said the former president of the United States, 'I'll give it to you in one word: Israel.'" – Andrew Cockburn, Rumsfeld: His Rise, Fall, and Catastrophic Legacy (New York: Scribner, 2007), 219.

DFH , August 20, 2017 at 2:44 pm GMT

@Tulips

Not all neo-cons are Jewish and not all Jewish people are neo-cons. Similarly, not all Zionists are Jewish and not all Jewish persons are Zionists.

And? Neo-conservatism is a Jewish ideology; it was founded and driven by Jews as a vehicle for Jewish ethnic interests.

Commenters with these reactions to Saker's essay should maybe introspect a little on what is running in the minds and emotions.

Isn't the appropriate response to look at the facts of the matter to determine whether opposition to Jewish influence is justified or not? What does introspection have to do with anything?

[Aug 19, 2017] Vassal Aristocracies Increasingly Resist Control by U.S. Aristocracy by Eric Zuesse

Notable quotes:
"... The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world. ..."
"... The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich. ..."
"... So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events. ..."
"... This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens. ..."
"... The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President . ..."
Aug 14, 2017 | www.unz.com

The tumultuous events that dominate international news today cannot be accurately understood outside of their underlying context, which connects them together, into a broader narrative -- the actual history of our time . History makes sense, even if news-reports about these events don't. Propagandistic motivations cause such essential facts to be reported little (if at all) in the news, so that the most important matters for the public to know, get left out of news-accounts about those international events.

The purpose here will be to provide that context, for our time.

First, this essential background will be summarized; then, it will be documented (via the links that will be provided here), up till the present moment -- the current news: America's aristocracy controls both the U.S. federal government and press , but (as will be documented later here) is facing increasing resistance from its many vassal (subordinate) aristocracies around the world (popularly called "America's allied nations"); and this growing international resistance presents a new challenge to the U.S. military-industrial complex (MIC), which is controlled by that same aristocracy and enforces their will worldwide. The MIC is responding to the demands of its aristocratic master. This response largely drives international events today (which countries get invaded, which ones get overthrown by coups, etc.), but the ultimate driving force behind today's international news is the aristocracy that the MIC represents, the billionaires behind the MIC, because theirs is the collective will that drives the MIC. The MIC is their collective arm, and their collective fist. It is not the American public's global enforcer; it is the American aristocracy's fist, around the world.

The MIC (via its military contractors such as Lockheed Martin) also constitutes a core part of the U.S. aristocracy's wealth (the part that's extracted from the U.S. taxpaying public via the U.S. government), and also (by means of those privately-owned contractors, plus the taxpayer-funded U.S. armed forces) it protects these aristocrats' wealth in foreign countries. Though paid by the U.S. government, the MIC does the protection-and-enforcement jobs for the nation's super-rich.

Furthermore, the MIC is crucial to them in other ways, serving not only directly as their "policeman to the world," but also indirectly (by that means) as a global protection-racket that keeps their many subordinate aristocracies in line, under their control -- and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the master-aristocracy's will. (International law is never enforced against the U.S., not even after it invaded Iraq in 2003.) So, the MIC is the global bully's fist, and the global bully is the U.S. aristocracy -- America's billionaires, most especially the controlling stockholders in the U.S.-based international corporations. These are the people the U.S. government actually represents . The links document this, and it's essential to know, if one is to understand current events.

For the first time ever, a global trend is emerging toward declining control of the world by America's billionaire-class -- into the direction of ultimately replacing the U.S. Empire, by increasingly independent trading-blocs: alliances between aristocracies, replacing this hierarchical control of one aristocracy over another. Ours is becoming a multi-polar world, and America's aristocracy is struggling mightily against this trend, desperate to continue remaining the one global imperial power -- or, as U.S. President Barack Obama often referred to the U.S. government, "The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation. That has been true for the century passed and it will be true for the century to come." To America's aristocrats, all other nations than the U.S. are "dispensable." All American allies have to accept it. This is the imperial mindset, both for the master, and for the vassal. The uni-polar world can't function otherwise. Vassals must pay (extract from their nation's public, and then transfer) protection-money, to the master, in order to be safe -- to retain their existing power, to exploit their given nation's public.

The recently growing role of economic sanctions (more accurately called "Weaponization of finance" ) by the United States and its vassals, has been central to the operation of this hierarchical imperial system, but is now being increasingly challenged from below, by some of the vassals. Alliances are breaking up over America's mounting use of sanctions, and new alliances are being formed and cemented to replace the imperial system -- replace it by a system without any clear center of global power, in the world that we're moving into. Economic sanctions have been the U.S. empire's chief weapon to impose its will against any challengers to U.S. global control, and are thus becoming the chief locus of the old order's fractures .

This global order cannot be maintained by the MIC alone; the more that the MIC fails (such as in Vietnam, Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, ), the more that economic sanctions rise to become the essential tool of the imperial masters. We are increasingly in the era of economic sanctions. And, now, we're entering the backlash-phase of it.

A turning-point in escalating the weaponization of finance was reached in February 2014 when a Ukrainian coup that the Obama Administration had started planning by no later than 2011, culminated successfully in installing a rabidly anti-Russian government on Russia's border, and precipitated the breakaway from Ukraine of two regions (Crimea and Donbass) that had voted overwhelmingly for the man the U.S. regime had just overthrown . This coup in Ukraine was the most direct aggressive act against Russia since the Cold War had 'ended' (it had actually ended on the Russian side, but not on the American side, where it continues ) in 1991. During this coup in Kiev, on February 20th of 2014, hundreds of Crimeans, who had been peacefully demonstrating there with placards against this coup (which coup itself was very violent -- against the police, not by them -- the exact opposite of the way that "the Maidan demonstrations" had been portrayed in the Western press at the time), were attacked by the U.S.-paid thugs and scrambled back into their buses to return home to Crimea but were stopped en-route in central Ukraine and an uncounted number of them were massacred in the Ukrainian town of Korsun by the same group of thugs who had chased them out of Kiev .

This massacre didn't play well on local Crimean television. Immediately, a movement to secede and to again become a part of Russia started, and spread like wildfire in Crimea. (Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. It was culturally Russian.) Russia's President, Vladimir Putin, said that if they'd vote for it in a referendum, then Russia would accept them back into the Russian Federation and provide them protection as Russian citizens.

On 6 March 2014, U.S. President Obama issued "Executive Order -- Blocking Property of Certain Persons Contributing to the Situation in Ukraine" , and ignored the internationally recognized-in-law right of self-determination of peoples (though he recognized that right in Catalonia and in Scotland), and he instead simply declared that Ukraine's "sovereignty" over Crimea was sacrosanct (even though it had been imposed upon Crimeans by the Soviet dictator -- America's enemy -- in 1954, during the Soviet era, when America opposed, instead of favored and imposed, dictatorship around the world, except in Iran and Guatemala, where America imposed dictatorships even that early). Obama's Executive Order was against unnamed "persons who have asserted governmental authority in the Crimean region without the authorization of the Government of Ukraine." He insisted that the people who had just grabbed control of Ukraine and massacred Crimeans (his own Administration's paid far-right Ukrainian thugs, who were racist anti-Russians ), must be allowed to rule Crimea, regardless of what Crimeans (traditionally a part of Russia) might -- and did -- want. America's vassal aristocracies then imposed their own sanctions against Russia when on 16 March 2014 Crimeans voted overwhelmingly to rejoin the Russian Federation . Thus started the successive rounds of economic sanctions against Russia, by the U.S. government and its vassal-nations . (As is shown by that link, they knew that this had been a coup and no authentic 'democratic revolution' such as the Western press was portraying it to have been, and yet they kept quiet about it -- a secret their public would not be allowed to know.)

The latest round of these sanctions was imposed not by Executive Order from a U.S. President, but instead by a new U.S. law, "H.R.3364 -- Countering America's Adversaries Through Sanctions Act" , which in July 2017 was passed by 98-2 in the Senate and 419-3 in the House , and which not only stated outright lies (endorsed there by virtually everyone in Congress), but which was backed up by lies from the U.S. Intelligence Community that were accepted and endorsed totally uncritically by 98 Senators and 419 Representatives . (One might simply assume that all of those Senators and Representatives were ignorant of the way things work and were not intentionally lying in order to vote for these lies from the Intelligence Community, but these people actually wouldn't have wrangled their ways into Congress and gotten this far at the game if they hadn't already known that the U.S. Intelligence Community is designed not only to inform the President but to help him to deceive the public and therefore can't be trusted by anyone but the President .

It's basic knowledge about the U.S. government, and they know it, though the public don't.) The great independent columnist Paul Craig Roberts headlined on August 1st, "Trump's Choices" and argued that President Donald Trump should veto the bill despite its overwhelming support in Washington, but instead Trump signed it into law on August 2nd and thus joined participation in the overt stage -- the Obama stage -- of the U.S. government's continuation of the Cold War that U.S. President George Herbert Walker Bush had secretly instituted against Russia on 24 February 1990 , and that, under Obama, finally escalated into a hot war against Russia. The first phase of this hot war against Russia is via the "Weaponization of finance" (those sanctions). However, as usual, it's also backed up by major increases in physical weaponry , and by the cooperation of America's vassals in order to surround Russia with nuclear weapons near and on Russia's borders , in preparation for a possible blitz first-strike nuclear attack upon Russia -- preparations that the Russian people know about and greatly fear, but which are largely hidden by the Western press, and therefore only very few Westerners are aware that their own governments have become lying aggressors.

Some excellent news-commentaries have been published about this matter, online, by a few 'alternative news' sites (and that 'alt-news' group includes all of the reliably honest news-sites, but also includes unfortunately many sites that are as dishonest as the mainstream ones are -- and that latter type aren't being referred to here), such as (and only the best sites and articles will be linked-to on this):

All three of those articles discuss how these new sanctions are driving other nations to separate themselves, more and more, away from the economic grip of the U.S. aristocracy, and to form instead their own alliances with one-another, so as to defend themselves, collectively, from U.S. economic (if not also military) aggression. Major recent news-developments on this, have included (all here from rt dot com):

"'US, EU meddle in other countries & kill people under guise of human rights concerns' – Duterte", and presented Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte explaining why he rejects the U.S. aristocracy's hypocritical pronouncements and condemnations regarding its vassals among the world's poorer and struggling nations, such as his. Of course, none of this information is publishable in the West -- in the Western 'democracies'. It's 'fake news', as far as The Empire is concerned. So, if you're in The (now declining) Empire, you're not supposed to be reading this. That's why the mainstream 'news'media (to all of which this article is being submitted for publication, without fee, for any of them that want to break their existing corrupt mold) don't publish this sort of news -- 'fake news' (that's of the solidly documented type, such as this). You'll see such news reported only in the few honest newsmedia. The rule for the aristocracy's 'news'media is: report what happened, only on the basis of the government's lies as to why it happened -- never expose such lies (the official lies). What's official is 'true' . That, too, is an essential part of the imperial system.

The front cover of the American aristocracy's TIME magazine's Asian edition, dated September 25, 2016, had been headlined "Night Falls on the Philippines: The tragic cost of President Duterte's war on drugs" . The 'news'-story, which was featured inside not just the Asian but all editions, was "Inside Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte's War On Drugs" , and it portrayed Duterte as a far-right demagogue who was giving his nation's police free reign to murder anyone they wished to, especially the poor. On 17 July 2017, China's Xinhua News Agency bannered "Philippines' Duterte enjoys high approval rating at 82 percent: poll" , and reported: "A survey by Pulse Asia Inc. conducted from June 24 to June 29 showed that 82 percent of the 1,200 people surveyed nationwide approved the way Duterte runs the country. Out of all the respondents, the poll said 13 percent were undecided about Duterte's performance, while 5 percent disapproved Duterte's performance. Duterte, who assumed the presidency in June last year, ends his single, six-year term in 2022." Obviously, it's not likely that the TIME cover story had actually been honest. But, of course, America's billionaires are even more eager to overthrow Russia's President, Putin.

Western polling firms can freely poll Russians, and do poll them on lots but not on approval or disapproval of President Putin , because he always scores above 80%, and America's aristocrats also don't like finding that confirmed, and certainly don't want to report it. Polling is routinely done in Russia, by Russian pollsters, on voters' ratings of approval/disapproval of Putin's performance. Because America's aristocrats don't like the findings, they say that Russians are in such fear of Putin they don't tell the truth about this, or else that Russia's newsmedia constantly lie about him to cover up the ugly reality about him.

However, the Western academic journal Post-Soviet Affairs (which is a mainstream Western publication) included in their January/February 2017 issue a study, "Is Putin's Popularity Real?" and the investigators reported the results of their own poll of Russians, which was designed to tap into whether such fear exists and serves as a distorting factor in those Russian polls, but concluded that the findings in Russia's polls could not be explained by any such factor; and that, yes, Putin's popularity among Russians is real. The article's closing words were: "Our results suggest that the main obstacle at present to the emergence of a widespread opposition movement to Putin is not that Russians are afraid to voice their disapproval of Putin, but that Putin is in fact quite popular."

The U.S. aristocracy's efforts to get resistant heads-of-state overthrown by 'democratic revolutions' (which usually is done by the U.S. government to overthrow democratically elected Presidents -- such as Mossadegh, Arbenz, Allende, Zelaya, Yanukovych, and attempted against Assad, and wished against Putin, and against Duterte -- not overthrowing dictators such as the U.S. government always claims) have almost consistently failed, and therefore coups and invasions have been used instead, but those techniques demand that certain realities be suppressed by their 'news'media in order to get the U.S. public to support what the government has done -- the U.S. government's international crime, which is never prosecuted. Lying 'news' media in order to 'earn' the American public's support, does not produce enthusiastic support, but, at best, over the long term, it produces only tepid support (support that's usually below the level of that of the governments the U.S. overthrows). U.S. Presidents never score above 80% except when they order an invasion in response to a violent attack by foreigners, such as happened when George W. Bush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq in the wake of 9/11, but those 80%+ approval ratings fade quickly; and, after the 1960s, U.S. Presidential job-approvals have generally been below 60% .

President Trump's ratings are currently around 40%. Although Trump is not as conservative -- not as far-right -- as the U.S. aristocracy wants him to be, he is fascist ; just not enough to satisfy them (and their oppostion isn't because he's unpopular among the public; it's more the case that he's unpopular largely because their 'news'media concentrate on his bads, and distort his goods to appear bad -- e.g., suggesting that he's not sufficiently aggressive against Russia). His fascism on domestic affairs is honestly reported in the aristocracy's 'news'media, which appear to be doing all they can to get him replaced by his Vice President, Mike Pence. What's not reported by their media is the fascism of the U.S. aristocracy itself, and of their international agenda (global conquest). That's their secret, of which their public must be (and is) constantly kept ignorant. America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble contolling its domestic public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST'S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity .

Recently from Author

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Fidelios Automata > , August 19, 2017 at 2:22 am GMT

Fascism is defined as a system that combines private monopolies and despotic government power. It is sometimes racist but not necessarily so. By the correct definition, every President since at least Herbert Hoover has been fascist to some degree.

exiled off mainstreet > , August 19, 2017 at 4:21 am GMT

One bit of silver lining in the deep-state propaganda effort to destabilise the Trump regime is the damage to the legitimacy of the yankee imperium it confers, making it easier for vassal states to begin to jump ship. The claims of extraterritorial power used for economic warfare might confer a similar benefit, since the erstwhile allies will want to escape the dominance of the yankee dollar to be able to escape the economic extortion practised by the yankee regime to achieve its control abroad.

WorkingClass > , August 19, 2017 at 4:43 am GMT

Good news – The beast is dying. Bad news – We Americans are in its belly.

Wally > , August 19, 2017 at 6:00 am GMT

"America's aristocracy" = lying Israel First Zionists. Why doesn't Eric Zuesse just say the truth? What is he afraid of?

Must read:

jilles dykstra > , August 19, 2017 at 6:31 am GMT

" America's aristocracy has almost as much trouble controlling its domestic public as it has controlling its foreign vassals. "

These foreign vassals had a cozy existence as long as the USA made it clear it wanted to control the world. Dutch minister of Foreign Affairs Ben Bot made this quite clear whan the Netherlands did not have a USA ambassador for three months or so, Ben Bot complained to the USA that there should be a USA ambassador.
He was not used to take decisions all by himself.

Right now Europe's queen Merkel has the same problem, unlike Obama Trump does not hold her hand.

Grandpa Charlie > , August 19, 2017 at 6:38 am GMT

Fidelios,

Yes, of course. I don't know about before Herbert Hoover, but certainly during the 50s, business -- monopolistic or oligopolistic (like the old Detroit auto industry) -- and government (including the MIC) were closely integrated. Such was, indeed, as aspect of progressivism. It was considered by most to be a good thing, or at least to be the natural and normal state of affairs. Certainly, the system back then included what amounted to price-fixing as a normal business practice.

On the other hand, the "despotic" thing is less clear. Some assert that since FDR was effectively a dictator during World War II, that therefore the Democratic Party represented despotism ever since FDR (or maybe ever since Wilson).

Having lived through that period of time, I have to say that I am not so sure about that: if it was despotism, it was a heavily democratic and beneficent despotism. However, it is evident that there was a fascist skein running through the entirety of USA's political history throughout the 20th Century.

jilles dykstra > , August 19, 2017 at 6:40 am GMT

@Fidelios Automata

Fascism originates from Mussolini's Italy. It was anti socialist and anti communist, it of course was pro Italian, Italy's great deeds in antiquity, the Roman empire, were celebrated.

One can see this as racist, but as Italy consisted of mostly Italians, it was not racist in the present meaning of the word at all. Italy was very hesitant in persecuting jews, for example. Hitler depised Mussolini, Mussolini was an ally that weakened Germany. Hitler and Mussolini agreed in their hatred of communism.

Calling Hitler a fascist just creates confusion. All discussions of what nowadays fascism is, our could mean, end like rivers in the desert.

Priss Factor > , August 19, 2017 at 7:52 am GMT

Come on

'Aristocracy' and 'fascist' are all weasel words. (I'm the only true fascist btw, and it's National Humanism, National Left, or Left-Right.)

US is an ethnogarchy, and that really matters. The Power rules, but the nature of the Power is shaped by the biases of the ruling ethnic group.

It is essentially ruled by Jewish Supremacists.

Now, if not for Jews, another group might have supreme power, and it might be problematic in its own way. BUT, the agenda would be different.

Suppose Chinese-Americans controlled much of media, finance, academia, deep state, and etc. They might be just as corrupt or more so than Jews, BUT their agenda would be different. They would not be hateful to Iran, Russia, Syria, or to Palestinians. And they won't care about Israel.

They would have their own biases and agendas, but they would still be different from Jewish obsessions.

Or suppose the top elites of the US were Poles. Now, US policy may be very anti-Russian BUT for reasons different from those of Jews.

So, we won't learn much by just throwing words like 'fascist' or 'aristocrat' around.

We have to be more specific. Hitler was 'fascist' and so was Rohm. But Hitler had Rohm wiped out.

Surely, a Zionist 'fascist' had different goals than an Iranian 'fascist'.

One might say the Old South African regime was 'fascist'. Well, today's piggish ANC is also 'fascist', if by 'fascist' we mean power-hungry tyrants. But black 'fascists' want something different from what white 'fascists' wanted.

It's like all football players are in football. But to understand what is going on, we have to know WHICH team they play for.

Jewish Elites don't just play for power. They play for Jewish power.

Priss Factor > , August 19, 2017 at 8:01 am GMT

GooDL -- Google + ADL -- purges Alternative Right. This is why Alt Right needs to support BDS.

The Alarmist > , August 19, 2017 at 9:13 am GMT

Don't worry about Prez Trump as the signing of the sanctions bill and the firing of Bannon show, he is getting his thinking "right."

Even if the Dems take both houses of Congress in 2018, they won't impeach Trump because they would lose their chief justification for fund-raising and they would have no "easy to beat opponent" in 2020 or 2024.

zzzz > , August 19, 2017 at 10:27 am GMT

"Crimea had been only involuntarily transferred from Russia to Ukraine by the Soviet dictator Khrushchev in 1954; it had been part of Russia for the hundreds of years prior to 1954. "

Sure, sure from 1783 to 1954, there were many hundreds years!

Regards

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 11:42 am GMT

Good summary of where we're at, but please don't call the ruling goons aristocrats. The word, "aristocrat," is derived from the Ancient Greek ἄριστος (áristos, "best"), and the ruling thugs in this country have never been the best at anything except lies, murder and theft.

I realize that calling them violent bloodthirsty sociopathic parasites is a mouthful, and that "plutarch" doesn't have quite the appropriate sting, but perhaps it's more accurate.

Or maybe we should get into the habit of calling them the "ruling mafiosi." I'm open to suggestions.

"Goonocrats"?

Anon > , Disclaimer August 19, 2017 at 12:56 pm GMT

and that threatens those foreign aristocrats with encroachments against their own territory, whenever a vassal aristocracy resists the master-aristocracy's will.

They also -- through the joint action of Rating Agencies, the Anglosaxon media, the vassal vassal states' media, make national debt's yield spreads skyrocket.

It's been the way to make entire governments tumble in Europe, as well as force ministers for economics to resign.
After obeisance has been restored -- and an "ex Goldman Sachs man" put on the presidential/ministerial chair, usually -- investors magically find back their trust in the nation's economic stability, and yield spreads return to their usual level.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 1:42 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

These foreign vassals had a cozy existence

No doubt about it.

That's how thugs rule; there are plenty of quivering sell outs to do the rulers' bidding. Look at the sickening standing ovations given to Netanyahoo by supposed "US" congresscreeps.

Jake > , August 19, 2017 at 1:46 pm GMT

@Fidelios Automata Abraham Lincoln's economic policy was to combine private monopolies with the Federal Government under a President like him: one who ordered the arrests of newspaper editors/publishers who opposed his policies and more 'despotic' goodies.

Joe Hide > , August 19, 2017 at 1:47 pm GMT

While the article favorably informs, and was written so as to engage the reader, it lacks reasonable solutions to its problems presented. One solution which I never read or hear about, is mandated MRI's, advanced technology, and evidence supported psychological testing of sitting and potential political candidates. The goal would be to publicly reveal traits of psychopathy, narcissism, insanity, etc. Of course, the most vocal opposition would come from those who intend to hide these traits. The greatest evidence for the likelyhood of this process working, is the immense effort those who would be revealed have historically put into hiding what they are.

Michael Kenny > , August 19, 2017 at 2:04 pm GMT

Eric Zuesse is a rather shadowy figure who describes himself as an "investigative historian" but does not appear ever to have held an academic position. I've read a lot of his articles on another website and he systematically supports Vladimir Putin. The arguments he puts forward are thus, unsurprisingly, the standard pro-Putin arguments that have been put forward many times by many authors over the last few years. Re-hashing them yet again, particularly in this rather polemical style, suggests increasing nervousness on the part of Putin's American supporters. A side effect of Charlottesville perhaps?

Brabantian > , Website August 19, 2017 at 2:24 pm GMT

This Eric Zuesse who has recently been insinuating himself as an 'alt media star', is a known Israeli propaganda agent who mixes some truth with big lies, Wikipedia-style, in Trojan Horse service for Zuesse's intel agency masters Zuesse tries to sound trendy-critical of the USA, but like other fakers he kicks the ball to Mossad at the key moments

Zuesse earned his Israeli-agent privileges long ago with a book attacking holocaust deniers, & Zuesse regularly pipes up supporting other intel agent shills in the media, always touting himself as 'fact-based' while disparaging others, Zuesse trying to paper over real truth with his too-many links

A big con game Zuesse performs along with others, is trying to sell the fairy tale that 9-11 was done by the evil 'Saudis', & that Israel had zero zilch nada to do with 11 Sep 2001 & the neo-con war aftermath Zuesse avoiding evidence such as rabbi's son & US Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff, releasing the arrested 'dancing Israels' of 9-11, & quickly putting them on an aeroplane back to Israel

And Zuesse breezily dismisses, the New York Times photo article on the 'art student project' inside the World Trade Center a couple of months before they were exploded, where the 'students' were photographed with a set of boxes there in the NYC tower innards the boxes had a commercial stamp on them they were boxes with components of bomb detonators

http://www.newnationalist.net/2017/03/02/world-trade-centers-infamous-91st-floor-israeli-art-student-project/

SolontoCroesus > , August 19, 2017 at 2:55 pm GMT

@jilles dykstra

All discussions of what nowadays fascism is, our could mean, end like rivers in the desert.

Poetic, jilles dykstra, but as an Italian given to bluntness, I'd state it somewhat differently:

Most people who sling the epithet "fascist" do not know what the hell they are talking about.

I suggest they read Giovanni Gentile's Origins and Doctrine of Fascism

http://www.lancasterlawoffice.com/Media/Gentile,%20Origins%20and%20Doctrine%20of%20Fascism.pdf

It's going to require a bit of effort -- a lot of effort, in fact to fully understand Gentile and what he/Mussolini hoped to achieve through Fascism- The effort will likely tax the most ambitious of our stenographer/journalist class: you'll have to take on board an understanding of Italy's fragmented history, and especially of Italy's relationship to Catholicism: it's easy for me, I lived it, but Brian Lamb was absolutely flummoxed when Maurizio Viroli tried to explain to him that Italians incorporate within themselves holy-joe pious Catholic practices with utter disdain for Church strictures -- https://www.c-span.org/video/?160904-1/niccolos-smile

As an Italian, I would, of course, play some beautiful music in the background. Tchaikovsky gathered charming Italian folk music and composed the dynamic Capriccio Italien:

PS Our Jewish/zionist friends might find it intriguing that Jabotinsky centered his "spiritual being" in Rome, and greatly admired Mussolini and sought to incorporate his ideas in Revisionist Zionism.

SolontoCroesus > , August 19, 2017 at 3:04 pm GMT

@jacques sheete

"ruling mafiosi."

No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy." Lots of Jews.

Jake > , August 19, 2017 at 3:05 pm GMT

Eric Zuesse is a nasty, hardcore leftist in the senses that matter most. Often, he reveals his Leftism to be based on his hatred of Christianity and his utter contempt for white Christians.

But there is that dead clock being correct twice per day matter. In this article, Zuesse gets a good deal right.

First, he delineates the American Elites well. The USA forged by Abe Lincoln is not a real democracy, not a real republic. It is the worst kind of oligarchy: one based on love of money almost exclusively (because if a man does not love money well enough to be bribed, then he cannot be trusted by plutocrats) while proclaiming itself focused on helping all the little guys of the world overcome the power of the rich oppressors.

It is the Devil's game nearly perfected by the grand alliance of WASPs and Jews, with their Saudi hangers-on.

Second, it is fair to label America's Deep State fascist , Elite Fascist. And we should never forget that while Jews are no more than 3% of the American population, they now are at least 30% (my guess would be closer to 59%) of the most powerful Deep Staters. That means that per capita Jews easily are the fascist-inclined people in America.

The most guilty often bray the loudest at others in hope of getting them blamed and escaping punishment. And this most guilty group – Deep State Elites evolved from the original WASP-Jewish alliance against Catholics – is dead-set on making the majority of whites in the world serfs.

Third, the US 'weaponization of finance' seems to have been used against the Vatican to force Benedict XVI to resign so that Liberal Jesuit (sorry for the redundancy) Jorge Bergolgio could be made Pope. The Jesuits are far and away the most Leftist and gay part of the Catholic Church, and the American Deep State wanted a gay-loving, strongly pro-Jewish, strongly pro-Moslem 'immigrant' as Pope.

Fourth, that America's Leftists of every stripe, America's Neocons, and America's 'compassionate conservatives' all hate Putin is all you should need to know that Putin is far, far better for Russia's working class, Russia's non-Elites, than our Elites are for us.

Ilyana Rozumova > , August 19, 2017 at 3:14 pm GMT

Brilliant Bird-view.

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 3:34 pm GMT

@Michael Kenny

but does not appear ever to have held an academic position.

So what?

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 3:36 pm GMT

@Brabantian Good comments.

They apply to a few others around here as well, particularly this

who mixes some truth with big lies

SolontoCroesus > , August 19, 2017 at 3:37 pm GMT

@SolontoCroesus PS Gentile is 3 syllables, gen TIL eh, not GEN tile.

Priss Factor > , Website August 19, 2017 at 3:44 pm GMT

Charlottesville, Occupy Wall St And The Neoliberal Police State.
Charlottesville was a Neoliberal ambush designed to crush the Alt Right once and for all. This story must be told.

https://altright.com/2017/08/19/charlottesville-occupy-wall-st-and-the-neoliberal-police-state/

jacques sheete > , August 19, 2017 at 3:46 pm GMT

@SolontoCroesus

"ruling mafiosi."
No way. How about Jewish terrorists ? Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy." Lots of Jews.

Very few Italians in the ruling "aristocracy."

Another common misconception is to associate the mafia with Italians mostly. The Italian mafiosi are pikers compared to the American ones of Eastern European descent. The real bosses are not the Italians.

Bugsy Siegel, Louis "Lepke" Buchalter, Longy Zwillman, Moe Dalitz, Meyer Lansky and many many others.

Even the Jewish Virtual Library admits to some of it.

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-gangsters-in-america

New York, Chicago, Las Vegas, LA, Miami, and many others all dominated by non-Italian mobsters, not to mention the US government.

[Aug 18, 2017] How think tanks sell war...

Notable quotes:
"... The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas, it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors. ..."
"... According to an email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ... ..."
"... So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | ronpaulinstitute.org

Weapons Money Intended for Economic Development Being Secretly Diverted to Lobbying Alex Emmons Aug 18, 2017 undefined

The United Arab Emirates created a "slush fund" using money meant for domestic economic development projects and funneled it to a high-profile think tank in the United States, emails obtained by The Intercept show.

Last week, The Intercept reported that the UAE gave a $20 million grant to the Middle East Institute, flooding a well-regarded D.C. think tank with a monetary grant larger than its annual budget . According to an email from Richard Clarke, MEI's chairman of the board, the UAE got the money from offset investments ! development investments by international companies that are made as part of trade agreements.

The idea behind offset agreements is simple: When a country buys weapons from a firm overseas, it pumps a large amount of money out of its economy, instead of investing in its own defense industry or in other domestic projects. So to make large weapons deals more attractive, arms companies offer programs to "offset" that effect. As part of a weapons package, they often sign an agreement to invest in the country's economy, either in defense or civilian sectors.

Offsets provide a way to sell weapons at inflated prices, when companies offer juicier offset packages. Critics say the lack of transparency in how offset investments are carried out leaves a window open for a form of legalized corruption. The emails lift a veil on what has long been an obscure element of the arms trade.

According to an email from Clarke, the UAE accepted unpaid offset obligations as cash payments to a large financial firm called Tawazun Holding. Tawazun sent the $20 million to a UAE think tank called the Emirates Center for Strategic Studies and Research . ECSSR then began sending that money to the Middle East Institute, a prestigious D.C. think tank that has a history of promoting arms sales to Gulf dictatorships. ...

So essentially, in a roundabout way, the UAE took money from international firms that was meant for economic development and funneled it to a supportive think tank in the United States.

Fair use excerpt. Full article here .

[Aug 18, 2017] After Neoliberalism, What Next by Jayati Ghosh

Notable quotes:
"... By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Cross posted from Triple Crisis ..."
"... There are several necessary elements of this. Globally, most now recognise the need to reform the international financial system, which has failed to meet two obvious requirements: preventing instability and crises, and transferring resources from richer to poorer economies. Not only have we experienced much greater volatility and propensity to financial meltdown across emerging markets and now even industrial countries, but even the periods of economic expansion were based on the global poor subsidising the rich. ..."
"... Given these problems, there is no alternative but systematic state regulation and control of finance. Since private players will inevitably attempt to circumvent regulation, the core of the financial system – banking – must be protected, and that is only possible through social ownership. Therefore, some degree of socialisation of banking (and not just the risks inherent in finance) is inevitable. In developing countries this is also important because it enables public control over the direction of credit, without which no country has industrialised. ..."
"... Originally published in the Red Pepper , August 6, 2017. ..."
Aug 18, 2017 | www.nakedcapitalism.com

The crisis consists precisely in the fact that the old is dying and the new cannot be born; in this interregnum a great variety of morbid symptoms appear.

By Jayati Ghosh, Professor of Economics and Chairperson at the Centre for Economic Studies and Planning, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi. Cross posted from Triple Crisis

We may be living through one of those moments in history that future historians will look back on as a watershed, a period of flux that marked a transition to quite different economic and social arrangements. Unfortunately, in human history a 'moment' can be a very long time, so long that it could be decades before the final shape of the new arrangements are even evident; and in the interim, there could be many 'dead cat bounces' of the current system.

What is clear is that the established order – broadly defined as neoliberal globalised finance capitalism – is no longer capable of delivering on its promises of either growth or stability, even as it generates more inequality and insecurity across the world. In Marxist terms (as befitting the 150th anniversary of Das Kapital), the property relations under which production is organised have become fetters on the development of productive forces themselves, and generate more and more alienation. This may explain why, perhaps even more significantly, the system is also losing legitimacy in most countries, under attack from both right and left.

Whether we look at straws in the wind or green shoots in the ground, there is no doubt that there are incipient signs of change. But at this point there are many directions in which such change could go, and not all of them are progressive or even desirable. That is why it is important to get social and political traction for alternative trajectories that focus on more equitable, just, democratic and ecologically viable outcomes for most of humanity.

A Familiar Question

The question 'what is your alternative?' is a familiar one for most progressives, and too often we are overly defensive or self-critical about our supposed lack of alternatives. In truth, there are many economically-viable, socially-desirable alternative proposals in different contexts. The problem is not their lack of existence but their lack of political feasibility, and perhaps their lack of wider dissemination. But it is certainly true that the alternative does not consist of one over-arching theory (or even framework) that can subsume all others, since there are many good reasons for being sceptical of the days of the 'grand theory' that supposedly could take care of everything.

While rejecting the totalising theory, it is possible to think of a broad framework around which there could be much agreement, even among people who do not necessarily identify themselves as of the 'left', but are nevertheless dissatisfied with current economic arrangements at both national and international levels.

Much current discussion on economic strategies for global capitalism is framed around the financial crisis of 2007/8 and its continuing repercussions. But it does not really need a crisis to show us that the past strategy for growth and development has been flawed in most countries. Even during the previous boom, the pattern of growth had too many limitations, paradoxes and inherent fragilities. Everyone now knows that the economic boom was unsustainable, based on speculative practices that were enabled and encouraged by financial deregulation. It also drew rapaciously and fecklessly on natural resources, and it was deeply unequal. Contrary to general perception, most people in the developing world, even within the most successful region of Asia, did not gain.

Global Transfers

The financial bubble in the US attracted savings from across the world, including from the poorest developing countries, so that for at least five years the global South transferred financial resources to the North. Developing country governments opened their markets to trade and finance, gave up on monetary policy and pursued fiscally 'correct' deflationary policies that reduced public spending. Development projects remained incomplete and citizens were deprived of the most essential socio-economic rights.

A net transfer of jobs from North to South did not take place. In fact, industrial employment in the South barely increased in the past decade, even in the 'factory of the world', China. Instead, technological change in manufacturing and new services meant that fewer workers could generate more output. Old jobs in the South were lost or became precarious and the majority of new jobs were fragile, insecure and low-paying, even in fast-growing China and India. The persistent agrarian crisis in the developing world hurt peasant livelihoods and generated global food problems. Rising inequality meant that the much-hyped growth in emerging markets did not benefit most people, as profits soared but wage shares of national income declined sharply.

Almost all developing countries adopted an export-led growth model, which in turn suppressed wage costs and domestic consumption in order to remain internationally competitive and achieve growing shares of world markets. This led to the peculiar situation of rising savings rates and falling investment rates (especially in several Asian countries) and to the holding of international reserves that were then placed in 'safe' assets abroad. This is why the boom that ended in 2007/8 was associated with the South (especially in developing Asia) subsidising the North: through cheaper exports of goods and services, through net capital flows from developing countries to the US in particular, through flows of cheap labour in the form of short-term migration.

Profit-Led Costs

The collapse in Northern export markets that followed the recession brought that process to a halt, and recent moves towards more protectionist strategies in the US and elsewhere, as well as the persistent mercantilist approach of surplus-producing countries like Germany, have made it more difficult since then. In any case, such a strategy is unsustainable beyond a point, especially when a number of relatively large economies use it at the same time.

In this boom, domestic demand tended to be profit-led, based on high and growing profit shares in the economy and significant increases in the income and consumption of newly-globalised middle classes, which led to bullish investment in non-tradeable sectors such as financial assets and real estate as well as in luxury goods and services. The patterns of production and consumption that emerged meant that growth also involved rapacious and ultimately destructive exploitation of nature and the environment. The costs – in terms of excessive congestion, environmental pollution and ecological degradation – are already being felt, quite apart from the implications such expansion has on climate change.

There have been other negative impacts. Within developing Asia, for example, it led to an internal 'brain drain' with adverse implications for the future. The skewed structure of incentives generated by the explosive growth of finance directed the best young minds towards careers that promised quick rewards and large material gains rather than painstaking but socially necessary research and basic science. The impact of relocation of certain industries and the associated requirement for skilled and semi-skilled labour led to increased opportunities for educated employment, but it also led bright young people to enter work that is typically mechanical and does not require much originality or creativity, with little opportunity to develop their intellectual capacities.

At the same time, crucial activities were inadequately rewarded. Farming in particular became increasingly fraught with risk and subject to growing volatility and declining financial viability, while non-farm work did not increase rapidly enough to absorb the labour force even in the fastest growing economies of the region.

Restructuring Economic Relations

The boom was not stable or inclusive, either across or within countries. The subsequent slump (or 'secular stagnation') has been only too inclusive, forcing those who did not gain earlier to pay for the sins of irresponsible and unregulated finance. As economies slow down, more jobs are lost or become more fragile, insecure and vulnerable; and people, especially those in the developing world who did not gain from the boom, face loss of livelihood and deteriorating conditions of living. This is why it is so important that we restructure economic relations in a more democratic and sustainable way.

There are several necessary elements of this. Globally, most now recognise the need to reform the international financial system, which has failed to meet two obvious requirements: preventing instability and crises, and transferring resources from richer to poorer economies. Not only have we experienced much greater volatility and propensity to financial meltdown across emerging markets and now even industrial countries, but even the periods of economic expansion were based on the global poor subsidising the rich.

Within national economies, this system has encouraged pro-cyclicality: it has encouraged bubbles and speculative fervour rather than real productive investment for future growth. It has rendered national financial systems opaque and impossible to regulate. It has allowed for the proliferation of parallel transactions through tax havens and loose domestic controls. It has reduced the crucial developmental role of directed credit.

Given these problems, there is no alternative but systematic state regulation and control of finance. Since private players will inevitably attempt to circumvent regulation, the core of the financial system – banking – must be protected, and that is only possible through social ownership. Therefore, some degree of socialisation of banking (and not just the risks inherent in finance) is inevitable. In developing countries this is also important because it enables public control over the direction of credit, without which no country has industrialised.

Desirable – and Necessary

The obsessively export-oriented model that has dominated the growth strategy for the past few decades must be reconsidered. This is not a just a desirable shift – it has become a necessity given the obvious fact that the US and the EU are no longer engines of world growth through increasing import demand in the near future. This means that both developed and developing countries must seek to redirect their exports to other countries and most of all to redirect their economies towards more domestic demand. This requires a shift towards wage-led and domestic demand-led growth, particularly in the countries with economies large enough to sustain this shift. This can happen not only through direct redistributive strategies but also through public expenditure to provide more basic goods and services.

This means that fiscal policy and public expenditure must be brought back centre stage. Calls to end austerity are becoming more widespread in the developed world and will soon find their counterpart in developing countries. Clearly, fiscal stimulus is now essential, to cope with the adverse real-economy effects of the current crisis/stagnation and to prevent economic activity and employment from falling, and then to put good, quality employment on a stable footing. Fiscal expenditure is also required to undertake and promote investment to manage the effects of climate change and promote greener technologies. Public spending is crucial to advance the development project in the South and fulfil the promise of achieving minimally acceptable standards of living for everyone in the developing world.

Social and Economic Rights

Social policy – the public responsibility for meeting social and economic rights of citizens – contributes positively to both growth and development. This means especially the provision of universal good quality care services, funded by the state, with care workers properly recognised, remunerated and provided with decent working conditions. This also helps to reduce gender and other social inequalities generated by the imposition of unpaid care work, and has strong multiplier effects that allow for more employment increases over time and generate a 'bubbling up' of economic activity.

There must be conscious attempts to reduce economic inequalities, both between and within countries. We have clearly crossed the limits of what is 'acceptable' inequality in most societies, and policies will have to reverse this trend. Globally and nationally, we must reduce inequalities in income and wealth, and most significantly in the consumption of natural resources.

This is even more complicated than might be imagined because unsustainable patterns of production and consumption are deeply entrenched in richer countries and are aspired to in developing countries. But many millions of citizens of the developing world still have poor or inadequate access to the most basic conditions of decent life, such as electricity, transport and communication links, sanitation, health, nutrition and education. Ensuring universal provision across the global South will inevitably require greater per capita use of natural resources and more carbon-emitting production.

Both sustainability and equity therefore require a reduction of the excessive resource use of the rich, especially in developed countries but also among the elites in the developing world. This means that redistributive fiscal and other economic policies must be especially oriented towards reducing inequalities of resource consumption, globally and nationally. Within countries, for example, essential social and developmental expenditure can be financed by taxes that penalise resource-wasteful expenditure.

New Demand and Production

This requires new patterns of demand and production. It is why the present focus on developing new means of measuring genuine progress, well-being and quality of life are so important. Quantitative GDP growth targets, which still dominate the thinking of policy-makers, are not simply distracting from these more important goals but can be counterproductive.

For example, a chaotic, polluting and unpleasant system of privatised urban transport involving many vehicles and over-congested roads generates more GDP than a safe, efficient and affordable system of public transport that reduces congestion and provides a pleasant living and working environment. It is not enough to talk about 'cleaner, greener technologies' to produce goods that are based on the old and now discredited pattern of consumption. Instead, we must think creatively about consumption itself, and work out which goods and services are more necessary and desirable for our societies.

This cannot be left to market forces, since the international demonstration effect and the power of advertising will continue to create undesirable wants and unsustainable consumption and production. But public intervention in the market cannot be knee-jerk responses to constantly changing short-term conditions. Instead, planning – not in the sense of the detailed planning that destroyed the reputation of command regimes, but strategic thinking about the social requirements and goals for the future – is absolutely essential. Fiscal and monetary policies, as well as other forms of intervention, will have to be used to redirect consumption and production towards these social goals, to bring about such shifts in socially-created aspirations and material wants, and to reorganise economic life to be less rapacious and more sustainable.

Since state involvement in economic activity is now an imperative, we should be thinking of ways to make involvement more democratic and accountable within our countries and internationally. Large amounts of public money will be used for financial bailouts and to provide fiscal stimuli. How this is done will have huge implications for distribution, access to resources and living conditions of the ordinary people whose taxes will be paying for this. So it is essential that we design the global economic architecture to function more democratically. And it is even more important that states across the world, when formulating and implementing economic policies, are more open and responsive to the needs of the majority of their citizens.

International Framework

These are general points and obviously leave much to the specific contexts of individual countries and societies. But finally, we need an international economic framework that supports all this, which means more than just that capital flows must be controlled and regulated so that they do not destabilise these strategies.

The global institutions that form the organising framework for international trade, investment and production decisions need to change and become not only more democratic in structure but more genuinely democratic and people-oriented in spirit, intent and functioning. This is particularly the case with respect to the dissemination of knowledge, now privatised and concentrated thanks to the privileging of intellectual property rights. Financing for development and conservation of global resources must become the top priorities of the global economic institutions.

These proposals may seem like a tall order, but human history is replete with stories of major reversals of past trajectories and transformations that come when they are not expected and from directions that are unpredictable. What has been created and implemented by human agency can also be undone to bring in better alternatives. It may well be that the time is ripe in terms of greater social acceptance of such ideas and thoughts about how to refine and adapt them to particular contexts.

Originally published in the Red Pepper , August 6, 2017.

[Aug 18, 2017] Postmodernism is a shift in Marxist theory from class conflict to identity politics conflict; instead of judging people by the content of their character, they are now to be judged by the color of their skin (or their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera).

Aug 18, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org

Just Sayin' | Aug 17, 2017 4:18:43 PM | 58

re #50

OT but not really -
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/the-unfortunate-fallout-of-campus-postmodernism

"In an article for Quillette.com on "Methods Behind the Campus Madness," graduate researcher Sumantra Maitra of the University of Nottingham in England reported that 12 of the 13 academics at U.C. Berkeley who signed a letter to the chancellor protesting Yiannopoulos were from "Critical theory, Gender studies and Post-Colonial/Postmodernist/Marxist background."

This is a shift in Marxist theory from class conflict to identity politics conflict; instead of judging people by the content of their character, they are now to be judged by the color of their skin (or their ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, et cetera).

"Postmodernists have tried to hijack biology, have taken over large parts of political science, almost all of anthropology, history and English," Maitra concludes, "and have proliferated self-referential journals, citation circles, non-replicable research, and the curtailing of nuanced debate through activism and marches, instigating a bunch of gullible students to intimidate any opposing ideas.""

[Aug 17, 2017] Google Culture Wars

Notable quotes:
"... So, noting that on average, men have 90% more upper body strength than women, would I not be able to claim that any woman my height or less will not have my upper body strength? ..."
"... The problem is that PC is on the way to functioning like militant Islam with regard to unbelievers and apostates. ..."
"... "It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them". ..."
"... "There are only two important days in the life of any person, the day that your are born and then day you find out why." ..."
"... The supreme irony of l'affaire Damore is that was a primary point of Damore's memo and the response was perhaps the best proof of the validity of that point possible. Hence my "inept thinkers" comment. ..."
"... Look how Canadian 'hate speech laws' began with silencing 'Neo-Nazis' (fake ones, btw) and then spread to going after those who don't use proper pronouns. Self-Righteous Addiction created all these Self-Righteous Junkies. ..."
"... The bigger question is why Homo Sapiens is the only primate on the planet where The female is expected to be equal to the male ..."
"... The whole argument "for equality" is fundamentally flawed – it is the wrong goal. As individuals we humans want to be different – not equal. We want to bring something different to the table of social interaction. People who are equal have nothing to give to each other. ..."
"... P.S. No matter our intellectual capabilities, for 99% of us – doing a good job of raising our children – is the most lasting thing that we can ever do. They are our true legacy – what we do on the job is all too soon lost in the evolution of business. ..."
"... it is quite likely that variation is bigger in males, as usual with many other traits. ..."
Aug 17, 2017 | www.unz.com

Peripatetic commenter > , August 16, 2017 at 4:20 pm GMT

OT, but I am looking for a list of references to criticism of the criticism of The Bell Curve or supporters of The Bell Curve.

Can anyone help. A quick search via Duck Duck Go turned up a couple.

James Thompson > , Website August 16, 2017 at 5:05 pm GMT

@Peripatetic commenter Fine, but better to read a few chapters of the book.

res > , August 16, 2017 at 5:09 pm GMT

Thank you for your comprehensive post.

One thought about:

This argument makes me smile. Hyde seems to take as granted that males have an advantage on "tightly timed tests for mathematical and spatial tasks". Is it simply my male point of view that to do well on any test, in the sense of getting things right, and doing so quickly, would be considered a double advantage? Why regard speedy thinking as a complexity of interpretation? Why is speed in correctly completing a task judged to be "speed as much as skill"? Absurdly, the prompt and correct completion of a task seems to be cast as mere male impetuosity. Furthermore, any employer reading this argument would be justified in thinking "On difficult tasks involving maths and spatial analysis, women need more time" so, given a chance, it might be better not to employ them.

Agreed, but the timing issue for spatial tests actually strikes me as even more important than that. I am good at typical spatial tests, but one thing I have noticed is that for the hardest items I find myself going through a very working memory loaded process of checking whether a rotation works for a variety of details (number of details being limited by WM). I am pretty sure this process is more g loaded than spatial (have to find, remember, and analyze these differences). It is also slow at my WM limits (I trial and error choose which details to focus on for the hardest items). I am certain I could improve my performance by making pen and paper notes, but consider that cheating on those tests. It would be interesting to explore differences in solution speed and style both within and between groups (e.g. do similar scoring men and women differ in technique?).

Thus I tend to think the need for more time indicates a relative deficit in "real" spatial skill in favor of g. Whether this "real" spatial skill is what drives the relationship of spatial skills with programming is unclear, but I think it might be. I would hypothesize that it might not be easy for someone like me to emulate the reasoning a higher spatial ability person might use to solve real world problems (rotations are a relatively simple special case problem). If so, presumably this problem would be even worse for someone with even less "real" spatial ability.

Part of what I base my self assessment on is my sense that some people just immediately see the answer to hard spatial problems. Another part of this is my experience with tasks like navigating in complex topographical environments (I suspect that is a related skill). I routinely encounter people who I think are much better at navigation than I am (especially considered in tandem with more g loaded differences). My sense is that this instant recognition correlates with g but is a separate ability (perhaps more separate than the spatial test correlations indicate given my substitutability observation above). I would be very interested in either anecdotal observations or research discussing this!

Overall, my takeaways from the whole l'affaire Damore (surprised I haven't seen this pun used yet, just searched and here is a use , though I disagree with it that post and the comments are worth a look) are:

res > , August 16, 2017 at 5:20 pm GMT

@Peripatetic commenter Perhaps a good start is to read (or at least skim) Intelligence, Genes, and Success: Scientists Respond to The Bell Curve as a collection of critiques of The Bell Curve which seem better than most. Then look for critiques of that book and its papers.

Another approach would be to look at Linda Gottfredson's work, most notably: Mainstream Science on Intelligence: An Editorial With 52 Signatories, History, and Bibliography

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.366.7808&rep=rep1&type=pdf

Though IIRC that is more useful as a source of information to form critiques than as ready made rebuttals to any particular work.

P.S. I agree with Dr. Thompson about reading TBC, but based on your other comments assume you have done so already.

Peripatetic commenter > , August 16, 2017 at 6:29 pm GMT

The Note makes it very clear that men and women "differ in part due to biological causes", that many such differences are small, with significant overlaps, and that you cannot say anything about an individual on the basis of population level distributions.

So, noting that on average, men have 90% more upper body strength than women, would I not be able to claim that any woman my height or less will not have my upper body strength?

res > , August 16, 2017 at 7:40 pm GMT

@Peripatetic commenter Short answer, no. Though it arguably depends on where you fall in the male range and the population size (which controls how much of an outlier one can expect to occur). If you want to make this more concrete, here is a paper on strength differences which seems to imply (though I don't see it stated) a Cohen's d of about 3 for upper body strength: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4756754/
Plugging that into the visualizer here (3 is the maximum value supported) you see only 13% overlap: http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/
Worth noting that these analyses don't account for size differences (so your equal height condition skews things).

To answer your question a different way, try looking at world championship weightlifting results. Can you lift more than the strongest woman there less than or equal to you in height (or weight as a proxy)? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_world_records_in_Olympic_weightlifting

https://rawpowerlifting.com/records/world_records/

Razib's grip strength post is a worthwhile look at this sort of thing: https://www.unz.com/gnxp/men-are-stronger-than-women-on-average

Peripatetic commenter > , August 16, 2017 at 8:04 pm GMT

To answer your question a different way, try looking at world championship weightlifting results. Can you lift more than the strongest woman there less than or equal to you in height (or weight as a proxy)?

I don't do weight training but if I did, I think I could and I would assert that world championship male weight lifters could.

Peripatetic commenter > , August 16, 2017 at 9:36 pm GMT

I started reading https://people.ok.ubc.ca/lgabora/papers/Gabora-Russon-EOI-2011.pdf

and found this:

The more we learn about nonhuman intelligence, however, the more we find that abilities previously thought to be uniquely human are not. For example, it was thought until the 1960s that humans alone make tools. But then Jane Goodall (1963) found wild chimpanzees making them. Later, several other species were found making tools too (Beck, 1980). Thus, ideas about what marks the boundary between human and nonhuman intelligence have undergone repeated

There is an enormous qualitative difference between the tools that Chimps (or other primates) use and something like, say, https://www.thoughtco.com/acheulean-handaxe-first-tool-171238 .

What is the use of making such statements? Chimps are not going to suddenly start making screw drivers or knives or bows and arrows etc. Is it thought that all other tool making is layered on top of the neural support Chimps use for making their very primitive tools?

Priss Factor > , Website August 17, 2017 at 4:38 am GMT

2 Kevins says we are living 'matriarchy'.

wayfarer > , August 17, 2017 at 4:44 am GMT

"Google Memo: Fired Employee Speaks Out!"

utu > , August 17, 2017 at 4:44 am GMT

@Peripatetic commenter

Tom Welsh > , August 17, 2017 at 8:44 am GMT

I suspect that no one with enough intelligence to think clearly understands what all the fuss is about. I have never been particularly successful at anything, despite my IQ of over 160 (according to Mensa). The only clearcut effect this has had, as far as I can make out, is that most people find my conversation obscure and boring.

If an IQ 60% above average confers no apparent practical advantage, what is the point in squabbling heatedly about hypothetical differences on the order of 1%? It is surely well established, even if it weren't glaringly obvious to common sense, that while pure intelligence is vital in some fields of work, its effects are usually swamped by those of other characteristics such as persistence, enthusiasm, charisma and empathy.

Indeed, there is a lot of anecdotal evidence to suggest that the very most intelligent people are disproportionately prone to mental disorders, existential horror, and despair. There is a lot to hate and fear in the world, and most people seem to be spared the worst consequences by the simplest of defence mechanisms – a sheer failure to notice.

Tom Welsh > , August 17, 2017 at 8:52 am GMT

@Peripatetic commenter "Is it thought that all other tool making is layered on top of the neural support Chimps use for making their very primitive tools?"

Yes. Although of course we are not chimps, nor are we directly descended from chimps. The human brain is immensely flexible and adaptable, and once the practice of solving problems by making tools became established, a whole vast new world opened up. Note that people were making stone tools for a very, very long time before the first metals were discovered. Note also that many of the human race's greatest discoveries may have been made only once or twice before spreading worldwide.

One serious weakness that most humans suffer from is an inability to visualize long periods of time. Just as, to the average citizen, a million, a billion, and a trillion are all more or less just "lots and lots", most of us really cannot conceive of a million years or what might happen in such a time. At about three generations per century, a million years represents about 30,000 generations. A mere 50 generations ago the Roman Empire was still flourishing.

James Thompson > , Website August 17, 2017 at 10:27 am GMT

@res Thanks for your thoughtful and detailed comments.

On the speed issue, for all tasks, I was objecting to Hyde's implied distinction between speed and ability, because ability is related to speed. I think that W.D.Furneaux was onto this issue years ago, and progressed it well. From memory, I have classified his key insight as saying that intellectual achievement depended on: speed, accuracy and persistence.

The first two are often a trade-off, though of course the brightest people are both speedy and accurate. Persistence is often an ignored characteristic, though it is a key part of most great intellectual achievements.

As regards g, at higher levels of ability it account for less variance.

1. Furneaux, W. D., Nature, 170, 37 (1952). | ISI |
2. Furneaux, W. D. "The Determinants of Success in Intelligence Tests" (paper read to Brit. Assoc. Adv. Sci., 1955).
3. Furneaux, W. D., Manual of Nufferno Speed Tests (Nat. Found. Educ. Res., London, 1955).
4. Furneaux, W. D., in Intellectual Abilities and Problem Solving Behaviour in Handbook of Abnormal Psychology (edit. by Eysenck, H. J.) (Pergamon Press, London, 1960)

James Thompson > , Website August 17, 2017 at 10:50 am GMT

@Peripatetic commenter I think you are right if we alter it from "any woman" to "almost any woman", simply because the difference in body strength (in the paper Res references, and in the others) is a d of 3.5 so I wouldn't bother with further calculations to correct for height. What would make a difference is the small numbers of elite women athletes, as shown in the paper Razib posted.

If one simplifies the whole issue to look at height, weight and body strength together, then women are at risk in any physical encounter with men, even old ones. This has been noticed before, resulting in kind societies paying extra respect to and showing more consideration for women, and in less kind societies to their abuse.

Miro23 > , August 17, 2017 at 12:21 pm GMT

I find the ferocity of some of the replies to Damore extreme. The vehemence of the opposition is coruscating, and absolute. These issues should be matters of scholarly debate, in which the findings matter, and different interpretations contend against each other.

Or maybe it's not for ferocious attacks or scholarly debate. It's just a difference of opinion (remember "diversity") – not something to get so excited about. The problem is that PC is on the way to functioning like militant Islam with regard to unbelievers and apostates.

Moi > , August 17, 2017 at 1:10 pm GMT

Free speech is an interesting concept – but don't try to put it into practice.

James Thompson > , Website August 17, 2017 at 1:19 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh Dear Tom,
An IQ of 160 is only found in 1 in 31,560 persons, being higher than 99.9976142490% of the population. This is more than a 60% advantage over the average citizen. IQ points are not percentages.

The work of Benbow and Lubinski shows that the higher the intelligence the greater the achievement. While other personality factors may be involved, they have yet to be shown to be as important. Typically, high ability people are shown to be more balanced than average, with lower rates of mental disorder.

dc.sunsets > , August 17, 2017 at 2:10 pm GMT

@James Thompson Not to worry. We have Hollywood providing young women with all the confidence necessary that, should she walk down a dark alley and be accosted by a man, she will likely strike him a few times in the face and walk away unscathed.

/sarc off.

If women grasped even vaguely just how great is the gulf between them and the overwhelming majority of men, I suspect we'd see a lot fewer women using their divorce attorney to torment their soon-to-be (or already) ex-husband. I've watched women metaphorically poke the most dangerous animal on Planet Earth, an adult male human, as he sits in a cage that lacks bars.

The only time I've seen the "Entertainment Industry" show what can really happen in a confrontation between a typical woman and a typical (in this case viciously predatory) man, it was in a foreign-made film titled "Irreversible," available on Amazon Video. It was without a doubt the most horrifying rape-beating ever put on film, and watching it would scare the living daylights out of women. It ran rings around any horror film ever made.

Tom Welsh > , August 17, 2017 at 2:10 pm GMT

@Moi That's nothing new, either.

"It is by the goodness of God that in our country we have those three unspeakably precious things: freedom of speech, freedom of conscience, and the prudence never to practice either of them".

– Mark Twain, Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar, Ch. XX

Moi > , August 17, 2017 at 2:54 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh Sam Clemens was sui generis. And I love this one of his: "There are only two important days in the life of any person, the day that your are born and then day you find out why."

szopen > , August 17, 2017 at 3:22 pm GMT

Well, I was looking for people-vs-things preference differences expressed in easily calculable terms (i.e. something in terms of "men are rated as 10 on this trait, with SD 2, while women as 8, with SD 1.8″) but I couldn't; Can anyone help?

The best I could found was the study which claimed that in people-vs-things rating, within the top 25% of topc scorers – which would be, if I understood correctly, people who are the most interested in things (as contrasted with "interested in people") ratio of women to men is 0.287. That would mean there would be around 78% men, 22% women.

Now, the question is what is the cutoff for going to STEM, ie. what is average "things" preference for people to decide to follow career in STEM (or, more specifically, in engineering and computer science). Depending on value of this cutoff, the gap in CS and engineering might be, indeed, completely explained away by difference in people-vs-things interest, or even might imply men are discriminated against, HOWEVER, seeing as some of those preferences are calculated, I wonder whether it is not a kind of circular argument, kind of "there are more men into computer-related work, because more men are interested in computers".

Also, it seems that i saw in one study taht this difference decreases with age, which is strange. This would contradict the theory that the preference is driven by the social expectations (because, then "sexist" expectations would cause is to go up with age) but this could be explained by "it is caused by biology" theory; HOWEVER, the bad thing and the weakness is that "it's caused by biology" could be used to justify BOTH increasing and decreasing the gap – a realisation which leaves bad taste in my mouth.

Anyway I'd love to see
(1) studies quantifying the differences on a scale, not saying "the effect is large with Cohen's d=1.23″
(2) studies looking at specifically computer science and comparing their preferences with general population
(3) studies measuring the trait in very early age

res > , August 17, 2017 at 3:25 pm GMT

@James Thompson Thanks for expanding on the speed, accuracy and persistence idea. And giving references!

I am having trouble chasing down your references though. This 1967 letter gives a very similar list of references but states that there were errors in the 1952 Furneaux paper equations: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v214/n5092/abs/2141056a0.html

This book (The Measurement of Intelligence, edited by Michael? Eysenck, copyright 1973, I actually have a copy but am having trouble finding it, I think that chapter would be a good starting point for me): https://books.google.com/books?id=wjLpCAAAQBAJ&pg=PA236&lpg=PA236
gives a title for your first reference: Some Speed, Error and Difficulty Relationships within a Problem-solving Situation
From which I find: https://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v170/n4314/abs/170037a0.html
It is nice that Nature assigns DOIs to its old papers. That appears to be a two page letter. Interesting, but I am having trouble drawing inferences from it.

I am not sure I communicated my agreement with your earlier speed, accuracy, and persistence comments. I was trying to extend the idea to consider that slow speed might be an indicator of the substitution of skills (other than persistence, though that is certainly critical there) for the skill nominally being tested for. In my earlier example, g for spatial ability. For another example, I took an online autism test a while ago (identifying emotions from pictures). I scored above average (in a good way ; ), but found myself again using a more "logical" (g based IMHO) process for the harder items. I doubt that is the way most people approach that test (though I could be wrong) and my result might overstate my ability on the skill they are trying to test .

The fundamental distinction I am trying to make is between solving a problem in the same way (or sufficiently similar) just more slowly and solving the problem using a fundamentally different approach (or skill/ability?!). The former could be viewed as changing the clock speed on a computer and I think corresponds with the point you make about persistence. For the latter envision a case where one person solves a problem using visual intuition and a quick mathematical check while another person uses an extended mathematical derivation. I think this kind of substitutabiltity could be a problem in subtests intended to measure a specific skill (e.g. spatial!). And g is a very useful Swiss army knife ; ).

Perhaps this is a second order effect relative to the basic speed/persistence issue and should (could?) not really be considered until that has been solved? I guess I am just interested in anyone who has thought about this substitutability idea in the more general form. Furneaux seems focused on the speed side. In particular, Furneaux limits his consideration to the 10-85% range of difficulty while my personal experience is much more about the hard end of the difficulty scale.

This seems like a fairly obvious idea to me so I presume it has been considered. Perhaps some combination of "second order effect" and "hard to test" prevents something having been done about it?

One other thought that occurs to me. Does Furneaux's deemphasis of higher D(ifficulty) items say something about the difficulty of creating high ceiling tests? Is it possible that the combination of substitutability and more idiosyncratic skill profiles at the high end are part of that problem?

res > , August 17, 2017 at 3:32 pm GMT

@Miro23

It's just a difference of opinion (remember "diversity") – not something to get so excited about.

The supreme irony of l'affaire Damore is that was a primary point of Damore's memo and the response was perhaps the best proof of the validity of that point possible. Hence my "inept thinkers" comment.

Tom Welsh > , August 17, 2017 at 3:49 pm GMT

@dc.sunsets "No one is insuring your foods are safe".

Actually, Western governments have for decades been going out of their way to recommend actively unhealthy foods and drinks. In 1865, in 1910 and in 1939 it was clearly understood everywhere that meat, fish, poultry, eggs, vegetables, and nuts, together with some dairy and fruit, were the essential dietary items. Carbohydrates, sugars and grains in particular, were clearly understood to be fattening and probably causative of many diseases.

Yet since the US government led the charge with its McGovern Committee Report in the 1970s, Western governments have been warning against meat, saturated fat, and other healthy foods while urging consumption of more foods made from sugars and grains. We all require about 20% of daily energy from protein, and the rest is a mixture of fats and carbs. Cut out the fats, and that means 70-80% carbs, which leads inexorably to weight gain, metabolic syndrome, and for many people eventual diabetes.

Did I mention that Senator McGovern represented a grain-producing state?

Tom Welsh > , August 17, 2017 at 3:51 pm GMT

@res

I would like, in this context, to repeat my quotation of Alfred Korzybski's declaration.

"I have said what I have said. I have not said what I have not said".

Intelligent, let alone constructive, discourse will not be possible until everyone understands that saying and takes care to make sure they understand what others mean.

James Thompson > , Website August 17, 2017 at 4:15 pm GMT

@res Good points. Sorry about the references: I took the first ones to hand, and should have searched through my own posts. Have done that now, and found this:

http://www.unz.com/jthompson/you-want-it-good-or-you-want-it-tuesday

This will add some content, but I agree that I did not properly answer your question. I think the question you raise would be considered a task solving strategy problem: "I have tried shape, as I did on the easier items, but that doesn't work for this more difficult problems, so I will try feature categorization". That is, you went from a modular solution to a g-loaded general strategy when the module seemed to fail you.

My first point is that if we can find someone who solves even the difficulty problem easily, we hire them because their module does the job for us!
Second, and more interestingly, most problem solving approaches fail when the problem is both novel and very difficult. (I cannot say what makes a problem difficult, but it probably relates to the number of items and the number of operations involved in solving it). At that point in the act of creation, people try all manner of re-framings and re-descriptions, in the hope that an analogy might open up a new line of attack. For example, I cannot assist anyone with finding new elements. Despite that, out of ignorance I can make some suggestions. For example, would anything be gained by taking the target close down to absolute zero? Would it make it easier to hit something?

So, problem-solving strategies often become the real test. That also involves working out what problems you don't have to solve. During the Manhattan project one group started worrying that in focusing the charges they would get wear in the system which would throw out their very crucial calculations about the critical mass required. After a while a team member pointed out the obvious fact that the firing mechanism would only be used once.

You are right that a different approach is what we generally need for very difficult problems.
Sorry that I cannot answer all your interesting questions.

res > , August 17, 2017 at 5:00 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh That is a good quote. Perhaps I am being a bit dense, but I don't see the applicability to my comment 32. Especially given that I was not responding to you. Perhaps you could elaborate?

If anything the obligation to understand lies first with those criticizing Damore's memo.

Priss Factor > , Website August 17, 2017 at 6:34 pm GMT

@schrub

I don't mind DS not existing. The question is IF they can go after DS, where does it end?

Look how Canadian 'hate speech laws' began with silencing 'Neo-Nazis' (fake ones, btw) and then spread to going after those who don't use proper pronouns. Self-Righteous Addiction created all these Self-Righteous Junkies.

Delinquent Snail > , August 17, 2017 at 6:40 pm GMT

@Tom Welsh What? 3 generations a century? That would mean people are having kids in their 30s . Which didn't happen until this last century. Its more like 4-5, maybe even 6, generations a century.

I agree humans can't visualize large spans of time. Plus, a very large minority think the world was created 2017 years ago, so that doesn't help.

Astuteobservor II > , August 17, 2017 at 7:08 pm GMT

I find the ferocity of some of the replies to Damore extreme. The vehemence of the opposition is coruscating, and absolute. These issues should be matters of scholarly debate, in which the findings matter, and different interpretations contend against each other. Expressing different opinions should be a cue for debate, not outrage.

this is why I support him.

Bill Jones > , August 17, 2017 at 7:50 pm GMT

The bigger question is why Homo Sapiens is the only primate on the planet where The female is expected to be equal to the male.

Art > , August 17, 2017 at 8:04 pm GMT

The whole argument "for equality" is fundamentally flawed – it is the wrong goal. As individuals we humans want to be different – not equal. We want to bring something different to the table of social interaction. People who are equal have nothing to give to each other.

Our goal is to find a niche for ourselves – there is room for all different capabilities in a rational society. There is only so much need for rocket scientists.

Proving that men and women are equal is fools work.

Smart people will endeavor to prove that all work is of value – and deserving of a living compensation.

Peace ! Art

P.S. No matter our intellectual capabilities, for 99% of us – doing a good job of raising our children – is the most lasting thing that we can ever do. They are our true legacy – what we do on the job is all too soon lost in the evolution of business.

Bill Jones > , August 17, 2017 at 8:27 pm GMT

@James Thompson

Cspan had an excellent two hour or so interview of the guy on one of their weekend book shows a decade or so ago. Worth the search and a download of at least the audio.

szopen > , August 17, 2017 at 8:57 pm GMT

@res Thanks a lot for a link to "interpretating cohen's d"! FInally I understood the concept

However, the problem with COhen's d is that it assumes – if I am not mistaken – the equal standard deviations, while I think it is quite likely that variation is bigger in males, as usual with many other traits. That would mean that using "d" would not truly reflect the ratios of population over some cutoff, am i right?

res > , August 17, 2017 at 10:02 pm GMT

@szopen My understanding is the official definition of Cohen's d uses the pooled SDs of the subpopulations, but I am not sure how rigorously that subtlety is observed. For example, this page gives them as alternate definitions: https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Cohen%27s_d

I am not sure how much of a difference that makes in practice. That might be a good thing to investigate with some simulations.

Bill Jones > , August 17, 2017 at 11:45 pm GMT

@CanSpeccy

"To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not O.K."

Even if it demonstrably true. Can't let reality get in the way of the religion , can we?

[Aug 16, 2017] HARPER: IDENTITY POLITICS--WE ALL LOSE

Notable quotes:
"... I vividly recall staying up past 1 AM on election night 2016, watching CNN, as it became clear that Donald Trump had been elected the next President of the United States. News anchor Dana Bash was beside herself at the outcome, and at one point, in a fit of honesty, she exclaimed, "This means the end of identity politics." Well, yes, but a deep ideology like identity politics does not die a quiet and sober death. Last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, we saw identity politics playing out--violently. Whether it was the white protesters who formed part of the original crowd, or the black and "antifa" protesters who formed part of the counter-demonstration, we witnessed a clash of identities. ..."
"... Watching the tirades on MSNBC and other news outlets over the past 48 hours, I can't help but lament how twisted our public discourse has become. Clearly some of the counter-demonstrators were part of the very same "antifa" apparatus that got very different news coverage when they torched and trashed Seattle a number of years back in protest at a WTO meeting. This time around, they were defended by the icons of media, who denounced any thought that there was "moral equivalence" between their violence and the violence of the hardcore white racists who made up part of the protesters on UVA campus. ..."
"... There is a difference between legitimate civil rights struggles, which at times led to violence, and the reverse racism that I see and hear far too often out of the Black Lives Matter people. ..."
"... Soros Money Matters too. He is not a benign figure but a promoter of division and discord. I sat in a room when he complained bitterly, with racist overtones, during a meeting of the Drug Policy Foundation years ago, that there were not black voices promoting the legalization of crack cocaine, part of his libertine agenda. Is he a friend of the black community? I don't think so. ..."
"... Identity politics is a disease. It divides people and makes them into the sum of their self-defined attributes. Far from bringing about the end of identity politics, the Trump election has hardened the fault lines, whether on Capitol Hill or on the streets of American cities. ..."
Aug 16, 2017 | turcopolier.typepad.com

I vividly recall staying up past 1 AM on election night 2016, watching CNN, as it became clear that Donald Trump had been elected the next President of the United States. News anchor Dana Bash was beside herself at the outcome, and at one point, in a fit of honesty, she exclaimed, "This means the end of identity politics." Well, yes, but a deep ideology like identity politics does not die a quiet and sober death. Last weekend in Charlottesville, Virginia, we saw identity politics playing out--violently. Whether it was the white protesters who formed part of the original crowd, or the black and "antifa" protesters who formed part of the counter-demonstration, we witnessed a clash of identities.

President Trump was not wrong when he said that there were violent protesters on both sides of the clash, and that many of the protesters were not there to show their racism, but to protest the tearing down of a statue of a figure in American history who cannot be airbrushed out of our nation's story. Is the next step to burn down the campus of Washington and Lee University in Lexington, Virginia, because it was co-named after Robert E. Lee after the Civil War?

Watching the tirades on MSNBC and other news outlets over the past 48 hours, I can't help but lament how twisted our public discourse has become. Clearly some of the counter-demonstrators were part of the very same "antifa" apparatus that got very different news coverage when they torched and trashed Seattle a number of years back in protest at a WTO meeting. This time around, they were defended by the icons of media, who denounced any thought that there was "moral equivalence" between their violence and the violence of the hardcore white racists who made up part of the protesters on UVA campus.

There is a difference between legitimate civil rights struggles, which at times led to violence, and the reverse racism that I see and hear far too often out of the Black Lives Matter people.

And there is the matter of George Soros spending millions of dollars to help launch that movement after Ferguson. Soros Money Matters too. He is not a benign figure but a promoter of division and discord. I sat in a room when he complained bitterly, with racist overtones, during a meeting of the Drug Policy Foundation years ago, that there were not black voices promoting the legalization of crack cocaine, part of his libertine agenda. Is he a friend of the black community? I don't think so.

Identity politics is a disease. It divides people and makes them into the sum of their self-defined attributes. Far from bringing about the end of identity politics, the Trump election has hardened the fault lines, whether on Capitol Hill or on the streets of American cities.

gaikokumaniakku , 16 August 2017 at 06:27 PM

Brennan Gilmore, Tom Perrielo, Michael Signer, and other friends of Podesta arranged the Charlottesville violence. This isn't just a bunch of college-age leftists getting excited about Derrida. The Charlottesville violence was the result of a conspiracy by well-connected insiders.

I quote the "Signs of the Times" website linked below:

The STOP KONY 2012 psyop was all about using the Joseph Kony boogieman to justify letting Barack Obama send Special Operations troops into Africa to run around and squash any and all resistance to our new imperialism campaign. It was a fraud. A show. And Brennan was part of it.

He was also part of the campaign of Tom Perriello's in Virginia to become the next governor.

End quote.

"Signs of the Times" dot net has a story on this that I will link in the third field below.

https://www.sott.net/article/359361-Charlottesville-Brennan-Gilmore-and-the-STOP-KONY-2012-Psyop

turcopolier , 16 August 2017 at 06:47 PM
gaikokumaniakku

I fear that we are approaching a season of disintegration. September 11 at Texas A&M and September 16 on Monument Avenue in Richmond, Virginia will be indicators. pl

Lars , 16 August 2017 at 06:48 PM
On June 6, 1944, a bunch of "protesters" attacked Nazis and did so violently. Was there a moral equivalency then too? You have to reach rather low to accept Nazis, et al, and try to deflect blame for what they stand for. What the defenders of the Confederacy has managed to do is to thoroughly discredit their cause by associating with these despicable groups. It is again a lost cause and again, they only have themselves to blame.

We may be watching the end of the Trump era come nearer. By association, he is rapidly losing the moral stature of the office that he holds. A lot of people near him are losing their reputations forever.

turcopolier , 16 August 2017 at 06:48 PM
Lars

Of course Sweden did not fight the Nazis at all. Was there a moral equivalence there or was it just self-interest? In fact there were many Swedish volunteers in the 5th SS Panzer Division. What is the factual basis for saying that the people who would not have the statues moved are Nazi-associated or supporting? Do you think the UDC and SCV (of whom I am not qualified to be a member) are Nazi-associated? pl

[Aug 16, 2017] MoA - Smashing Statues, Seeding Strife

Aug 16, 2017 | www.moonofalabama.org
Smashing Statues, Seeding Strife

In the aftermath of competing protests in Charlottesville a wave of dismantling of Confederate statues is on the rise. Overnight Baltimore took down four Confederate statues. One of these honored Confederate soldiers and sailors, another one Confederate women. Elsewhere statues were toppled or defiled .

The Charlottesville conflict itself was about the intent to dismantle a statue of General Robert E. Lee, a commander of the Confederate forces during the American Civil War. The activist part of the political right protested against the take down, the activist part of the political left protested against those protests. According to a number of witnesses quoted in the LA Times sub-groups on both sides came prepared for and readily engaged in violence.

In 2003 a U.S. military tank pulled down the statue of Saddam Hussein on Firdos Square in Baghdad. Narrowly shot TV picture made it look as if a group of Iraqis were doing this. But they were mere actors within a U.S. propaganda show . Pulling down the statue demonstrated a lack of respect towards those who had fought under, worked for or somewhat supported Saddam Hussein. It helped to incite the resistance against the U.S. occupation.

The right-wing nutters who, under U.S. direction, forcefully toppled the legitimate government of Ukraine pulled down hundreds of the remaining Lenin statues in the country. Veterans who fought under the Soviets in the second world war took this as a sign of disrespect. Others saw this as an attack on their fond memories of better times and protected them . The forceful erasement of history further split the country:

"It's not like if you go east they want Lenin but if you go west they want to destroy him," Mr. Gobert said. "These differences don't only go through geography, they go through generations, through social criteria and economic criteria, through the urban and the rural."

Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or group. They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories:

"One guy said he didn't really care about Lenin, but the statue was at the center of the village and it was the place he kissed his wife for the first time," Mr. Gobert said. "When the statue went down it was part of his personal history that went away."

(People had better sex under socialism . Does not Lenin deserves statues if only for helping that along?)

Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery. But there are few historic figures without fail. Did not George Washington "own" slaves? Did not Lyndon B. Johnson lie about the Gulf of Tonkin incident and launched an unjust huge war against non-white people under false pretense? At least some people will think of that when they see their statues. Should those also be taken down?

As time passes the meaning of a monument changes. While it may have been erected with a certain ideology or concept in mind , the view on it will change over time:

[The Charlottesville statue] was unveiled by Lee's great-granddaughter at a ceremony in May 1924. As was the custom on these occasions it was accompanied by a parade and speeches. In the dedication address, Lee was celebrated as a hero, who embodied "the moral greatness of the Old South", and as a proponent of reconciliation between the two sections. The war itself was remembered as a conflict between "interpretations of our Constitution" and between "ideals of democracy."

The white racists who came to "protect" the statue in Charlottesville will hardly have done so in the name of reconciliation. Nor will those who had come to violently oppose them. Lee was a racist. Those who came to "defend" the statue were mostly "white supremacy" racists. I am all for protesting against them.

But the issue here is bigger. We must not forget that statues have multiple meanings and messages. Lee was also the man who wrote :

What a cruel thing is war: to separate and destroy families and friends, and mar the purest joys and happiness God has granted us in this world; to fill our hearts with hatred instead of love for our neighbors, and to devastate the fair face of this beautiful world.

That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down. The park in Charlottesville, in which the statue stands, was recently renamed from Lee Park into Emancipation Park. It makes sense to keep the statue there to reflect on the contrast between it and the new park name.

Old monuments and statues must not (only) be seen as glorifications within their time. They are reminders of history. With a bit of education they can become valuable occasions of reflection.

George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: "The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history." People do not want to be destroyed. They will fight against attempts to do so. Taking down monuments or statues without a very wide consent will split a society. A large part of the U.S. people voted for Trump. One gets the impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved "punishment" for those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump voters will dislike statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign to take them down even more.

That may be the intend of some people behind the current quarrel. The radicalization on opposing sides may have a purpose. The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further disenfranchise they people. The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans.

Anyone who wants to stoke the fires with this issue should be careful what they wish for.

Merasmus | Aug 16, 2017 12:42:12 PM | 1

"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."

How about the fact that he was a traitor?

"George Orwell wrote in his book 1984: 'The most effective way to destroy people is to deny and obliterate their own understanding of their history.'"

The only reason statues of traitors like Lee exist is because the South likes to engage in 'Lost Cause' revisionism; to pretend these were noble people fighting for something other than the right to own human beings as pets.

james | Aug 16, 2017 12:42:57 PM | 2
isn't taking down statues what isis does?

erasing history seems part of the goal.. i feel the usa has never really addressed racism.. the issue hasn't gone away and remains a deep wound that has yet to heal.. events like this probably don't help.

DMC | Aug 16, 2017 12:45:04 PM | 3
The statues of Lee and his ilk should come down because they are TRAITORS who deserve no honor. Washington and Jefferson may have owned slaves but they were PATRIOTS. Its really that simple.
RUKidding | Aug 16, 2017 1:03:54 PM | 4
I don't want to get derailed into the rights or wrongs of toppling statues. I wonder whose brilliant idea it was to start this trend right at this particular tinder box moment.

That said, the USA has never ever truly confronted either: 1) the systemic genocide of the Native Americans earlier in our history; and b) what slavery really meant and was. NO reconciliation has ever really been done about either of these barbarous acts. Rather, at best/most, we're handed platitudes and lip service that purports that we've "moved on" from said barbarity - well I guess WHITES (I'm one) have. But Native Americans - witness what happened to them at Standing Rock recently - and minorities, especially African Americans, are pretty much not permitted to move on. Witness the unending police murders of AA men across the country, where, routinely, most of the cops get off scott-free.

To quote b:

The Trump camp can use it to cover up its plans to further disenfranchise they people. The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans.

While I dislike to descend into the liturgy of Both Siderism, it's completely true that both Rs and Ds enjoy and use pitting the rubes in the 99% against one another because it means that the rapine, plunder & pillaging by the Oligarchs and their pet poodles in Congress & the White House can continue apace with alacrity. And: That's Exactly What's Happening.

The Oligarchs could give a flying fig about Heather Heyer's murder, nor could they give a stuff about US citizens cracking each other's skulls in a bit of the old ultra-violence. Gives an opening for increasing the Police State and cracking down on our freedumbs and liberties, etc.

I heard or read somewhere that Nancy Pelosi & Chuck Schumer are absolutely committed to not impeaching Donald Trump because it means all the Ds have to do is Sweet Eff All and just "represent" themselves as the Anti-Trump, while, yes, enjoying the "benefits" of the programs/policies/legislation enacted by the Trump Admin. I have no link and certainly cannot prove this assertion, but it sure seems likely. Just frickin' great.

kgw | Aug 16, 2017 1:09:10 PM | 5
Lee was not a racist; I'd say you are addressing your own overblown egos. The U.S. Civil War was long in coming. During the 1830's during Andrew Jackson's presidency, and John Calhoun's vice-presidency, at an annual state dinner, the custom of toasts was used to present political views. Jackson toasted the Union of the states, saying "The Union, it must be preserved." Calhoun's toast was next, "The Union, next to our liberty, most dear."

Calhoun was a proponent of the Doctrine of Nullification, wherein if a national law inflicted harm on any state, the state could nullify the law, until such time as a negotiation of a satisfactory outcome could come about. The absolute Unionists were outraged by such an idea.

Curtis | Aug 16, 2017 1:27:39 PM | 6
My memory tells me that the invention of the cotton gin made cotton a good crop, but that you needed the slaves. Slaves represented the major money invested in this operation. Free the slaves and make slave holders poor. Rich people didn't like that idea. I think maybe the cotton was made into cloth in the factories up north. Just saying.
dh | Aug 16, 2017 1:27:57 PM | 7
How would 'addressing the problem' actually work? Should all native Americans and people of colour go to Washington to be presented with $1 million each by grovelling white men?
joeymac | Aug 16, 2017 1:34:24 PM | 8
Did not George Washington "own" slaves?
But, the memorials to GW, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, et al , does not honor them for owning slaves. Memorials of Lee, Stonewall Jackson, Jefferson Davis, et al , is because they took up arms against a legitimate government simply to support of a vile system.
kgw | Aug 16, 2017 1:37:23 PM | 9
@6
The manufacturing states put export duties on the agricultural states, and tariffs on British imported cloth. The English mills were undercutting the U.S. mills prices for a number of reasons, not the least of which was they were more experienced in the industry.
therevolutionwas | Aug 16, 2017 1:46:02 PM | 10
The civil war in the US was not really started because of slavery. Robert E. Lee did not join the south and fight the north in order to preserve slavery, in his mind it was state's rights. Lincoln did not start the civil war to free the slaves. See https://ixquick-proxy.com/do/show_picture.pl?l=english&rais=1&oiu=https%3A%2F%2Fupload.wikimedia.org%2Fwikipedia%2Fen%2Fc%2Fc9%2FThe_Real_Lincoln_cover_art.jpg&sp=b359dec0befbd12fc479633d5b6c6de4
Dan Lynch | Aug 16, 2017 1:49:57 PM | 11
The difference between a statue of Lee vs. a statue of Washington, Jefferson, LBJ, etc., is that Washington, Jefferson, and LBJ did some good things to earn our respect even though they did a lot of bad things, too. The Confederacy did no good things. It would be like erecting a statue to honor Hitler's SS.

If there were statues honoring the SS, would anyone be surprised if Jews objected? Why then does anyone fail to understand why blacks object to Confederate symbols?

I would, however, support statues that depict a Confederate surrendering. Perhaps the statue of Lee on a horse could be replaced with a statue of Lee surrendering to Grant?

I am not a fan of the "counter-protests." Martin Luther King never "counter-protested" a KKK rally. A counter-protest is a good way to start a fight, but a poor way to win hearts and minds. It bothers me when the 99% fight among themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%.

fi | Aug 16, 2017 1:56:38 PM | 12


George Washington "the father of our country" was a slave owner, a rapist and a murderer. What do we expect from his descendants?
should we remove his face of the dollar bill and destroy his statues?

The civil war was due to economic reasons, free labor is good business.
Now cheap Mexican-labor ( the new type of slavery) is good business to the other side.
when will the new civil war in the US start?


maningi | Aug 16, 2017 2:00:24 PM | 13
@b
Many years ago, within the leadership of my student organization, I initiated to rename the University I was attending, which was named after a communist ideological former state acting figure, with very bloody hands, co-responsible for the death of tenths of thousands and thousands of people. Today I still think, that educational and cultural institutions (and many more) should be named either neutral, or by persons with cultural background and with impeccable moral history, no many to be found. On the other side, I opposed the removal of the very statue of the same person at a nearby public plaza - and there it stands today - as a rather painful reminder of the past bloody history of my country, that went through a conflict, that today seems so bizarre. Wherever I go, I look into black abyss, knowing, that the very culture I belong to (the so called Christian Liberal Free Western World) has inflicted so many horrors and crimes against other nations and ethnic groups, its even difficult to count. Karlheinz Deschner wrote 10 books, titled "The Criminal History of Christianity (Kriminalgeschichte des Christentums - on YT you can find videos him reading from it). Yes, this is the very civilization, we Westerners originate from. It was deadly for centuries - and its about time to change this. And keeping the memory of our so bloody history, will help us to find the right and hopefully more peaceful solutions in the future. Don`t tear down monuments or change street names, but give them the so often shameful meaning, they had in history.
Northern Lights | Aug 16, 2017 2:03:05 PM | 14
Then southern states have no business being part of United States of America since their history and customs are not honored. That is good overall I think. Best for the world. Southern states are very unlikely to attack any other sovereign state thousands of miles away, but all united as unitary state, we can see how persistent in their aggression on the rest of the world they are. 222 years out of its 239 years US has been aggressor:
https://www.infowars.com/america-has-been-at-war-93-of-the-time-222-out-of-239-years-since-1776/
Time to break US lust for attacking, invading and raiding other countries.
james | Aug 16, 2017 2:05:07 PM | 15
what little of this history i know - which is to say very little - kgw reflects what i have read.. the problem is way deeper.. if you want to address racism, you are going to have to pull down most of the statues in the usa today of historical figures..
james | Aug 16, 2017 2:06:35 PM | 16
if - that is why way you think it will matter, lol.. forgot to add that.. otherwise, forget pulling down statues and see if you can address the real issue - like @4 rukidding and some others here are addressing..
ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:10:18 PM | 17
A little false equivalency anyone? I'm sure Adolph Hitler had some reasonable remarks at some point in his life, so, I guess we should tolerate a few statues of him also? States rights as the cause for the U$A's civil war? baloney, it was about the murder and enslavement of millions of humans.
Grieved | Aug 16, 2017 2:12:25 PM | 18
Bob Dylan's "Only a Pawn in Their Game" still spells out unsurpassed the divide and rule strategy, to my mind. Powers that be are rubbing their hands with satisfaction at this point, one would think.

I like your observation, b, that statues don't necessarily represent what they did when they were erected. It's an important point. It meant something at the time, but now it's a part of today's heritage, and has often taken on some of your own meaning. To destroy your own heritage is a self-limiting thing, and Orwell's point is well taken. Perhaps people without history have nowhere in the present to stand.

Northern Lights | Aug 16, 2017 2:12:50 PM | 19
Have to add, slavery wasn't the cause for the war. It was centralization, rights of the states. Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners didn't. Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents in the US, Southerners were on their own. I personally think Southerners were much better soldiers, more honorable and courageous, but we lacked industrial capacity and financial funds. I could be biased having Southern blood, but my opinion anyway.
PavewayIV | Aug 16, 2017 2:13:51 PM | 20
therevolutionwas@10 - Have to agree. The events leading up to the US Civil War and the war itself were for reasons far more numerous and complex then slavery. Emancipation was a fortunate and desirable outcome and slavery was an issue, but saying the entire war was about ending slavery is the same as saying WW II was mostly about stopping Nazis from killing jews. Dumbing down history serves nobody.
dh | Aug 16, 2017 2:14:02 PM | 21
Still wondering how specifically the 'real issue' can be addressed. I don't think any amount of money will compensate plains Indians .actually some are quite well off due to casinos. But the days of buffalo hunting are gone and white people will not be going back where they came from. As for blacks in urban ghettos you could build them nice houses in the suburbs but I doubt if that will fix the drugs/gangs problem.
michaelj72 | Aug 16, 2017 2:15:36 PM | 22
"That Lee was a racist does not mean that his statue should be taken down."

If the sole criteria for taking down any statues was that a man was a 'racist', meaning that he hated people of color/hated black people, can we assume then that all those who owned slaves were also racist?

Then all the statues in the whole country of Jefferson, Washington, Madison, Monroe and perhaps all the Founding Daddies who owned slaves, should be removed. I am playing devil's advocate here.

Fashions come and go.... and so the vices of yesterday are virtues today; and the virtues of yesterday are vices today.


Bernard is correct at the end: "The fake Clintonian "resistance" needs these cultural disputes to cover for its lack of political resistance to Trump's plans." The Demos have nothing, so they tend to fall back on their identity politics.


FYI
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Presidents_of_the_United_States_who_owned_slaves

....In total, twelve presidents owned slaves at some point in their lives, eight of whom owned slaves while serving as president. George Washington was the first president to own slaves, including while he was president. Zachary Taylor was the last president to own slaves during his presidency, and Ulysses S. Grant was the last president to have owned a slave at some point in his life.


psychohistorian | Aug 16, 2017 2:17:06 PM | 23
Pitting people against people by inciting and validating fringe groups is a tried and true social manipulation ploy.....and it seems to be working as intended.

Focus is on this conflict gets folks riled up and myopic about who the real enemies of society really are.....and then that riled up energy is transferred to bigger conflicts like war between nations.....with gobs of "our side is more righteous" propaganda

Humanity has been played like this for centuries now and our extinction would probably be a kinder future for the Cosmos since we don't seem to be evolving beyond power/control based governance.

And yes, as Dan Lynch wrote just above: "It bothers me when the 99% fight among themselves. Our real enemy is the 1%"

ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:20:12 PM | 24
The U$A was conceived in genocide. I think we should throw out much of our history
woogs | Aug 16, 2017 2:27:34 PM | 25
Robert E. Lee a racist? No, he was a man of his time. B, you blew it with this one. You have confused what you don't know with what you think you know.

Now, if Lee was a racist, what about this guy?

From Lincoln's Speech, Sept. 18, 1858.

"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:36:31 PM | 26
@ 25: Leading an army to perpetuate a system that enslaves and murders millions, is just a bit different than being a racist. More false equivalency?
b | Aug 16, 2017 2:38:38 PM | 27
All states who joined the confederation cited the "need" and "right" to uphold slavery in their individual declarations. To say that the civil war was not about this point is strongly misleading. Like all wars there were several named and unnamed reasons. Slavery was the most cited point.

The argument of rather unlimited "state rights" is simply the demand of a minority to argue for the right to ignore majority decisions. With universal state rights a union can never be a union. There is no point to it. What is needed (and was done) is to segregate certain fields wherein the union decides from other policy fields that fall solely within the rights of member states. The conflict over which fields should belong where hardly ever ends.

P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's presidents for perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered millions around the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the iron shackles, but the murder is still murder...

Posted by: ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:45:29 PM | 28

P. S.--If it were up to me, I'd tear down monuments to most of the U$A's presidents for perpetuating and abetting the rise of an empire who has enslaved and murdered millions around the globe, simply for profits for the few. Economic slavery has replaced the iron shackles, but the murder is still murder...

Posted by: ben | Aug 16, 2017 2:45:29 PM | 28 /div

Jackrabbit | Aug 16, 2017 2:48:00 PM | 29
Northern Lights @19 is right.

The Northern manufacturers were exploiting the South and wanted to continue doing so. They didn't much care that the raw materials came from slave labor.

Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation to encourage slave rebellion (meaning fewer white Southern men available for military service) and to punish the South.

Yet, while slavery ended when the North won, we all know how that turned out. For nearly 100 years (and some might say, even today) , many black people were still virtual slaves due to discrimination and poor education.

woogs | Aug 16, 2017 2:53:03 PM | 30
B@27: you're missing a couple of very basic points.

First, not all states that seceded issued declarations. Virginia, for example, of which the 'racist' Robert E. Leehailed, only seceded after Lincoln made his move on fort sumter. In fact, Virginia had voted against secession just prior but, as with 3 other southern states, seceded when Lincoln called for them to supply troops for his war.

Speaking of declarations of causes, have a look at the cherokee declaration. Yes, united indian tribes fought for the confederacy.

Finally, the causes for secession are not the causes for war. Secession is what the southerners did. War is what Lincoln did. One should not have automatically led to the other.

Oilman2 | Aug 16, 2017 3:09:32 PM | 31
Well, just reading the comments here it is obvious that there are several versions of history taught at different times in the last century. If not, then all of us would "know" the real reason for the CW - there would be no need for discussion. What is also obvious is that this delving back into a muddied history, the defacing of formerly meaningful objects, the thrusting of certain "rights" into the face of anyone even questioning them - all of it is working. It is working extremely well in distracting us from things like the numerous economic bubbles, the deep state scratching at war or chaos everywhere, politicians who are at best prevaricating prostitutes and at worst thieves enriching themselves at our expense as we struggle to maintain in the face of their idiocy.

It simply doesn't MATTER what started the Civil War - it ought to be enough to look at the death toll on BOTH sides and know we don't need to go there again.

Who stands to gain from this? Because it surely isn't the historically ignorant antifa bunch, who are against everything that includes a moral boundary. It isn't the alt-right, who get nothing but egg on their face and decimation of position by virtue of many being "white". CUI BONO?

The single answer is threefold: media, the government and the military - who continue to refuse to address any of our problems - and feed us a diet of revolting pablum and double-speak.

Honestly, congress passed a law legalizing propaganda - did anyone notice? Did anyone factor in that they allowed themselves freedom to lie to anyone and everyone? It wasn't done for show - it was done to deny future accountability.

Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.

The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve. But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves - and for our government, lying is quite legal now.

Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black, right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely...

Northern Lights | Aug 16, 2017 3:14:42 PM | 32
Speaking of Lincoln's quotes, here is a good one to dispel the myth about slavery being the cause of war.
Pres. Abraham Lincoln: "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

I the civil war was for the most part connected with the federal reserve central bank charter right which unionist Yankees frightful about possible restraints of bankers rights were keen to give London banking families unrestricted rights to do whatever they please in the US. Other reasons exclusively included expanding federal government powers. Adding personal income tax would be unimaginable prior to CW. Creation of all those fed gov agencies too. It was all made possible by London bankers' servants Yankees.

MRW | Aug 16, 2017 3:18:49 PM | 33
Posted by: therevolutionwas | Aug 16, 2017 1:46:02 PM | 10
The civil war in the US was not really started because of slavery. Robert E. Lee did not join the south and fight the north in order to preserve slavery, in his mind it was state's rights. Lincoln did not start the civil war to free the slaves.

You're right. The Emancipation Act was an afterthought really because Europe had turned against the idea of slavery before the Civil War broke out, in fact was repelled by it, and Lincoln knew that it would hurt commerce.
Northern Lights | Aug 16, 2017 3:19:39 PM | 34
@29
Jack the South was right. The South was always right.
woogs | Aug 16, 2017 3:21:37 PM | 35
The southern states felt they had a right to secede, using the tenth amendment as the legal basis. It states simply " The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.".

Furthermore, the union of states was referred to many times by the founders as a compact. Under the theory of compacts, when one party doesn't honor said compact, it is rendered null.

Slavery, regardless of how we may feel today, was a legal and federally protected institution. With the rise of the republican party, a campaign of agitation towards the south and slavery had begun. It is this agitation towards a legal institution that rankled southerners.

The south saw this coming well before the election of Lincoln. William seward, the favorite to win the election, gave a speech in l858 called "the irrepressible conflict". The south well knew of this and saw the writing on the wall if a republican was elected president.

When reading the declarations of causes, this background should be kept in mind if one wants to understand the southern position. Or, one can just count how many times the word 'slavery' appears like a word cloud.

Probably the best articulated statement on the southern position was south Carolina's "address to the slaveholding states".


Lea | Aug 16, 2017 3:29:49 PM | 36
I'm afraid if you go back in time, no US president can be saved from a well-deserved statue toppling. Including Abraham Lincoln, the hypocrite who DID NOT, and I repeat, DID NOT abolish slavery. The U.S "elite" has always been rotten through and through, so good luck with those statues.
https://www.currentaffairs.org/2017/06/the-clintons-had-slaves
woogs | Aug 16, 2017 3:33:55 PM | 37
Northern Lights@32:

You used Lincoln's inaugural address to show that the war was not over slavery. It's plain enough coming from the horse's mouth, so to speak.

Lincoln, in that same inaugural address, stated what the war would be fought over ...... and it was revenue.

Here's the quote:

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.

historicus | Aug 16, 2017 3:35:02 PM | 38
As a rare book dealer and history buff with thirty-odd years of experience reading and studying original civil war era periodicals and documents, a fact stands out for me about these now-controversial statues. None is from the civil war period. Many, like the Lee statue in this article, date to the 1920's, which was the era of the second Ku Klux Klan. The infamous movie "Birth of a Nation" inspired the nationwide revival of that faded terrorist group. The year that statue was dedicated a hundred thousand Klansmen paraded in full regalia in the streets of Washington.

The children and grandchildren of the men who had taken up arms against the United States had by then completed a very flattering myth about 1861 - 1865. Consider too that romanticized lost cause mythology was integral to the regional spirit long before the rebellion. The Scots Irish who settled the American south carried with them the long memory their forebears' defeats at the Boyne and Culloden, at the hands of the English – the very ancestors of the hated Yankees living to the north of their new homeland.

Note also that many more CSA statues and memorials were built in the 1960s, as symbols of defiance of the civil rights movement of that era. The War for the Union was fought at its heart because the elite of the old south refused to accept the result of a fair and free democratic election, but for those who came after, white supremacy became the comforting myth that rationalized their ancestors' incredibly foolish treason.

I.W. | Aug 16, 2017 3:35:32 PM | 39
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."

Would this have been written in his time? Would it be written today in other countries (Africa included) where slavery (aka human trafficking) is big business today?

I'm disappointed that Moon of Alabama, usually so astute in its presentations, would print this article.

Don Wiscacho | Aug 16, 2017 3:37:30 PM | 40
A whole lot of false equivalence goin' on.

That the many statutes of America's founding fathers should be re-evaluated is actually a great idea. Many of these people were simply oligarchs who wanted to be the top of the pyramid instead of the British. Many owned slaves and perpetuated slavery. Others, like Andrew Jackson were legitimate psychopaths. Pretty much all of them cheered the genocide of Native Americans. So maybe we *should* have different heros.

Using the logic b spells out above, one could argue that statues of Nazis should be allowed too, after all they did come up with the Autobahn (modern highways), jet engines, and viable rockets, all technology used all over the world. Some patriotic, well meaning Germans fought in the Wehrmacht, don't they deserve statues, too? What about the Banderists and Forest Brothers? The Imperial Japanese? Don't those well-meaning fascists deserve to celebrate their heritage?

But simply saying that idea out loud is enough to realize what a crock that notion is. Nazis and fascists don't deserve statues, neither do confederates. Neither do most Americans, for that matter.

Trying to make some moral equivalence between NeoNazis and the leftists who oppose them is about as silly as it gets. I don't support violence against these idiots, and they have the same rights as anyone else in expressing their opinion. But to paint legit NeoNazis and the leftists opposing them (admittedly in a very juvenile manner) in the same brush ("Both sides came prepared for violence") is utter hogwash. We don't give Nazis a pass in Ukraine, don't give them a pass in Palestine, and we sure as hell don't give them a pass in the US. It doesn't matter what hypocritical liberal snowflake is on the other side of the barricade, the Nazi is still a f*****g Nazi.

Joe | Aug 16, 2017 3:39:00 PM | 41
"Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery."

b, you have just displayed your ignorance of the character of Robert E. Lee, why he fought, and what he fought for. To give you the short n sweet of it, General Lee was a Christian gentleman respected by those in the North as well as the South. He fought the Federal leviathan as it had chosen to make war on what he considered to be his home and country--the State of Virginia. The issue at hand was not racism and slavery but Federal tyranny. Lincoln himself said he had no quarrel with slavery and as long as the South paid the Federal leviathan its taxes, the South was free to go. Make a visit to Paul Craig Roberts site for his latest essay which explains the world of the 1860s American scene much more eloquently than I can ...

folktruther | Aug 16, 2017 3:41:47 PM | 42
b is completely wrong in thread. The USA has been a highly racist power system historically where killing non-Whites has been a major historical policy. Lee is not merely a racist, he epitomizes this policy and is a symbol of it. Attacking racist symbols is essential to destroying racism.
woogs | Aug 16, 2017 3:45:05 PM | 43
Historicus@38: that 'fair and free democratic election' was replete with Lincoln supporters printing counterfeit tickets to the convention in order to shut out seward supporters.

The gambit worked and the rest, as they say, is history.

Ian | Aug 16, 2017 3:45:37 PM | 44
I suggest reading this article for some perspective:

http://takimag.com/article/carved_upon_the_landscape_steve_sailer#axzz4pwMfiSP8

karlof1 | Aug 16, 2017 3:51:18 PM | 45
Wow! What to write? Craig Murray wrote a very intriguing piece related to Charlottesville while putting the event somewhat into the context of the Scottish Independence Movement; it and the many comments are well worth the time to read and reflect upon, https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2017/08/americans-irish-uzbeks-ukrainians-pakistanis-balls-scots/

james @2--You are 1000000000% correct. And given the current state-of-affairs, will continue to fester for another century if not more thanks to historical ignorance and elite Machiavellian maneuvering.

Southern Extremist self-proclaimed Fire Eaters were the ones that started the war as they took the bait Lincoln cunningly offered them. If they'd been kept away from the coastal artillery at Charlestown, the lanyard they pulled may have remained still and war avoided for the moment. The advent of the US Civil War can be blamed totally on the Constitution and those who wrote it, although they had no clue as to the fuse they lit.

Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western Hemisphere because the enslaved First Peoples died off and the sugar plantations needed laborers. Rice, tobacco, indigo, "Naval Stores," and other related cash crops were the next. Cotton only became part of the mix when the cotton gin made greatly lessened the expense of its processing. But, cotton wore out the thin Southern soils, so it cotton plantations slowly marched West thus making Mexican lands attractive for conquest. But slaves were used for so much more--particularly the draining of swamps and construction of port works. The capital base for modern capitalism was made possible by slavery--a sentence you will NOT read in any history textbook. There are a great many books written on the subject; I suggest starting with Marcus Rediker's The Slave Ship: A Human History , followed by Eric Williams's classic Capitalism and Slavery , Edward Baptist's The Half Has Never Been Told: Slavery and the Making of American Capitalism , and John Clarke's Christopher Columbus and the Afrikan Holocaust: Slavery and the Rise of European Capitalism .

There are even more books published about the war itself. But as many have pointed out, it's learning about the reasons for the war that's most important. Vice President Henry Wilson was the first to write a very detailed 3 volume history of those reasons, Rise and Fall of the Slave Power in America beginning in 1872, and they are rare books indeed; fortunately, they've been digitized and can be found here, https://archive.org/search.php?query=creator%3A%22Wilson%2C+Henry%2C+1812-1875%22 Perhaps the most complete is Allan Nevins 8 volume Ordeal of the Union , although for me it begins too late in 1847, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ordeal_of_the_Union Finally, no study of the period's complete without examining the unraveling and utter dysfunction of the political process that occurred between 1856 and 1860 that allowed Lincoln to win the presidency, Roy Nichols's The Disruption of American Democracy illustrates that best.

The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were multiple, although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong; better to display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder what will become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display of the Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw US Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at my color when they hear my name.)

The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the populous can gain a high degree of solidarity.

ruralito | Aug 16, 2017 4:01:10 PM | 46
There's also the school of thought that holds that Honest Abe freed the slaves in order that northern industrialists could acquire replacements for workers lost in the war.
Pareto | Aug 16, 2017 4:05:35 PM | 47
"racism" i.e., when a white person notices demographic patterns lol.
Northern Lights | Aug 16, 2017 4:06:37 PM | 48
@37
Aye Woogs. All about expanding fed gov powers, most of which was focused on permanent central banking charter. Many forget that central banking charter had been in place before CW in the US and that great statesman Andrew Jackson repelled it. The first central banking charter caused terrible economic suffering, which is why it was repelled. People had more sense then. Not so much now.

"Gentlemen! I too have been a close observer of the doings of the Bank of the United States. I have had men watching you for a long time, and am convinced that you have used the funds of the bank to speculate in the breadstuffs of the country. When you won, you divided the profits amongst you, and when you lost, you charged it to the bank. You tell me that if I take the deposits from the bank and annul its charter I shall ruin ten thousand families. That may be true, gentlemen, but that is your sin! Should I let you go on, you will ruin fifty thousand families, and that would be my sin! You are a den of vipers and thieves. I have determined to rout you out, and by the Eternal I will rout you out!"
~Andrew Jackson

ken | Aug 16, 2017 4:11:20 PM | 49
It saddens me that so many buy into the South fought for slavery. That story line was used in the same manner that Weapons of Mass Destruction was used to war with Iraq. The difference is the internet was able to get the truth out. Doesn't do much good to argue as most believe the Confederate slavery propaganda. The US is done as a nation. A thousand different groups that hate each other preaching no hate. Yes it will limp along for a while but it's done for.
michaelj72 | Aug 16, 2017 4:23:39 PM | 50
@46 karlof1

many thanks for the history, and the books. I read Murray's essay and consider it a good take....


".... As an historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong..."

I have to agree.


& there is at least one sane (african american) person in LA, as per below article

http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-hollywood-forever-monument-20170815-story.html

"....Los Angeles resident Monique Edwards says historical monuments, like the Confederate statue removed from Hollywood Forever Cemetery, need to be preserved and used as teachable moments...."

joeymac | Aug 16, 2017 4:24:42 PM | 51
@Northern Lights (19)
Yankees wanted strong central government with wide array of power, Southerners didn't. Yankees were supported by London banking families and their banking allies or agents in the US, Southerners were on their own.

I recall that it was the slavers that wanted the central government to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act even in states that outlawed slavery; it was the slavers that insisted that slavery be legal in the new territories, regardless of the wishes of the settlers.

Also, the London industrial and banking interest strongly supported the breakaway slavers because:
(1) It was the slave produced cotton that fueled the textile industry in England.
(2) Imported British ¨prestige¨ items found a ready market with the nouveau riche planters grown fat on stolen labor.
(3) A Balkanized NA would be more subject to pressure from the ¨Mother Country.¨
(4) Lincoln refused to borrow from the bankers and printed ¨greenbacks¨ to finance the war; this infuriated the bankers.

Neo-Confederate revisionism creates mythical history, in a large part, by attempting to deify vile human beings.

Northern Lights | Aug 16, 2017 4:26:38 PM | 52
Me too Ken. Used to say to those I would like to offer them fairy dust to buy. Half of them didn't catch the meaning.
somebody | Aug 16, 2017 4:30:53 PM | 53
7
How about memorials for red indians and slaves.

Like this one .

somebody | Aug 16, 2017 4:34:53 PM | 54
51
I would say a country that cannot agree on its history has a huge problem.
woogs | Aug 16, 2017 4:35:22 PM | 55
Ben@26: Lincoln stated that he would only use force to collect imposts and duties.

The first battle of the war (actually more a skirmish) was the battle of Phillipi in western Virginia in early June, l86l.

To the best of my knowledge, there were no customs houses in western Virginia as it was not a port of entry. This was simply an invasion by the union army at Lincoln's command that revealed his true colors. The war was Lincoln's war, plain and simple.

Northern Lights | Aug 16, 2017 4:36:10 PM | 56
@51
Joey, I would like yo offer you fairy dust to buy. Interested? Luckily we should part our ways soon. Should have happened ages ago if you ask me. Your history is not our own. You were aggressors fighting for foreign entity. Time for us to part I think. have your own history and say whatever you want there. We will have ours.
NemesisCalling | Aug 16, 2017 4:40:58 PM | 57
In my view, b is comparing a modern sensibility on race relations with that of a mid 19th century confederate leader and so with this bad thesis it is quite easy to dismiss this post entirely. Was the north that much more enlightened on the treatent of blacks? I think not. Was the emancipation proclamation largely a political gesture to incite ire and violence not only among southerners but also slaves living in these states towards their owners? Meanwhile, the effect of such a proclamation was exempt on states where said effect would not "pinch" the south. The north, if anything, was even more racist using blacks as a means towards the end to consolidate power even more centrally.

It honestly reads like most neutral apologetic drivel out of the "other" msm which is on the ropes right now from an all-out wholly political assault. If you truly wanted to educate people on their history you would stand up for fair and honest discourse. Make no mistake, this is all about obscuration and historical-revisionism. Globalists gotta eat.

"Slavery as an institution, is a moral &political evil in any Country... I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race... The blacks are immeasurably better off." Robert E. Lee

Sounds like a man with opinions, but without the burning fire to see that evil enshrined in a state-policy towards blacks. Basically, one condemns him for sharing a popular view of the day. CALL THE THOUGHT POLICE!

Clueless Joe | Aug 16, 2017 4:43:56 PM | 58
From a British point of view, Washington and Jefferson were traitors as well.
As for Lee, he was racist, but doesn't seem to have been more racist than the average Yankee. No more racist than Sherman or Lincoln, and less racist than many of the Confederate top guys, for instance.

Then, there's the nutjob idea that forcefully taking down other statues in the South will make these guys "win". At least, the Lee statue had a more or less legal and democratic process going on, which is the only way to go if you don't want to look like a Taliban.
Really, did these idiots not understand that bringing down Confederate statues without due process will massively piss off most of the locals? Do they really want the local hardliners to come armed and ready to use their guns, one of these days? Is this the plan all along, to spark another civil war for asshat reasons?

(Like B, toppling Saddam and communist statues was the very first thing I thought of. As if these poor fools had just been freed from a terrible dictatorship, instead of nothing having changed or been won at all in the last months)

john | Aug 16, 2017 4:51:09 PM | 59
ben says:

I think we should throw out much of our history

Paul Craig Roberts thinks so too

Mithera | Aug 16, 2017 4:54:03 PM | 60
I agree with Woogs (25). How stoopid are we ? History has been re-written and manipulated going back a long way. Most of the readers here know that our "masters" , and their versions of history are not accurate. Yet here we are arguing and such ... " he was good...NO He was bad...." acting as if we know truth from fiction. Back then, as now, it was all planned. Divide and conquer. Slavery was the "excuse" for war. The Power Elite" were based in Europe at that time and saw America as a real threat to their global rule. It was becoming too strong and so needed to be divided. Thus the people of those times were played....just as we are today. Manipulated into war. Of course America despite the Civil War , continued to grow and prosper so the elite devised another plan. Plan "B" has worked better than they could have ever imagined. They have infected the "soul" of America and the infection is spreading rapidly.Everyone , please re-read oilman2 comments (31)
Pnyx | Aug 16, 2017 5:16:11 PM | 61
Thanks B, precisely my thinking. It has a smell of vendetta. And I believe this sort of old testament thinking is very common in the u.s. of A. What's currently happening will further alienate both sides and lead to even more urgent need to externalize an internal problem via more wars.
virgile | Aug 16, 2017 5:18:00 PM | 62
If We Erase Our History, Who Are We?
Pat Buchanan • August 15, 2017
somebody | Aug 16, 2017 5:19:47 PM | 63
There is a reason for this craze to get rid of confederate statues.

Dylann Roof who photographed himself at confederate landmarks before he shot nine black people in a church .

It is futile to discuss what the confederacy was then, when white supremacy groups consider them their home today.

These monuments were not built after or during the civil war. And the reason for building them was racism .

In 2016, the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of the Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located, as one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points out, some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania, four) and at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil War.

How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two key periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil rights movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.

To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept of a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed by the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes that 35 Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.

But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee or Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do with paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to black disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension.

I don't know if b. realizes how many German monuments got destroyed because people did not wish to recall this particular part of history, the bomb raids of the allies helped, of course, but there are cemeteries of Marx, Engels and Lenin statues, and only revisionists recall what was destroyed after WWII .

Young people need some space to breath. They don't need monuments of war heros.

47 | Aug 16, 2017 5:20:32 PM | 64
b wrote "Statues standing in cities and places are much more than veneration of one person or group. They are symbols, landmarks and fragments of personal memories..."

Symbols indeed, traits in cultural landscapes. This piece may add another dimension to the importance of cultural landscape in the context of this conversation:
"To this day, the question remains: why would the Southerners remember and celebrate a losing team, and how come the non-Southerners care about it so passionately? A convenient answer revolves around the issue of slavery; i.e., a commemoration of the era of slavery for the former, and, for the latter, the feeling that the landscape reminders of that era should be entirely erased."
and
"In the past two decades, the American(s)' intervention has brought down the statues of Hussein, Gaddafi, Davis, and Lee respectively. Internationally, the work seems to be completed. Domestically, the next stage will be removing the names of highways, libraries, parks, and schools of the men who have not done an illegal act. Eventually, all such traits in the cultural landscape of Virginia may steadily disappear, because they are symbols of Confederacy."
http://www.zokpavlovic.com/conflict/the-war-between-the-states-of-mind-in-virginia-and-elsewhere/

virgile | Aug 16, 2017 5:20:37 PM | 65
What about the statues of the American "heroes" who massacred the Indians?
Robert Browning | Aug 16, 2017 5:24:32 PM | 66
It warms my heart that you are not a racist. But who really gives a fuck? And what makes you think not favoring your own kind like every other racial and ethnic group does makes you a better than those of your own racial group?? Something is wrong with you.
Bill | Aug 16, 2017 5:33:25 PM | 67
Statues are kim jong un like silly and useless anyway. Put up a nice obelisk or rotunda instead.
joeymac | Aug 16, 2017 5:33:44 PM | 68
@Clueless Joe (58)
From a British point of view, Washington and Jefferson were traitors as well.
Kindly correct me if i´m wrong, but, to my knowledge, there are no monuments to Washington or Jefferson on Trafalgar Square.
did these idiots not understand that bringing down Confederate statues without due process will massively piss off most of the locals?
It is my understanding that ¨due process¨ was underway because of pressure from the locals when the neo-Nazis sought to short circuit this process.
joeymac | Aug 16, 2017 5:47:36 PM | 69
@Northern Lights
Your history is not our own.

You are certainly entitled to your attitudes, hatreds, memories, affinities and such. You are not entitled to your own history. History is what happened. Quit lying about it!

Anonymous | Aug 16, 2017 5:59:02 PM | 70
Lee is the past. Obama is the present. The 'Nobel Peace Prize' winner ran more concurrent wars than any other president. He inaugurated the state execution of US citizens by drone based on secret evidence presented in secret courts. He was in charge when ISIS was created by the US Maw machine. What about removing his Nobel Peace Prize?
Erlindur | Aug 16, 2017 5:59:30 PM | 71
A long time ago Christians destroyed the old god's statues because they were pagan and didn't comply with their religion (or is it ideology?). Muslims followed and did the same on what was left. They even do that now when ISIS blows up ancient monuments.

What is next? Burning books? Lets burn the library of Alexandria once again...

aaaa | Aug 16, 2017 6:02:53 PM | 72
Just posting to say that I'm done with this place - will probably read but am not posting here anymore. Have fun
Clueless Joe | Aug 16, 2017 6:11:39 PM | 73
Joeymac 69:
I didn't mean the Charlottesville mess was done without due process. I refer to the cases that have happened these last few days - a trend that won't stop overnight.
Extremists from both sides aren't making friends on the other ones, and obviously are only making matters worse.

Somebody 63:
"It is futile to discuss what the confederacy was then, when white supremacy groups consider them their home today."
That's the whole fucking problem. By this logic, nobody should listen to Wagner or read Nietzsche anymore. Screw that. Assholes and criminals from now should be judged according to current values, laws and opinions, based on their very own crimes. People, groups, states, religions from the past should be judged according to their very own actions as well, and not based on what some idiot would fantasize they were 1.500 years later.

Merasmus | Aug 16, 2017 6:38:35 PM | 74
Looks like the Lee apologetics and claims that the war was about state's rights (go read the CSA constitution, it tramples the rights of its own member states to *not* be slave holding) or tariffs are alive and well in these comments. That's what these statues represent: the utter perversion of the historical record. And as pointed out @38, none of these statues are from anywhere near the Civil War or Reconstruction era.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/

https://www.civilwar.org/learn/primary-sources/declaration-causes-seceding-states

http://www.americancivilwarforum.com/five-myths-about-secession-169444.html?PageSpeed=noscript

https://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/06/05/the-great-civil-war-lie/?mcubz=3

Hoarsewhisperer | Aug 16, 2017 6:43:32 PM | 75
I think anyone and everyone who instigates a successful campaign to destroy a memorial which glorifies war should be awarded the Nobel Prize for Peace & Sanity and be memorialised in bronze, nearby, as a permanent reminder that war WAS a racket, until Reason prevailed.
No offense intended.
Anonymous | Aug 16, 2017 6:49:20 PM | 76
Arch-propagandist Rove said "[Those] in what we call the reality-based community, [who] believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality. That's not the way the world really works anymore. We're an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality [e.g Russia hacked the election]. And while you're studying that reality!judiciously, as you will!we'll act again, creating other new realities [e.g. Neo-Nazi White Supremacism], which you can study too, and that's how things will sort out. We're history's actors and you, all of you, will be left to just study what we do."

There is a coup underway to get rid of Trump [who's 'unpardonable crime' seems to be that he isn't going along with the War Party]. The War Party will try anything, anything, if there is a hope that it will work to get rid of him. When Trump launched the cruise missiles against Syria, there was a moment's silence, totally spooky given all the bs that was flying ... Would he start a war with Russia? Would Trump go all the way with that, as Clinton probably would have done? When the attack fizzled out, the chorus resumed their attacks as though nothing had happened.

Their tactical attacks change as they are revealed to be fakes. The current attack, probably using War Party provacateurs operating on both sides, is the next tactical phase - out with 'Russian Hacking the Election', in with 'Trump White Supremacist Nazi'. If there is the standard CIA regime change plan behind this (as outlined by John Perkins and seen in Ukraine, Libya, Syria)] and the relatively passive actions don't work, they will ultimately resort to hard violence. At that stage, they resort to using snipers to kill people on both sides.

The anti-fas' are supposedly liberal, anti-gun, but there already have been stories of them training with weapons, even working with the Kurds in Syria so the ground is laid for their use of weapons. There are those on the Trump side who would relish the excuse for gun violence irrespective on consequence so the whole thing could spiral out of control very rapidly and very dangerously.

Disclosure - I do not support Trump [or any US politico for that matter]. The whole US political system is totally corrupt and morally bankrupt. Those that rise [or more accurately those that are allowed to rise] to the top reflect that corruption and bankruptcy. This could get very very messy.

Lemur | Aug 16, 2017 6:50:58 PM | 77
There's nothing wrong with being racist. Racism is simply preference for one's extended family. 'b' calls the admittedly rather goony lot at C'ville 'white supremacists'. But do they want to enslave blacks or rule over non-whites? No. In fact most of the alt-right lament the slave trade and all its ills, including mixing two groups who, as Lincoln pointed out, had no future together. What the left wants to do is reduce Confederate American heritage and culture down to the slavery issue, despite the fact only a few Southerners owned slaves.

Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would white and non-white groups?

You lefties need to have a serious moral dialogue over your rejection of ethno-nationalism! Time to get on the right side of history! Have you noticed the alt-right, despite being comprised of 'hateful bigots', is favourably disposed toward Iran, Syria, and Russia? That's because we consistently apply principles which can protect our racially, culturally, religiously, and ethnically diverse planet, and mitigate conflict. But the woke woke left (not a typo) meanwhile has to 'resist' imperialism by constantly vilifying America. ITS NOT THAT I'M IN FAVOUR OF ASSAD OR PUTIN, ITS JUST THAT AMERICA IS SO NAUGHTY! OH, HOW BASE ARE OUR MOTIVES. OH, WHAT A POX WE ARE. Weak tea. You have no theoretical arguments against liberal interventionism or neoconservativism.

Newsflash folks. Hillary Clinton doesn't fundamentally differ from you in principle. She merely differs on what methods should be employed to achieve Kojeve's universal homogeneous state. Most of you just want to replace global capitalism with global socialism. Seen how occupy wall street turned out? Didn't make a dent. See how your precious POCs voted for the neoliberal war monger? Diversity increases the power of capital. The only force which can beat globalization is primordial tribalism.

I suggest you all start off your transition to nationalism by reading up on 'Social Democracy for the 21st Century'. http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.co.nz/

Seamus Padraig | Aug 16, 2017 6:57:50 PM | 78
All in all, b, a pretty brave post -- especially in these dark times. Only a few minor points to add:
Robert Lee was a brutal man who fought for racism and slavery.

Lee wasn't known for being brutal. You're probably confusing him with Nathan Bedford Forrest, who had a notorious mean streak: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest

Lee actually thought the Civil War an awful tragedy. He was asked to choose between his state and his country. That's not much different from being asked to choose between your family and your clan.

Lee was a racist.

That might be true, depending on one's definition of a racist. But then, why should Abraham Lincoln get a pass? It's well known that he did not start the Civil War to end slavery -- that idea only occurred to him halfway through the conflict. But there's also the fact that, while he was never a great fan of slavery, he apparently did not believe in the natural equality of the races, and he even once professed to have no intention of granting blacks equality under the law:
"While I was at the hotel to-day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the black and white races -- that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making VOTERS or jurors of negroes, NOR OF QUALIFYING THEM HOLD OFFICE, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any of her man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race."

It turns out that history's a complicated thing! To bad it wasn't all written by Hollywood with a bunch of cartoon villains and heroes ...
One gets the impression that the current wave of statue take downs is seen as well deserved "punishment" for those who voted wrongly - i.e. not for Hillary Clinton. While many Trump voters will dislike statues of Robert Lee, they will understand that dislike the campaign to take them down even more.

You nailed it, b. The way things are headed, I now wonder if I will someday be arrested for owning Lynard Skynard albums (the covers of which usually had Confederate battle flags) or for having watched Dukes of Hazard shows as a child. It's starting to get that crazy.

Anyway, thanks for running a sane blog in a mad world!

jdmckay | Aug 16, 2017 6:58:20 PM | 79
Good interview with a Black, female pastor in Charlottsville who was in church when the march began Friday night. They caught a lot that wasn't on network news.

http://www.msnbc.com/all-in/watch/trump-is-lying-about-charlottesville-says-witness-1025515075632

George Smiley | Aug 16, 2017 6:58:29 PM | 80
"Don't let this site get bogged down in history that is being constantly rewritten on Wikipedia. Don't buy into the left/right division process. Don't let your self identify with either group, as they are being led by provocateurs.

The lies we know of regarding Iraq, Syria, Libya - aren't they enough to force people to disbelieve our media completely? The HUGE lies in our media about what is going on in Venezuela should be quite enough (bastante suficiente) to make most people simply disbelieve. But they cannot because they are only allowed to see and hear what our government approves - and for our government, lying is quite legal now.

Let the emotions go - they are pushed via media to force you to think in white or black, right or left, old vs young - any way that is divisive. Getting beaten for a statue would likely make the guy who posed for it laugh his butt off most likely..."

Posted by: Oilman2 | Aug 16, 2017 3:09:32 PM | 31

Well said. Hope to see your thoughts in the future.

And as always, Karlof1 you have some insights I rarely get ever else (especially not in a comment section)

______________________________

"The US Civil War can't be boiled down to having just one cause; it's causes were multiple, although slavery--being an economic and social system--resides at its core. As an historian, I can't really justify the removal of statues and other items of historical relevance, although displaying the Confederate Flag on public buildings I see as wrong; better to display the Spirit of '76 flag if stars and stripes are to be displayed. (I wonder what will become of the UK's Union Jack if Scotland votes to leave the UK.) Personal display of the Stars and Bars for me amounts to a political statement which people within the Outlaw US Empire still have the right to express despite the animus it directs at myself and other non-Anglo ethnicities. (I'm Germanic Visigoth with Spanish surname--people are surprised at my color when they hear my name.)

The current deep dysfunction in the Outlaw US Empire's domestic politics mirrors that of the latter 1850s somewhat but the reasons are entirely different yet solvable--IF--the populous can gain a high degree of solidarity."

Posted by: karlof1 | Aug 16, 2017 3:51:18 PM | 45

____________________________

Also, somebody @63, very poignant to mention. While I could care less whether about some statues stand or fall (it helps living outside the empire), to deny that they are (generally) symbols of racism, or were built with that in mind, is a little off base in my eyes. Going to repost this quote because I think it had quite a bit of value in this discussion.

"In 2016 the Southern Poverty Law Center estimated that there were over 1,500 "symbols of thE Confederacy in public spaces" in the United States. The majority of them are located, as one might expect, in the 11 states that seceded from the union, but as Vice aptly points out, some can be found in Union states (New York, for example has three, Pennsylvania, four) and at least 22 of them are located in states that didn't even exist during the Civil War.

How can that be possible? Because largely, Confederate monuments were built during two key periods of American history: the beginnings of Jim Crow in the 1920s and the civil rights movement in the early 1950s and 1960s.

To be sure, some sprung up in the years following the Confederacy's defeat (the concept of a Confederate memorial day dates back to back to 1866 and was still officially observed by the governments of Alabama, Mississippi, and South Carolina, as of the publication of the Southern Poverty Law Center's report), and some continue to be built!USA Today notes that 35 Confederate monuments have been erected in North Carolina since 2000.

But when these statues!be they historical place markers, or myth-building icons of Lee or Stonewall Jackson!were built seems to suggest these monuments have very little to do with paying tribute to the Civil War dead and everything to do with erecting monuments to black disenfranchisement, segregation, and 20th-century racial tension."

Peter AU 1 | Aug 16, 2017 6:59:17 PM | 81
@77

Racism means zero understanding or tolerance of other people/cultures, an attitude that ones own culture or skin colour or group is far superior to those 'others'.

NemesisCalling | Aug 16, 2017 7:01:45 PM | 82
@77 lemur

Hear, hear. Generally, a resurgence of American nationalism WILL take the form of populist socialism because it will mark a turning away from the global police state which America is leading currently and will replace it with nationalistic spending on socialist programs with an emphasis on decreased military spending. This will continue ideally until a balance of low taxation and government regulation form a true economy which begins at a local level from the ground up.

annie | Aug 16, 2017 7:05:36 PM | 83
the city council, elected by the people, voted to remove the monument.

Where are America's memorials to pain of slavery, black resistance?

In 1861, the vice-president of the Confederacy, Alexander H. Stephens, offered this foundational explanation of the Confederate cause: "Its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. "

how much public space in the US should be dedicated to monuments honoring these people in the coming century? and for the children and grandchildren of slaves walking by them every day? what about their heritage? and the public monuments to the indigenous people of this land who we genocided? oh right, as a country we have still not even officially recognized that genocide. monuments should not be solely a reflection of the past, but of the future, of who we want to be. who we choose to recognize in our public spaces says a lot about us.

anon | Aug 16, 2017 7:06:12 PM | 84
It's pretty fair too say several of the "alt-right" leaders who planned this event agent are provocateurs or Sheep Dipped assets running honeypot "white nationalist" operations.

You can see from the make-up of the phony "Nazis" in the groups and their continued use of various propaganda that serves only to tie people and movements OPPOSED by the Deep State to "Nazis" and racist ideology, you can see how on the ground level, this event has psyop planners' fingerprints all over it.


It's also fair too say the complicit media's near universal take on the event signals a uniform, ready-made reaction more than likely dictated to them from a single source.

Trump is attacked. The ACLU is attacked. Peace activists opposed to the CIA's regime change operation in Syria are attacked. Tucker Carlson is attacked. Everyone attacked that the CIA and various other aspects of the Deep State want attacked as if the MSM were all sent the same talking points memo.

And keep in mind, this all comes right after the news was starting to pick up on the story that the Deep State's bullshit narrative about a "Russian hack" was falling apart.

Also keep in mind it comes at a time when 600,000 Syrians returned home after the CIA's terrorist regime change operation fell apart.

(from Scott Creighton's blog)

Zico the musketeer | Aug 16, 2017 7:11:22 PM | 85
Is there a left in America?
I think is really fun to watch those burgers call an US citizen a lefties.

From outside US you ALL looks like ULYRA right wing.
This is ridiculous!

Sigil | Aug 16, 2017 7:21:33 PM | 86
The statues were erected when the KKK was at its peak, to keep the blacks in their place. They started getting torn down after the 2015 massacre of black churchgoers by a Nazi. For once, don't blame Clinton.
Vas | Aug 16, 2017 7:28:08 PM | 87
as the country becomes less and less white
more and more symbols of white supremacy
have to go..
perry | Aug 16, 2017 7:51:05 PM | 88
Karlof1@45

My only argument with your post is "Chattel Slavery was introduced in the Western Hemisphere"
Chattel = movable property as opposed to your house. In that day and long before women and children were chattel.

Thinking about what might have been might help. If the south had won would we have had a strong enough central government to create and give corporate charters and vast rights of way to railroads which then cross our nation. Would states have created their own individual banking systems negating the need for the all controlling Federal reserve? Would states have their own military units willing to join other states to repel an attack instead of the MIC which treats the rest of the world like expendable slaves?

Before our constitution there was the Articles of Confederation. Article 1,2+3.....
Article I. The Stile of this Confederacy shall be "The United States of America."

Article II. Each state retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every Power, Jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this confederation expressly delegated to the United States, in Congress assembled.

Article III. The said States hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defense, the security of their liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretense whatever.

This first set of laws in the new world was later undone in a secret convention with Madison, input from Jefferson and others found on our money and other honorariums. 1868 gave us the 14th amendment to the constitution that freed all who are born within this nation and were given equal rights. (Not saying that this worked for all slaves. Within a few years this was used to create corporate persons with access to the bill of rights.

I am thinking there were many reasons that people who lived in those times had to fight for what they did. We today are not in a position to judge why individuals fought. Certainly many poor white southerners who owned no slaves at all fought and died. Was it to keep slaves they did not own enslaved or did they fight and die for issues around protection of local or state rights, freedoms and way of life?

Histories are written and paid for by the winners who control that particular present time for the glorification of those rulers. A vast removal of historical artifacts speaks of a weak nation fading into the west's need to clean up some points from history of mean and brutal behaviors which we as a nation support now in the present but try and make it about others.

Peter AU 1 | Aug 16, 2017 8:01:00 PM | 89
A paragragh here from lemur 77 comment...
"Now, within ethnic European countries, should whites be supreme? You're goddamn right they should. Just as the Japanese should practice 'yellow supremacy', and so on and so forth. Most of you lot here, being liberals, will be in favour of no fault divorce. You understand there can be irreconcilable differences which in way suggest either person is objectively bad. The same applies to disparate ethnicities. If white Slovaks and Czechs can't get one, why would white and non-white groups?"

What is the United States of America? It is made up of British, French, Spanish and Russian territories aquired or conquered, the original colonists in turn taking them from the native inhabitants. The US has had a largley open imigration policy, people of all cultures, languages and skin colours and religions.
Why should white Europeans be supreme in the US lemur?

psychohistorian | Aug 16, 2017 8:01:58 PM | 90
The following is the guts of a posting from Raw Story that I see as quite related.
"
White House senior strategist Steve Bannon is rejoicing at the criticism President Donald Trump is receiving for defending white nationalism.

Bannon phoned The American Prospect progressive writer and editor Robert Kuttner Tuesday, according to his analysis of the interview.

In the interview, Bannon dismissed ethno-nationalists as irrelevant.

"Ethno-nationalism!it's losers. It's a fringe element," Bannon noted.

"These guys are a collection of clowns," he added.

Bannon claimed to welcome the intense criticism Trump has received.

"The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats."

Kuttner described Bannon as being in "high spirits" during the call

"You might think from recent press accounts that Steve Bannon is on the ropes and therefore behaving prudently. In the aftermath of events in Charlottesville, he is widely blamed for his boss's continuing indulgence of white supremacists," Kuttner explained. "But Bannon was in high spirits when he phoned me Tuesday afternoon to discuss the politics of taking a harder line with China, and minced no words describing his efforts to neutralize his rivals at the Departments of Defense, State, and Treasury."

"They're wetting themselves," Bannon said of opponents he planned to oust at State and Defense.
"

Curtis | Aug 16, 2017 8:25:00 PM | 91
Curtis 6 isn't me. However, I somewhat agree with the point.

Joe 41
Very true. Lee saw himself as defending Virginia. Slavery was the chief issue used in the states declarations of secession. But the end goal was a separate govt (that actually banned the importation of new slaves).

Nemesis 57
Excellent. Racism was bad in the North, too.

Alexander Grimsmo | Aug 16, 2017 8:37:55 PM | 92
Strange how the left are pulling down statues of democrats, and the right are fighting to have them stand. The confederates were democrats, but nobody seem to remember that now anymore.
sigil | Aug 16, 2017 8:51:24 PM | 93
Nothing strange about it. The Democrats dropped the southern racists and the Republicans picked them up with the Southern Strategy. It's all pretty well documented. The current Republicans are not heirs to Lincoln in any meaningful way.
michaelj72 | Aug 16, 2017 8:53:14 PM | 94
some may consider this interesting.. at the end of Robert Kuttner's conversation with Steve Bannon, Bannon says:

http://prospect.org/article/steve-bannon-unrepentant

...."The Democrats," he said, "the longer they talk about identity politics, I got 'em. I want them to talk about racism every day. If the left is focused on race and identity, and we go with economic nationalism, we can crush the Democrats.".....

Petra | Aug 16, 2017 9:11:29 PM | 95
Those who make silly talk about "Patriots and Traitors" (Swallows and Amazons?) are being obtuse about their history. The whole system was racist through and through, depended upon it and was built upon it, starting with the very first rapacious sorties inland from the swampy coast.

Some excellent commentary here, including james's percipient notes, Grieved's point, RUKidding's and karlof1's, perry's observations and speculations.

Aside, this "99% v.1%" discourse is disempowering and one has to ask whose interests such talk and attendant disempowerment serve.

Krollchem | Aug 16, 2017 9:33:38 PM | 96
Both sides of this ideological issue are frooty and do not see the invisible hands that manipulate their weak minds. See Mike Krieger On Charlottesville: "Don't Play Into The Divide & Conquer Game"
http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-08-14/mike-krieger-charlottesville-dont-play-divide-conquer-game

Please note that slavery persisted in some Northern States after the end of the Civil War. The slave trade was even a profit center in the North:

http://www.tracingcenter.org/resources/background/northern-involvement-in-the-slave-trade/

VietnamVet | Aug 16, 2017 9:40:12 PM | 97
This is a meaningful post on a touchy subject. Global Brahmins are looting the developed world. Color revolutions and ethnic rifts make great fire sales. In a sane world, old monuments would molder away in obscurity. Instead a faux resistance to divide and conquer the little people has commenced. But, it is careening out of control due to austerity and job loss. Deplorable Bushwhackers are fighting for tribalism and supremacy. After the 27 year old war in Iraq, subjected Sunnis turned to their ethnic myths and traditions to fight back; obliterating two ancient cities and themselves. The Chaos is coming west.
John Merryman | Aug 16, 2017 9:43:21 PM | 98
The problem is that people focus on the effects of history, like slavery and the holocaust, but if you go into the causes and context of these events, then you get accused of rationalizing them. Yet being ignorant of the causes is when history gets repeated. By the time another seriously bad effect rises, it's too late.
As for slavery, it's not as though peoples lives haven't been thoroughly commodified before and continue to be. Yes, slavery in the early part of this country was horrendous and the resulting racism arose from the more reptilian parts of people's minds, but that part still exists and needs to be better understood, not dismissed.
It should also be noted that if it wasn't for slavery, the African American population would otherwise only be about as large as the Arab American population. It is a bit like being the offspring of a rape. It might the absolute worst aspect of your life, but you wouldn't be here otherwise. It's the Native Americans who really got screwed in the deal, but there are not nearly enough of them left, to get much notice.
John Merryman | Aug 16, 2017 9:47:52 PM | 99
PS,
For those who know their legal history, no, I'm not using a pseudonym. There is a lot of family history in this country, from well before it was a country.

[Aug 16, 2017] A New Martin Luther

Aug 16, 2017 | www.unz.com

Original: https://tsargrad.tv/articles/triumf-gendernyh-sharikovyh_79187

Translated by Fluctuarius Argenteus

Google fires employee James Damore for "perpetuating gender stereotypes.

– You persecute your employees for having opinions and violate the rights of White men, Centrists, and Conservatives.

– No, we don't. You're fired.

A conversation just like or similar to this one recently took place in the office of one of modern information market monsters, the Google Corporation.

Illustration to the Google scandal. James Damore fired for "perpetuating gender stereotypes". Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.

Google knows almost everything about us, including the contents of our emails, our addresses, our voice samples ( OK Google ), our favorite stuff, and, sometimes, our sexual preferences. Google used to be on the verge of literally looking at the world with our own eyes through Google Glass, but this prospect appears to have been postponed, probably temporarily. However, the threat of manipulating public opinion through search engine algorithms has been discussed in the West for a long while, even to the point of becoming a central House of Cards plotline.

Conversely, we know next to nothing about Google. Now, thanks to an ideological scandal that shook the company, we suddenly got a glimpse of corporate values and convictions that the company uses a roadmap to influencing us in a major way, and American worldview even more so. Suddenly, Google was revealed to be a system permeated by ideology, suffused with Leftist and aggressively feminist values.

The story goes this way. In early August, an anonymous manifesto titled Google's Ideological Echo Chamber was circulated through the local network of Google. The author lambasted the company's ideological climate, especially its policy of so-called diversity. This policy has been adopted by almost all of US companies, and Google has gone as far as to appoint a "chief diversity officer". The goal of the polity is to reduce the number of white cisgendered male employees, to employ as many minorities and women as possible and to give them fast-track promotions – which, in reality, gives them an unfair, non-market based advantage.

The author argues that Leftism and "diversity" policies lead to creating an "echo chamber" within the company, where a person only talks to those who share their opinions, and, through this conversation, is reinforced in the opinion that their beliefs are the only ones that matter. This "echo chamber" narrows one's intellectual horizon and undermines work efficiency, with following "the party line" taking precedence over real productivity.

In contrast to Google's buzzwords of "vision" and "innovation", the author claims that the company has lost its sight behind its self-imposed ideological blindfold and is stuck in a morass.

As Google employs intellectuals, argues the critic, and most modern Western intellectuals are from the Left, this leads to creating a closed Leftist clique within the company. If the Right rejects everything contrary to the God>human>nature hierarchy, the Left declares all natural differences between humans to be nonexistent or created by social constructs.

The central Leftist idea is the class struggle, and, given that the proletariat vs. bourgeoisie struggle is now irrelevant, the atmosphere of struggle has been transposed onto gender and race relations. Oppressed Blacks are fighting against White oppressors, oppressed women challenge oppressive males. And the corporate management (and, until recently, the US presidency) is charged with bringing the "dictatorship of the proletariat" to life by imposing the "diversity" policy.

The critic argues that the witch-hunt of Centrists and Conservatives, who are forced to conceal their political alignment or resign from the job, is not the only effect of this Leftist tyranny. Leftism also leads to inefficiency, as the coveted job goes not to the best there is but to the "best woman of color". There are multiple educational or motivation programs open only to women or minorities. This leads to plummeting efficiencies, disincentivizes White men from putting effort into work, and creates a climate of nervousness, if not sabotage. Instead of churning out new ground-breaking products, opines the critic, Google wastes too much effort on fanning the flames of class struggle.

What is the proposed solution?

Stop diving people into "oppressors" and "the oppressed" and forcefully oppressing the alleged oppressors. Stop branding every dissident as an immoral scoundrel, a racist, etc.

The diversity of opinion must apply to everyone. The company must stop alienating Conservatives, who are, to call a spade a spade, a minority that needs their rights to be protected. In addition, conservatively-inclined people have their own advantages, such as a focused and methodical approach to work.

Fight all kinds of prejudice, not only those deemed worthy by the politically correct America.

End diversity programs discriminatory towards White men and replace them with non-discriminatory ones.

Have an unbiased assessment of the costs and efficiency of diversity programs, which are not only expensive but also pit one part of the company's employees against the other.

Instead of gender and race differences, focus on psychological safety within the company. Instead of calling to "feel the others' pain", discuss facts. Instead of cultivating sensitivity and soft skins, analyze real issues.

Admit that not all racial or gender differences are social constructs or products of oppression. Be open towards the study of human nature.

The last point proved to be the most vulnerable, as the author of the manifesto went on to formulate his ideas on male vs. female differences that should be accepted as fact if Google is to improve its performance.

The differences argued by the author are as follows:

Women are more interested in people, men are more interested in objects.

Women are prone to cooperation, men to competition. All too often, women can't take the methods of competition considered natural among men.

Women are looking for a balance between work and private life, men are obsessed with status

Feminism played a major part in emancipating women from their gender roles, but men are still strongly tied to theirs. If the society seeks to "feminize" men, this will only lead to them leaving STEM for "girly" occupations (which will weaken society in the long run).

It was the think piece on the natural differences of men and women that provoked the greatest ire. The author was immediately charged with propagating outdated sexist stereotypes, and the Google management commenced a search for the dissent, with a clear purpose of giving him the sack. On 8th August, the heretic was revealed to be James Damore, a programmer. He was fired with immediate effect because, as claimed by Google CEO Sundar Pichai, "portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace". Damore announced that he was considering a lawsuit.

We live in a post-Trump day and age, that is why the Western press is far from having a unanimous verdict on the Damore affair. Some call him "a typical sexist", for others he is a "free speech martyr". By dismissing Damore from his job, Google implicitly confirmed that all claims of an "echo chamber" and aggressive Leftist intolerance were precisely on point. Julian Assange has already tweeted: "Censorship is for losers, WikiLeaks is offering a job to fired Google engineer James Damore".

It is highly plausible that the Damore Memo may play the same breakthrough part in discussing the politically correct insanity as WikiLeaks and Snowden files did in discussing the dirty laundry of governments and secret services. If it comes to pass, Damore will make history as a new Martin Luther challenging the Liberal "Popery".

However, his intellectual audacity notwithstanding, it should be noted that Damore's own views are vulnerable to Conservative criticism. Unfortunately, like the bulk of Western thought, they fall into the trap of Leftist "cultural constructivism" and Conservative naturalism.

Allegedly, there are only two possible viewpoints. Either gender and race differences are biologically preordained and therefore unremovable and therefore should always be taken into account, or those differences are no more than social constructs and should be destroyed for being arbitrary and unfair.

The ideological groundwork of the opposing viewpoints is immediately apparent. Both equate "biological" with "natural" and therefore "true", and "social" with "artificial" and therefore "arbitrary" and "false". Both sides reject "prejudice" in favor of "vision", but politically correct Leftists reject only a fraction of prejudices while the critic calls for throwing all of them away indiscriminately.

As a response, Damore gets slapped with an accusation of drawing upon misogynist prejudice for his own ideas. Likewise, his view of Conservatives is quite superficial. The main Conservative trait is not putting effort into routine work but drawing upon tradition for creative inspiration. The Conservative principle is "innovation through tradition".

The key common mistake of both Google Leftists and their critic is their vision of stereotypes as a negative distortion of some natural truth. If both sides went for an in-depth reading of Edmund Burke, the "father of Conservatism", they would learn that the prejudice is a colossal historical experience pressurized into a pre-logical form, a collective consciousness that acts when individual reason fails or a scrupulous analysis is impossible. In such circumstances, following the prejudice is a more sound strategy than contradicting it. Prejudice is shorthand for common sense. Sometimes it oversimplifies things, but still works most of the time. And, most importantly, all attempts to act "in spite of the prejudice" almost invariably end in disaster.

Illustration to the Google scandal. A fox sits gazing at the Google's Ideological Echo Chamber exposing the ideas of the fired engineer James Damore. Source: Screenshot of Instragram user bluehelix.

However, the modern era allows us to diagnose our own prejudice and rationalize them so we could control them better, as opposed to blind obedience or rejection. Moreover, if the issue of "psychological training" ever becomes relevant in a country as conservative as Russia is, that is the problem we should concentrate on: analyzing the roots of our prejudices and their efficient use.

The same could be argued for gender relations. Damore opposes the Leftist "class struggle of the genders" with a technocratic model of maximizing the profit from each gender's pros and cons. This functionalism appears to be logical in its own way, but is indeed based on too broad assumptions, claiming that all women are unfit for competition, that all of them like relationships and housekeeping while all men are driven by objects and career. And, as Damore claims biological grounds for his assumptions, all our options boil down to mostly agreeing with him or branding him as a horrible sexist and male chauvinist.

However, the fact that gender roles historically developed based on biology but are, as a whole, a construct of society and culture does not give an excuse to changing or tearing them down, as clamored by Leftists. Quite the contrary: the social, cultural, and historical determinism of these roles gives us a reason to keep them in generally the same form without any coups or revolutions.

First, that tradition is an ever-growing accumulation of experience. Rejecting tradition is tantamount to social default and requires very good reasons to justify. Second, no change of tradition occurs as a result of a "gender revolution", only its parodic inversion. Putting men into high heels, miniskirts, and bras, fighting against urinals in public WCs only reverses the polarity without creating true equality. The public consciousness still sees the "male" as "superior", and demoting "masculinity" to "femininity" as a deliberate degradation of the "superior". No good can come of it, just as no good came out of humiliating wealth and nobility during the Communist revolution in Russia. What's happening now is not equal rights for women but the triumph of gender Bolshevism.

Damore's error, therefore, consists in abandoning the domain of the social and the historical to the enemy while limiting the Conservative sphere of influence to the natural, biological domain. However, the single most valuable trait in conservative worldview is defending the achievements of history and not just biological determinism.

The final goal of a Conservative solution to the gender problem should not be limited to a rationalist functionalization of society. It should lead to discovering a social cohesion where adhering to traditional male and female ways and stereotypes (let's not call them roles – the world is not a stage, and men and women not merely players) would not keep males and females from expressing themselves in other domains, provided they have a genuine calling and talent.

The art of war is not typical of a woman; however, women warriors such as Joan of Arc leave a much greater impact in historical memory. The art of government is seen as mostly male, yet it makes great female rulers, marked not by functional usefulness but true charisma, all the more memorable. The family is the stereotypical domain of the woman, which leads to greater reverence towards fathers that put their heart and soul into their families.

Social cohesion, an integral part of it being the harmony of men and women in the temple of the family, is the ideal to be pursued by our Russian, Orthodox, Conservative society. It is the collapse of the family that made gender relations into such an enormous issue in the West: men and women are no longer joined in a nucleus of solidarity but pitted against one another as members of antagonistic classes. And this struggle, as the Damore Memo has demonstrated, is already stymieing the business of Western corporations. Well, given our current hostile relations, it's probably for the better.

[Aug 15, 2017] The Neoconservative Movement is Trotskyism by Jonas E. Alexis

Notable quotes:
"... The Neoconservative Persuasion ..."
"... Illustrated Sunday Herald ..."
"... In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies!policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had. ..."
"... For example, when two top AIPAC officials!Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman!were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them. ..."
"... Wall Street Journal ..."
Aug 15, 2017 | www.veteranstoday.com
Editors Note: Mr. Alexis has sent us a well written position with which VT totally agrees

Former neoconservative luminary Francis Fukuyama of Stanford (formerly of Johns Hopkins) compares the neoconservative movement to Leninism. Neoconservatism, according to Fukuyama, is the reincarnation to some extent of both Leninism and Bolshevism.

Fukuyama's observation makes sense when even Irving Kristol, who founded the movement, proudly admitted that the "honor I most prized was the fact that I was a member in good standing of the [Trotskyist] Young People's Socialist League (Fourth International)."

And this neoconservative movement, as Jewish writer Sidney Blumenthal has shown, found its political and intellectual ideology "in the disputatious heritage of the Talmud."

Even after the birth of the neoconservative movement, many of its members such as Stephen Schwartz of the Weekly Standard and Joan Wohlstetter of the RAND Corporation still had a burning thirst for Lev Davidovich Bronstein, known as Leon Trotsky.

In that sense, the neoconservative persuasion is a subversive movement which started out in the 1920s and 30s. Legal scholar Michael Lind pointed out some years ago that,

"Most neoconservative defense intellectuals have their roots on the left, not the right. They are products of the influential Jewish-American sector of the Trotskyist movement of the 1930s and 1940s, which morphed into anti-communist liberalism between the 1950s and 1970s and finally into a kind of militaristic and imperial right with no precedents in American culture or political history."

This was the case for Kristol, who bragged about how his Jewish intellectual comrades such as Nathan Glazer of Harvard, Philip Selznick of Berkley, Peter Rossi of Johns Hopkins, Merroe Berger of Princeton, I. Milton Sacks of Brandeis, and Seymour Melman of Columbia were not only Trotskyists but were "unquestionably the most feverishly articulate" in indoctrinating students into their Weltanschauung.

Irving Kristol

Kristol argues in his book The Neoconservative Persuasion that those Jewish intellectuals did not forsake their heritage (revolutionary ideology) when they gave up Communism and other revolutionary movements, but had to make some changes in their thinking. America is filled with such former Trotskyists who unleashed an unprecedented foreign policy that led to the collapse of the American economy.

We have to keep in mind that America and much of the Western world were scared to death of Bolshevism and Trotskyism in the 1920s and early 30s because of its subversive activity.

Winston Churchill himself wrote an article in 1920 in the British newspaper Illustrated Sunday Herald entitled "Zionism versus Bolshevism: A Struggle for the Soul of the Jewish People."

The United States had document after document in archives (particularly at the Yale Law School) on Bolshevik Revolution. One of those documents is entitled "Papers Relating to the Foreign Relations of the United States 1918 Russia Vol. I – The Bolshevik 'Coup d'Etat' November 7, 1917." Virtually no one wanted to tolerate Bolshevism.

Noted Australian economist John Quiggin declares in his recent work Zombie Economics that "Ideas are long lived, often outliving their originators and taking new and different forms. Some ideas live on because they are useful. Others die and are forgotten. But even when they have proved themselves wrong and dangerous, ideas are very hard to kill. Even after the evidence seems to have killed them, they keep on coming back.

These ideas are neither alive nor dead; rather they are undead, or zombie, ideas." Bolshevism or Trotskyism is one of those zombie ideas that keeps coming back in different forms. It has ideologically reincarnated in the political disputations of the neoconservative movement.

If this sounds like an exaggeration and if you think the projectile motion of Trotskyism is over, listen to Gabriel Schoenfeld, senior advisor to the Mitt Romney for President campaign, as to why he supported Romney for president:

"My support for Mitt Romney has something to do with a ship called the Serpa Pinto and with an American Marxist revolutionary."

Schoenfeld later declared that his father was a Trotskyist in the revolutionary sense, and that Obama was too soft on the Middle East, and Romney was the better choice to take care of Iran. Schoenfeld was an editor for the neoconservative magazine Commentary.

As it turns out, neoconservative think tanks such as the American Enterprise Institute are largely extensions of Trotskyism with respect to foreign policy. Other think tanks such as the Bradley Foundation were overtaken by the neoconservative machine back in 1984.

Some of those double agents have been known to have worked with Likud-supporting Jewish groups such as the Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, an organization which has been known to have "co-opted" several "non-Jewish defense experts by sending them on trips to Israel. It flew out the retired general Jay Garner, now slated by Bush to be proconsul of occupied Iraq."

Philo-Semitic scholars Stephen Halper of Cambridge University and Jonathan Clarke of the CATO Institute agree that the neoconservative agendas "have taken American international relations on an unfortunate detour," which is another way of saying that this revolutionary movement is not what the Founding Fathers signed up for, who all maintained that the United States would serve the American people best by not entangling herself in alliances with foreign entities.

As soon as the Israel Lobby came along, as soon as the neoconservative movement began to shape U.S. foreign policy, as soon as Israel began to dictate to the U.S. what ought to be done in the Middle East, America was universally hated by the Muslim world.

Moreover, former secretary of defense Robert Gates made it clear to the United States that the Israelis do not and should not have a monopoly on the American interests in the Middle East. For that, he was chastised by neoconservative Elliott Abrams.

In that sense, the neoconservative movement as a political and intellectual movement represents a fifth column in the United States in that it subtly and deceptively seeks to undermine what the Founding Fathers have stood for and replace it with what the Founding Fathers would have considered horrible foreign policies!policies which have contributed to the demise of the respect America once had.

Halper and Clarke move on to say that the neoconservative movement is "in complete contrast to the general cast of the American temperament as embodied by the Declaration of Independence."

The neoconservative persuasion is horrible in the sense that much of the war in the Middle East has been based on colossal hoaxes and fabrications.

This point became more interesting when it was discovered that Israel has maintained covert operations against the U.S. on multiple levels, including smuggling illegal weapons for years, while the neoconservative machine says nothing about this issue and keeps propounding that Israel is a model of Western values in the Middle East.

Israel has been spying on the United States for years using various Israeli or Jewish individuals, including key Jewish neoconservative figures such as Paul Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith, who were under investigation for passing classified documents to Israel.

The FBI has numerous documents tracing Israel's espionage in the U.S., but no one has come forward and declared it explicitly in the media because most political pundits value mammon over truth.

For example, when two top AIPAC officials!Steven Rosen and Keith Weissman!were caught passing classified documents from the Pentagon to Israel, Gabriel Schoenfeld defended them.

In the annual FBI report called "Foreign Economic Collection and Industrial Espionage," Israel is a major country that pops up quite often. This is widely known among CIA and FBI agents and U.S. officials for years.

One former U.S. intelligence official declared, "There is a huge, aggressive, ongoing set of Israeli activities directed against the United States. Anybody who worked in counterintelligence in a professional capacity will tell you the Israelis are among the most aggressive and active countries targeting the United States.

They undertake a wide range of technical operations and human operations. People here as liaisons aggressively pursue classified intelligence from people. The denials are laughable."

In 1991, the Israelis tried to recruit a former U.S. intelligence official, but he declined. "I had an Israeli intelligence officer pitch me in Washington at the time of the first Gulf War. I said, 'No, go away,' and reported it to counterintelligence." Covert operations were done by the Israelis in "a 1997 case in which the National Security Agency bugged two Israeli intelligence officials in Washington discussing efforts to obtain a sensitive U.S. diplomatic document.

Israel denied wrongdoing in that case and all others, and no one has been prosecuted." Yet this has rarely seen the light of day in the popular media. Pointing these facts out, according to the reasoning of Omri Ceren of the fifth column magazine Commentary , is tantamount to anti-Semitism.

In 2003, Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon made the declaration that the United States had already conquered Iraq, and it was time that the U.S. marched against Iran, Syria, and Libya.

Under Obama, Sharon's prediction became a reality in Libya, and now the U.S. is destabilizing Syria by covertly supporting the Syrian rebels, while the war drum is being beaten against Iran.

In the process, Iran has been blamed for a cyber attack in the Middle East with little evidence. By the fall of 2012, the United States and Israel were even considering a "surgical strike" against Iran.

At the same time, the "democracy" which the neocons dreamed of establishing in Iraq has become "increasingly authoritarian and narrowly sectarian," according to twenty-eight-year CIA veteran and Georgetown University professor Paul R. Pillar. In his inaugural speech for his second term, President Obama suggested that the perpetual war has come to an end.

But by that time the U.S. was already marshalling some of our precious men in Mali, and British Prime Minister David Cameron has recently declared that the war in Mali will more than likely last for decades, which is another way of saying that perpetual wars are here to stay. And the people who will be paying for this are the American taxpayers, decent people who are trying to put food on the table and generational children who will be drown in massive debt and student loans.

What, then, are some of the outcomes of the neoconservative movement? What are some of its revolutionary or subversive offshoots? We will explore these questions in the upcoming articles, but one of the indirect by-products of this movement is that no person, democrat or republican, can be elected as president without being a Zionist or at least favoring Israel over the Founding Fathers. This point became clear when Obama won the presidential election in 2012.

Months before election, both Romney and Obama were competing as to who was going to give the biggest tribute to Israel. Romney went to Israel and declared that Iran was the biggest threat in the world, and Obama sent Defense Secretary Leon Panetta to Israel right after Romney's departure to tell Israel that his administration is in agreement with Israeli officials with respect to Iran. Both Romney and Obama supported deploying troops to Syria if Assad, they said, used chemical weapons.

For Alan Dershowitz of Harvard, it was the Jews in Florida who helped reelect Obama. This is not without evidence, since it has been reported that at least 70 percent of Jewish voters sided with Obama. Dershowitz continues to say that Jews like himself "must now realize that our support for the president will be good for Israel over the next four years Jews vote for both parties.

Nobody is ignoring us. Every rational candidate knows that they and their party must earn our votes in every election." One would say that this absolutely means nothing, since Jews are less than five percent of the population. But as we shall show in the next article, Jewish billionaires were largely the main vehicles supporting both Democrats and so-called Republicans.

Dershowitz then declared something that would have been a shock to the Founding Fathers: "Most Americans, regardless of religion, are united in support of Israel's security, but divided about social and economic issues. It is critically important that support for Israel's security remains a bipartisan issue, and never becomes a wedge issue that divides voters along party lines, as it has in some European countries."

In other words, even though the economy is a dismal failure, even though Americans are out of work, even though people are being cheated out of their retirement plans, even though student loans have been skyrocketed, Americans must support Israel (it has been at least $3 billion a year). Just like the Pharisees and rabbis who had to tell Pilate what to do in the first century, Dershowitz declares, "I and others who support [Obama] will have his ear over the next four years."

Almost two months before he won the presidential election, Obama invited Dershowitz to the White House and told him, "I don't bluff." Obama also invited Edgar Bronfman, former president of the World Jewish Congress, to the White House and told him, "My commitment to Israel's security is bone deep." What would George Washington, Thomas Edison and others say? Let us hear them.

George Washington: "The great rule of conduct for us, in regard to foreign nations, is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. Europe has a set of primary interests, which to us have none, or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns.

Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves, by artificial ties, in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities." Thomas Jefferson: "Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations!entangling alliances with none," Grover Cleveland: "It is the policy of Monroe and of Washington and Jefferson: Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliance with none."

Does any president have the courage to pronounce these statements today? The answer is a resounding no. The only former presidential candidate who tried to implement that foreign policy was Ron Paul, but he was castigated as "a vicious anti-Semite" for doing so.

In a nutshell, if you are a follower of the Founding Fathers when it comes to foreign policy, you are a "vicious anti-Semite." Moreover, if the Founding Fathers were alive today, they would be all anti-Semites! Over the past few weeks, more than 60 articles have been written against Chuck Hagel by two neoconservative magazines alone, Commentary and the Weekly Standard (not to mention the Washington Post , National Review , the Wall Street Journal , etc.).

This brings us to an essentially critical point that will be explored in more details later in the series: the word anti-Semitism has carelessly been applied in the political landscape to shut down rational arguments and important issues. It has become a weapon in the blessed hands of those who seek to destabilize thoughtful discussion. You either support the neoconservative ideology, or else

[Aug 14, 2017] the USA is somewhat similar to the USSR: it is ruled by a Nomenklatura , an Inner Party to use Orwells expression, which keeps the rest of the 99 pecent in a condition that I would describe as semi-serfdom by The Saker

Notable quotes:
"... Not that I believe that there is much of a difference between the Demoblicans and the Republicrats (Pepsi vs Cola, really), but this simply illustrates two basic facts of the US political system: ..."
"... The US "deep state" is not affected by changes in the White House ..."
"... In a way, the USA is very similar to the bad old Soviet Union: it is ruled by a Nomenklatura , an " Inner Party " to use Orwell's expression, which keeps the rest of the 99% in a condition that I would describe as semi-serfdom ("semi" because the modern serf can legally leave his place of labor and move to another one). And while the real "deep state" is only a small sub-section of the US Nomenklatura, the entire Nomenklatura is bound to it by a deep sense of class solidarity. ..."
Sep 11, 2016 | www.unz.com
402 Comments

Not that I believe that there is much of a difference between the Demoblicans and the Republicrats (Pepsi vs Cola, really), but this simply illustrates two basic facts of the US political system:

  1. The US "deep state" is not affected by changes in the White House
  2. The US "deep state" is equally embedded in both factions of the "1% Party" in power

In a way, the USA is very similar to the bad old Soviet Union: it is ruled by a Nomenklatura , an " Inner Party " to use Orwell's expression, which keeps the rest of the 99% in a condition that I would describe as semi-serfdom ("semi" because the modern serf can legally leave his place of labor and move to another one). And while the real "deep state" is only a small sub-section of the US Nomenklatura, the entire Nomenklatura is bound to it by a deep sense of class solidarity.

This is what primarily explains the collective blindness of quite literally all the US elites about 9/11: just like everybody now knows that Kennedy was not killed by a lone gunman, most people by now suspect that the official 9/11 conspiracy theory is a stupid load of hogwash – but they just don't see what difference it makes for them and the world they live in.

[Aug 14, 2017] American dream as example of propaganda

Notable quotes:
"... The American Dream meme is not as American as apple pie, it's a relatively recent invention and a vacuous one at that. It functions to keep Americans from taking action upon confronting the distortions Erebus spelled out in #34 (great comment, btw). ..."
September 11, 2016

SolontoCroesus > , September 11, 2016 at 3:53 pm GMT

@Seamus Padraig

1) The US "deep state" is not affected by changes in the White House
In this case, I'd have to disagree. When I examine the bizarre events of the 2000 election in hindsight, it seems likely that someone was absolutely determined to get Bush into the White House at all costs, probably so that Cheney and Rumsfeld could appoint all the neocons to neutralize the Pentagon and the CIA, leaving the country ripe for attack.
Of course, the stakes are sky-high: if 9/11 was an inside job, then the US government is not only absolutely illegitimate, it is in fact an occupation government controlled by either foreign elements, or traitors or both.
I strongly agree with this statement. Mossad did 9/11: https://wikispooks.com/wiki/9-11/Israel_did_it
Yes, that is, indeed, a very painful realization: the American Dream is just that – a dream.
It's like George Carlin said: "The reason they call it the American Dream is because you have to be asleep to believe it."
In spite of it all, the 9/11 Truth movement has had a huge victory: it has basically forced the US government to admit that explosives were used to bring down WTC7!
The owner of the WTC, Larry Silverstein, admitted that he deliberately brought down building 7 through controlled demolition, even though the exact justification he offered is implausible: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-jPzAakHPpk&feature=youtu.be

Yes, that is, indeed, a very painful realization: the American Dream is just that – a dream.

small point in your overall pic, Saker, but annoying as hell:

The American Dream is a trope invented by Jews & Hollywood, or maybe Jews in the Bernays influenced PR world. take a look at Neal Gabler's An Empire of Their Own: How the Jews Invented Hollywood

coordinate the rise of holocaustism with the increase in the use of the term, American dream

https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=american+dream&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Camerican%20dream%3B%2Cc0

The American Dream meme is not as American as apple pie, it's a relatively recent invention and a vacuous one at that. It functions to keep Americans from taking action upon confronting the distortions Erebus spelled out in #34 (great comment, btw).

Jefferson, Madison, Washington, Adams, Franklin did not "pledge their lives, their fortune, their sacred honor" for the American Dream.

Intelligent Dasein > , Website September 11, 2016 at 3:58 pm GMT

@Erebus I've long been an admirer of Thomas Kuhn's.

Indeed, humans live a narrative that continuously tells them who they are, the world they live in, and their and everybody/everything else's place in it.
I've often thought that the "truther" versions of 9/11 don't get traction not because they don''t make physical sense, but precisely because they do. I've watched competent professionals, confronted with mathematical proof (that they sometimes worked out for themselves), look from side to side in obvious discomfort and then reject it wholesale using some semi-religious psycho-babble argument like "Nobody could be that evil"....

Why?

Well, a part of the answer is that to acknowledge the facts is to also face an life changing decision. That is, whether one is OK with the fact that one's "betters" just murdered 3000 of your compatriots with absolute impunity, or not.

If not, a moral imperative stares one in the face. One has to go Che Guevara and fight this evil with every fibre of his being, at the cost of one's career, home, (probably) family and any hopes & dreams one may have had for a comfortable, long life.

The shame of shirking the moral imperative, that one is OK with one's "betters" murdering how ever many they like of ones compatriots, is to admit to cowardice and henceforth to live an unprincipled, grovelling existence at the whim of those "betters".

Nobody will thank the truther for putting them in that position. And, the smarter they are the worse they react. So, their internal narratives build defences in an earnest desperation, scorning the truth they themselves worked out and casting all other plain facts out the window. No obfuscatory, prevaricating, question-begging, word-mincing tactic will go untried as the lifelong narrative desperately tries to save itself.

That's humans for ya, and the "betters" know it well. That's how they got to be betters. Your comment, gold box and all, is exactly the kind of oblivious, preachy, self-righteous bullshit that proves what the Truthers are really all about!vanity and anarchy. Truther's beliefs are a method of self-aggrandizement that allows them to feel superior to the rest of the world; that is to say, to the great unwashed masses whom they accuse of believing "the official version," regardless of what such people actually believe or whether they even exist (for the facts do not matter; it's all about the melodrama with you, anyway), and whom you libel as cowards, ignorant, government shills, "sheeple," and other choice terms from your little catalog of epithets.

This act of deprecation is your real objective. It provides the little power-fixes, little dopamine rushes, that allow you to feel oh-so dominant and in-the-know. "Look how much better I am than all these ignorant sheeple," you say to yourself. It also provides you with every excuse you need to ignore your civic responsibilities and mock society's institutions whenever doing so would be convenient for you. After all, society is unjust and all those institutions are just serving the deep state and shilling for the "official version." You, sir, have found a civic loophole. You get to enjoy the benefits of living in the commonwealth while denigrating and flouting it at the same time. You're just a Jacobin, a Bolshevik, another liberal revolutionary cloaked in a different ideology.

But let's look at your specific claim the majority of people simply cannot accept "what really happened" on 9/11 because that would entail the psychologically impossible task of acknowledging that!gasp!!their own government murdered 3,000 people in a false flag incident that set the backdrop for the roll-out of the War on Terror.

What kind of a mouth-breathing idiot do you have to be to make such a claim? It simply doesn't make any sense. Even a cursory glance at history reveals that governments have been slaughtering people on a large scale, for all kinds of reasons, since the very beginning of time, and yet that fact seems to have been acknowledged without any attendant epidemic of cognitive dissonance. Why should it be any more difficult to believe that our government would kill 3000 Americans in our own time if it suited its purposes? Given the fact that the US deep state is one of the most corrupt, feckless, and downright byzantine organizations to ever exist, I have no trouble at all believing such a thing, except for the minor fact that it did not happen. I certainly am not impeded by any unrealistic, juvenile hangups regarding the sanctity of the federal government.

But I suspect that you are. I suspect that you think , somewhere deep inside, that whatever powers ought to be governing the affairs of men!be it the Constitution "as written," or some sort of Randian libertarian fantasy!really are pure and perfect as the driven snow, and therefore it required an act of unsurpassed dastardliness to obscure them: enter 9/11 "Truth." I suspect that you think yourself to be quite above reproach, and that your adherence to 9/11 "Truth" gives you a sense of permanent absolution from all past and future guilt. And I further suspect that the nefarious plots and subterfuges you project upon The Powers That Be are precisely the sort of acts you yourself would commit if you held their high station. Your feigned moral indignation at them is really just a histrionic facade, as moral indignation always is. You don't hate them. You don't even really fear them. You covet them. Your only outrage arises from the fact that someone else got to do them and you did not. Therefore belief in "Truth" is an existential necessity of yours. It is the sacrament by which you hypostatically unite yourself with everything you desire. All thought is but the mirror image of the thinker.

But in reality it is all a lie. 9/11 was not a false flag. It really was a terrorist attack, the fact that the government responded with a hamfisted acceleration of the security state, and by bombing the Middle East into a quagmire, notwithstanding.

[Aug 12, 2017] Here's the memo that blew up the National Security Council

Aug 12, 2017 | www.businessinsider.com

Political Warfare NSC memo by Brett LoGiurato on Scribd

The memo at the heart of the latest blowup at the National Security Council paints a dark picture of media, academics, the "deep state," and other enemies allegedly working to subvert U.S. President Donald Trump, according to a copy of the document obtained by Foreign Policy.

The seven-page document, which eventually landed on the president's desk, precipitated a crisis that led to the departure of several high-level NSC officials tied to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The author of the memo, Rich Higgins, who was in the strategic planning office at the NSC, was among those recently pushed out.

The full memo, dated May 2017, is titled "POTUS & Political Warfare." It provides a sweeping, if at times conspiratorial, view of what it describes as a multi-pronged attack on the Trump White House.

Trump is being attacked, the memo says, because he represents "an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative." Those threatened by Trump include "'deep state' actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans."

The memo is part of a broader political struggle inside the White House between current National Security Advisor H.R. McMaster and alt-right operatives with a nationalist worldview who believe the Army general and his crew are subverting the president's agenda.

Though not called out by name, McMaster was among those described in the document as working against Trump, according to a source with firsthand knowledge of the memo and the events. Higgins, the author, is widely regarded as a Flynn loyalist who dislikes McMaster and his team.

Political Warfare NSC memo by Brett LoGiurato on Scribd

BACKGROUND. The Trump administration is suffering under withering information campaigns designed to first undermine, then delegitimize and ultimately remove the President. Possibly confusing these attacks with an elevated interplay of otherwise normal D.C. partisan infighting and adversarial media relations, the White House response to these campaigns reflects a political advocacy mindset that it is intensely reactive, severely under-inclusive and dangerously inadequate to the threat. If action is not taken to re-scope and respond to these hostile campaigns very soon, the administration risks implosion and subsequent early departure from the White House.

This is not politics as usual but rather political warfare at an unprecedented level that is openly engaged in the direct targeting of a seated president through manipulation of the news cycle. It must be recognized on its own terms so that immediate action can be taken. At its core, these campaigns run on multiple lines of effort, serve as the non-violent line of effort of a wider movement, and execute political warfare agendas that reflect cultural Marxist outcomes. The campaigns operate through narratives. Because the hard left is aligned with Islamist organizations at local (ANTIFA working with Muslim Brotherhood doing business as MSA and CAIR), national (ACLU and BLM working with CAIR and MPAC) and international levels (OIC working with OSCE and the UN), recognition must given to the fact that they seamlessly interoperate at the narrative level as well. In candidate Trump, the opposition saw a threat to the "politically correct" enforcement narratives they've meticulously laid in over the past few decades. In President Trump, they see a latent threat to continue that effort to ruinous effect and their retaliatory response reflects this fear.

INTRODUCTION. Responding to relentless personal assaults on his character, candidate Trump identified the players and the strategy:

• 'The establishment and their media enablers will control over this nation through means that are very well known. Anyone who challenges their control is deemed a sexist, a racist, a xenophobe, and morally deformed." - President Trump, Oct 2016

Culturally conditioned to limit responses to such attacks as yet another round in the on-going drone from diversity and multicultural malcontents, these broadsides are discounted as political correctness run amuck. However, political correctness is a weapon against reason and critical thinking. This weapon functions as the enforcement mechanism of diversity narratives that seek to implement cultural Marxism. Candidate Trump's rhetoric in the campaign not only cut through the Marxist narrative, he did so in ways that were viscerally comprehensible to a voting bloc that then made candidate Trump the president; making that bloc self-aware in the process. President Trump is either the candidate he ran as, or he is nothing.

Recognizing in candidate Trump an existential threat to cultural Marxist memes that dominate the prevailing cultural narrative, those that benefit recognize the threat he poses and seek his destruction. For this cabal. Trump must be destroyed. Far from politics as usual, this is a political warfare effort that seeks the destruction of a sitting president. Since Trump took office, the situation has intensified to crisis level proportions. For those engaged in the effort, especially those from within the "deep state" or permanent government apparatus, this raises clear Title 18 (legal) concerns.

DISCUSSION.

The Opposition. While opposition to President Trump manifests itself through political warfare memes centered on cultural Marxist narratives, this hardly means that opposition is limited to Marxists as conventionally understood. Having become the dominant cultural meme, some benefit from it while others are captured by it; including "deep state" actors, globalists, bankers, Islamists, and establishment Republicans. Through the campaign, candidate Trump tapped into a deep vein of concern among many citizens that America is at risk and is slipping away. Globalists and Islamists recognize that for their visions to succeed, America, both as an ideal and as a national and political identity, must be destroyed. Atomization of society must also occur at the individual level; with attacks directed against all levels of group and personal identity. Hence the sexism, racism and xenophobia memes. As a Judeo-Christian culture, forced inclusion of post-modern notions of tolerance is designed to induce nihilistic contradictions that reduce all thought, all faith, all loyalties to meaninglessness. Group rights based on sex or ethnicity are a direct assault on the very idea of individual human rights and natural law around which the Constitution was framed. "Transgender acceptance" memes attack at the most basic level by denying a person the right to declare the biological fact of one's sex. When a population has 2 + 2 = 5 imposed on it, there are many that benefit:

Complicating the current situation, many close to the president have pushed him off his message when he was candidate Trump thus alienating him from his base thereby isolating him in the process. When President Trump is not candidate Trump, he becomes dangerously exposed. While the base that elected candidate Trump identified with his vision, they are only Trump's insofar as he holds to

the vision that made him president.

Political Warfare Attacks - A Primer. As used here, "political warfare" does not concern activities associated with the American political process but rather exclusively refers to political warfare as understood by the Maoist Insurgency model. 2 Political warfare is one of the five components of a Maoist insurgency. Maoist methodologies employ synchronized violent and non-violent actions that focus on mobilization of individuals and groups to action. This approach envisions the direct use of non-violent operational arts and tactics as elements of combat power. In Maoist insurgencies, the formation of a counter-state is essential to seizing state power. Functioning as a hostile competing state acting within an existing state, it has an alternate infrastructure. Political warfare operates as one of the activities of the "counter-state" and is primarily focused on the resourcing and mobilization of the counter state or the exhaustion and demobilization of the targeted political movement. Political warfare methods can be implemented at strategic, operational, or tactical levels of operation.

Political warfare is warfare. Strategic information campaigns designed to delegitimize through disinformation arise out of non-violent lines of effort in political warfare regimes. They principally operate through narratives. Because the left is aligned with Islamist organizations at local, national and international levels, recognition should be given to the fact that they seamlessly interoperate through coordinated synchronized interactive narratives.

Complicating the current situation, many close to the president have pushed him off his message when he was candidate Trump thus alienating him from his base thereby isolating him in the process. When President Trump is not candidate Trump, he becomes dangerously exposed. While the base that elected candidate Trump identified with his vision, they are only Trump's insofar as he holds to

the vision that made him president.

Political Warfare Attacks - A Primer. As used here, "political warfare" does not concern activities associated with the American political process but rather exclusively refers to political warfare as understood by the Maoist Insurgency model. 2 Political warfare is one of the five components of a Maoist insurgency. Maoist methodologies employ synchronized violent and non-violent actions that focus on mobilization of individuals and groups to action. This approach envisions the direct use of non-violent operational arts and tactics as elements of combat power. In Maoist insurgencies, the formation of a counter-state is essential to seizing state power. Functioning as a hostile competing state acting within an existing state, it has an alternate infrastructure. Political warfare operates as one of the activities of the "counter-state" and is primarily focused on the resourcing and mobilization of the counter state or the exhaustion and demobilization of the targeted political movement. Political warfare methods can be implemented at strategic, operational, or tactical levels of operation.

Political warfare is warfare. Strategic information campaigns designed to delegitimize through disinformation arise out of non-violent lines of effort in political warfare regimes. They principally operate through narratives. Because the left is aligned with Islamist organizations at local, national and international levels, recognition should be given to the fact that they seamlessly interoperate through coordinated synchronized interactive narratives.

2 This discussion relies on Thomas A. Marks' treatment of the Maoist model as discussed in Maoist People's War in Post-Vietnam Asia (Bangkok, Thailand: White Lotus Press, 2007), 1 - 14. Hereafter "Thomas A. Marks, Maoist People's War."

As used in this discussion, cultural Marxism relates to programs and activities that arise out of Gramsci Marxism, Fabian Socialism and most directly from the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt strategy deconstructs societies through attacks on culture by imposing a dialectic that forces unresolvable contradictions under the rubric of critical theory. The result is induced nihilism, a belief in everything that is actually the belief in nothing.

That post-modern (diversity/multiculturalism) narratives seeks to implement cultural Marxist objectives can be demonstrated by reference to founding Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse's repurposing of the term tolerance. In a 1965 paper, Marcuse defined tolerance as intolerance; said it can be implemented through undemocratic means to stop chauvinism (xenophobia), racism, discrimination; and should be extended to the left while denied to the right:

• "The realization of the objective of tolerance would call for intolerance toward prevailing policies, attitudes, opinions, and the extension of tolerance to policies, attitudes, and opinions which are outlawed or suppressed."

• "Surely, no government can be expected to foster its own subversion, but in a democracy such a right is vested in the people (i.e in the majority of the people). This means that the ways should not be blocked on which a subversive majority could develop, and if they are blocked by organized repression and indoctrination, their reopening may require apparently undemocratic means They would include the withdrawal of toleration of speech and assembly from groups and movements which promote aggressive policies, armament, chauvinism, discrimination on the grounds of race and religion, or which oppose the extension of pubic services, social security, medical care, etc." (8-9)

• "Liberating tolerance, then, would mean intolerance against movements from the Right and toleration of movements from the Left. As to the scope of this tolerance and intolerance:... it would extend to the stage of action as well as of discussion and propaganda, of deed as well as of word. - (12)

It is through such post-modern constructs that interoperable narratives are established among various left-wing groups as well as between them and Islamist groups at all levels. For example, from the 2001 Conference of Foreign Ministers at Bamako, Mali, the Organization of Islamic Cooperation (OIC) declared its commitment to fight racism and xenophobia and then declared Islamophobia a "contemporary form of racism":

• In this context, the world Conference urges all states... take all necessary measures to comoat hatred, discrimination, intolerance and acts of violence. Intimidation and coercion motivated by racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance particularly against Islam

• Racism, racial discrimination, xenophobia and related intolerance which display an increasing trend, in their most subtle and contemporary forms, constitute a violation of human rights. 3 Contemporary forms of racism are based on discrimination and disparagement on a cultural, rather than biological basis. In this content, the increasing trend of Islamophobia, as a distinct form of xenophobia in non-Muslim societies is very alarming.

That the OIC made these claims as part of its planned inputs to the United Nation's "Third World Conference against Racism, Racial Discrimination. Xenophobia and Related Intolerance" further demonstrates the coordinated and interoperable nature of these narratives at international levels in international forums.

As cultural Marxist narratives intensify, they are to be further operationalized in the form of hate speech narratives. Hate speech narratives are non-random, coordinated, and fully interoperable escalations of cultural Marxist memes. Key international players include the European Union, the UN, and the OSCE, the OIC and the International Muslim Brotherhood. Hate speech memes are structured, coordinated, and implemented through these same international forums. They involve close coordination with media and social media and include the Countering Violent Extremism (CVE) narratives. David Shipler's book Freedom of Speech provides a road map for how hate speech narratives are to be structured, deployed and enforced.

Battlespace. These attack narratives are pervasive, full spectrum and institutionalized at all levels. They operate in social media, television, the 24-hour news cycle in all media, and are entrenched at the upper levels of the bureaucracies and within the foreign policy establishment. They inform the entertainment industry from late night monologues, to situation comedies, to television series memes, to movie themes. The effort required to direct this capacity at President Trump is little more than a programming decision to do so. The cultural Marxist narrative is fully deployed, pervasive, full spectrum and ongoing. Regarding the president, attacks have become a relentless 24/7 effort.

While there is certainly a Marxist agenda and even Islamist motivations that must be seriously addressed in their own right, these motivations alone seem inadequate to explain the scope and magnitude of the effort directed against the president. The economic drivers behind the Marxist and Islamist ideologues are enormously influential and seek to leverage these ideological movements for their own self interests. While beyond the actual scope of this document, the benefactors of these political movements include; Urban Real Estate who depend greatly on immigrant tenants, International Banking who seeks to maintain US debtor status so as to control the application of American power, and elements of the business sector that depend upon immigrant labor or government infrastructure. The overall objective of these economic forces is the forced urbanization of the populace, thereby necessitating a larger, more powerful government. In summary, this is a form of population control by certain business cartels in league with cultural Marxists/corporatists/lslamists who will leverage Islamic terrorism threats to justify the creation of a police state.

Adversary Campaign Plan. Political Warfare has been described as "propaganda in battledress." 3 The effort directed at President Trump is executed along one overt, as well as two covert, lines of effort:

The overt line of effort is PUBLICITY. Publicity is the straightforward projection of a case that builds a picture in the audience's mind designed to garner support. It is facts without context and information the adversary wants the audience to possess that creates an impression and sets conditions. It seeks to establish good will and receptiveness to additional inputs.

There are two covert lines of effort: PROPOGANDA and INFILTRATION/SUBVERSION.

о Propaganda is the deliberate direction, even manipulation, of information to secure a

definite outcome. It is an attempt to direct the thinking of the recipient, without his conscious collaboration, into predetermined channels that are established in the Publicity line of effort. It is the unwitting conditioning of the recipient by devious methods with an ulterior motive that seeks to move them incrementally over time into greater belief and acceptance of message transmitted in the Publicity line of effort.

о Infiltration and subversion operate internal to the targeted organization in order to

inform, target, coordinate, and amplify the effects of the publicity and propaganda.

Both operate to gather intelligence, obstruct legitimate courses of action, provide inside information, and leak sensitive information that undermines the leadership and suppresses the morale of friendly elements.

3 "Political Warfare Executive - The Meaning, Techniques and Methods of Political Warfare," His 8ritannic Majesty's Government, London, 1942, 5.

о Infiltration of political and social groups within a target state is done for the purpose of extending counter- state influence and control. The endgame is concealed and may involve illicit activities.

о Subversion undermines or detaches the loyalties of significant political and social groups within the target state and transfers political and/or ideological loyalties to the counter-state. As the counter-state forms, a counter-elite of influential individual and key leaders within the target state will later facilitate the legitimacy and permanency of the new regime.

Political warfare employs both publicity and propaganda. It recognizes no intrinsic virtue in the news but rather envisions it as a mechanism to exploit and build up support. From a political warfare perspective, control of the news cycle is the most potent means of attracting and building up a favorable audience.

As it relates to the news cycle, publicity and propaganda can be merged to form a "pseudo-publicity" that is presented as news in furtherance of sustaining pseudo-realities maintained by cultural Marxist memes. Pseudo-publicity treatment of President Trump dominates the news cycle. The current campaign against President Trump operates in the following manner:

The Meta Narrative. Meta narratives seeks to delegitimize President Trump, his administration, and the vision of America he projected as a candidate. With cultural Marxist memes serving as the backdrop, President Trump is to be relentlessly characterized as unfit through the use of supporting narratives acting to move unwitting populations to belief in the meta narrative. Hence:

• "President Trump is illegitimate"

• "President Trump is corrupt"

• "President Trump is dishonest"

Note that the twitter accounts and mainstream media personalities pushing this narrative have seen their audience numbers rise greatly in the past 6 months. This is a direct result of the supporting and backdrop narratives channeling individuals to this meta-narrative.

Supporting Narratives. Meta-narratives are supported by an ongoing series supporting-narratives that can be swapped out as circumstances warrant. It is important to recognize that these stories do not have to be true, valid or accurate to serve their purpose. Overtime, deserved or not, the cumulative effect of these supporting narratives will result in a Trump fatigue. From a political warfare perspective. President Trump's inability to meet this challenge will cast him as a weak failed leader. The current list of supporting narratives include:

Backdrop Narratives. The backdrop to the meta and supporting narratives are cultural Marxist memes designed to sustain a general sense of loathing of President Trump and the America that elected him. Hence:

• "[meta] President Trump is illegitimate, [supporting] he was elected because of Russian hacking, [backdrop] and besides, he a racist, sexist xenophobe."

Adversaries utilize these interlocking narratives as a defensive political and information warfare screen that silences critics and smears supporters of President Trump. When people in the media question the behavior, actions and decisions of the Trump Administration's opponents, they are immediately said to be "working for the Russians" or "supporting Russian propaganda." Individual Americans who support the President are deemed "deplorable" and "racist."

End State. Attacks on President Trump are not just about destroying him, but also about destroying the vision of America that lead to his election. Those individuals and groups seeking the destruction of President Trump actually seek to suffocate the vision of America that made him president. Hence, the end state is not just a delegitimized, destabilized, immobilized and possibly destroyed presidency; but also a demoralized movement composed of a large enough bloc to elect a president that subsequently become self-aware of Its own disenfranchisement.

CONCLUSION.

The recent turn of events give rise to the observation that the defense of President Trump is the defense of America. In the same way President Lincoln was surrounded by political opposition both inside and outside of his wire, in both overt and covert forms, so too is President Trump. Had Lincoln failed, so too would have the Republic. The administration has been maneuvered into a constant back- pedal by relentless political warfare attacks structured to force him to assume a reactive posture that assures inadequate responses. The president can either drive or be driven by events; it's time for him to drive them.

[Aug 11, 2017] Is the United States in Decline by Christopher Layne

Notable quotes:
"... Writing in the Financial Times , former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that London's AIIB decision and its aftermath "may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system." ..."
"... Summers was both right and wrong. The U.S. role as the hegemonic power in international politics and economics indeed is being challenged. But this did not start when Britain and the others decided to sign-up with the AIIB. America has been slowly, almost imperceptibly, losing its grip on global leadership for some time, and the Great Recession merely accelerated that process. China's successful launch of the AIIB and its OBOR offspring merely accentuates that process. ..."
"... While President Trump lacks any serious, coherent worldview, there are more than enough Republican members of the foreign policy establishment to ensure that he doesn't break with America's post-1945, bipartisan policy of primacy. And Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again'' certainly puts him in the camp of U.S. global dominance. ..."
"... But Paul Kennedy was correct when he noted in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers that in the history of the modern international system (since around 1500) no state has managed to remain permanently atop the great power pyramid. "American exceptionalism" notwithstanding, the United States will not be an exception. ..."
"... Pax Americana was the product of a unique post-World War II constellation of power. As scholars such as Kennedy and Gilpin have pointed out, when World War II ended the United States accounted for half of the world's manufacturing output and controlled some two-thirds of the world's gold and foreign exchange. Only America could project air and naval power globally. ..."
"... the United States kept the Soviet Union at bay until that artificial regime collapsed of its own weight. ..."
"... today China's AIIB presents a double-barreled challenge to U.S. leadership of the global economy as well as to Pax Americana's institutional (and ideational) foundations. The AIIB aims at enhancing China's role both in managing the international economy and in international development. With AIIB China means to demonstrate its seriousness in demanding a share of decision-making power in the Bretton Woods legacy institutions, the IMF and World Bank, reflecting its current economic and financial clout. The AIIB's impact, however, transcends international economic affairs and reflects the shifting Sino-American balance of power. ..."
"... because of the AIIB, America's "international credibility and influence are being threatened." ..."
"... For their part, the Chinese regarded the U.S. stance as an attempt to counter China's rise and its ambition to become the dominant power in East Asia. As China's former Vice Minister of Finance, Wei Jianguo, put it, "You could think of this as a basketball game in which the U.S. wants to set the duration of the game, size of the court, the height of the basket and everything else to suit itself. In fact, the U.S. just wants to exclude China from the game." ..."
"... China's rise within the post-1945 international order doesn't mean it has any interest in preserving Pax Americana's core. On the contrary, the evidence suggests China wants to reshape the international order to reflect its own interests, norms, and values. As Martin Jacques puts it: ..."
"... The main plan of American soft power is democracy within nation-states; China by way of contrast emphasizes democracy between nation-states!most notably in respect for sovereignty!and democracy in the world system. China's criticism of the Western-dominated international system and its governing institutions strikes a strong chord with the developing world at a time when these institutions are widely recognized to be unrepresentative and seriously flawed. ..."
"... Rules and institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system. In global politics, the rules are made by those who rule. ..."
"... As E. H. Carr, the renowned English historian of international politics, once observed, a rules-based international order "cannot be understood independently of the political foundation on which it rests and the political interests which it serves." The post-World War II international order is an American order that, while preserving world stability for a long time, primarily privileged U.S. and Western interests. ..."
"... But Beijing, by all the evidence, does not see it that way. And OBOR and the AIIB prove the point. Instead of living within the geopolitical, economic, and institutional confines imposed by Pax Americana, an increasingly powerful China will seek to revise the international order so that it reflects its own political and economic interests. Thus are OBOR and the AIIB straws in the wind. And, as the great Bob Dylan said, you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing. ..."
"... Paradoxically the acceleration in the decline began with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Incredible hubris followed, and we are reaping the usual results. ..."
Aug 11, 2017 | www.theamericanconservative.com

No state stays on top of the great power pyramid forever. August 8, 2017 In mid-May, leaders of 29 nations, and representatives from some 80 others, descended on Beijing to discuss China's ambitious "One Belt One Road" (OBOR) development initiative!also known to some as the "New Silk Road." This plan is the follow-on to China's creation several years ago of the Asia Infrastructure Development Bank (AIIB), a major new international financial institution to foster economic development in "emerging market" nations.

OBOR, a signature policy of Chinese president Xi Jinping, calls for investing massive amounts of money ($1 trillion, according to some reports) to promote trade and economic development by constructing transportation links that will tie together East Asian manufacturing hubs with Southeast Asia, Central Asia, Africa, and Southwest Asia. These new transportation routes also will connect China with the participating nations and Europe. China's aim is twofold: to create new markets for the goods and services it produces, and to extend its geopolitical influence. Some analysts see OBOR as a Chinese version of the Marshall Plan, the important post-World War II American initiative that helped rebuild Western Europe and laid the foundation for European economic unity that ultimately culminated in the European Union.

With OBOR, China is following the example of Great Britain and the United States (as well as pre-World War I European great powers such as Germany). In the 19th century, the expansion of the British empire, including what scholars Ronald Robinson and John Gallagher describe as its "informal empire," was driven by the perceived need to find outlets for the United Kingdom's "surplus" goods and capital!that is, goods and capital that could not be profitably absorbed by the domestic economy. When the United States burst onto the world stage as a great power in the late 19th century, acquiring Puerto Rico, Hawaii, Guam, and the Philippines, it imitated Britain's pursuit of both informal and formal empire for the same reason: the belief that America's continuing economic growth depended on exporting American capital and goods. China today faces the problem of insufficient demand for its products and limited prospects for profitable domestic investment. Beijing is responding to these problems pretty much as Britain and the United States did in the latter part of the 19th century: by seeking new markets and attractive investment opportunities abroad.

As both Britain and the United States demonstrated, economic expansion begets geopolitical expansion. Economic clout can buy a lot of political influence. But the lines of communication linking the home country to its overseas markets must be protected. And political stability must be maintained where the home country is investing. For Britain and the United States, economic expansion resulted in the inexorable expansion of their military power and diplomatic sway. We can expect OBOR to have a similar effect on China. It is a powerful incentive for China to expand its military projection capabilities. Beijing will be compelled to assume an increasingly active role in managing regional security in places affected by OBOR!especially in Central Asia and Pakistan, which are plagued by political instability and terrorism.

OBOR is a milestone on China's path to great power status and is one of several indicators of receding American power!not just geopolitically, but also in matters involving the international economy and international institutions. When discussing the Sino-American rivalry, attention is focused on the military balance between the United States and China and to flashpoints between the two countries that could spark a conflict!the South China Sea, the East China Sea, Taiwan, the Korean Peninsula. But these more intangible economic and diplomatic developments will be no less important in shaping relations between Washington and Beijing as in determining the fate of the world order built by the United States following World War II!that is, Pax Americana, or what is sometimes referred to as "the liberal rules-based international order."

Since the early 2000s there has been an ongoing conversation among scholars, policymakers, and members of the broader American foreign policy establishment about whether U.S. power is in decline. The question actually extends back to the 1980s, with the publication of Yale historian Paul Kennedy's The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers and other important books on the subject by scholars David Calleo and Robert Gilpin. The controversy surrounding decline dissipated, however, when the Soviet Union imploded and Japan's economic bubble burst. In one fell swoop, America's primary military and economic competitors fell off the geopolitical chessboard.

The decline issue remained dormant through the "the unipolar moment" of the 1990s but was rekindled with China's rapid great-power emergence in the early 2000s. China's rise is the flip side of American decline. The central geopolitical question of the early 21st century is whether Pax Americana can survive China's rise and the resulting shift of world geopolitical and economic power from west to east. The U.S. foreign policy establishment is allergic to the word "decline." After all, as Jon Huntsman declared during his brief presidential run in 2012: "Decline is un-American." Perhaps so, but that doesn't mean that it's not happening.

Though Huntsman has plenty of company on this issue in the foreign policy establishment, we would do better to heed the advice of the great Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Paige. "Don't look back," he said, "because something may be gaining on you." A glance at the rear-view mirror shows China rapidly closing the gaps with the United States in all the dimensions of power upon which the Pax Americana was built: military, economic, and institutional.

In the last decade, China has displaced the United States as the world's leading manufacturing power. In 2014, according to the World Bank, China passed America as the world's largest economy (measured by purchasing power parity). In 1980, the United States accounted for about 25 percent of gross world product. Today it accounts for around 18 percent. Some analysts have come up with clever arguments to discount the importance of these economic trends. They are unconvincing. But the reality of U.S. decline is more than just a matter of numbers; it is also evident in Washington's diminishing ability to manage the international economy and in the growing challenges to many legacy institutions of Pax Americana.

A strain of thinking called hegemonic stability theory holds that a liberal, open international economy requires an overarching power to manage and stabilize the system by creating a political and security order that permits economic openness. The United States filled this role for half a century, from 1945 until the Great Recession. The world's economic hegemon must provide public goods that benefit the international system as a whole, including: making the rules for the international economic order; opening its domestic market to other states' exports; supplying liquidity to the global economy; and providing a reserve currency. Having declined to grasp the mantle of leadership during the 1930s, Washington seized it decisively after World War II. Johns Hopkins professor Michael Mandelbaum has argued that, following the Cold War, the United States essentially acted as a de facto government for the international system by providing security and managing the global economy.

The Great Recession impaired the United States' ability to provide leadership for the international economy. After all, an economic hegemon is supposed to solve global economic crises, not cause them. But America plunged the world into economic crisis when its financial system seized up with the sub-prime mortgage crisis. A hegemon is supposed to be the lender of last resort in the international economy, but the United States became the borrower of first resort!the world's largest debtor. When the global economy falters, the economic hegemon must assume responsibility for kick-starting recovery by purchasing other nations' goods. From 1945 to the Great Recession, America's willingness to consume foreign goods constituted the primary firewall against global economic downturns. During the Great Recession, however, the U.S. economy proved too infirm to lead the global economy back to health.

At the April 2009 G20 meeting in London, President Barack Obama conceded that, in key respects, the United States' days as economic hegemon were numbered because America is too deeply in debt to continue as the world's consumer of last resort. Instead, he said, the world would have to look to China (and other emerging market states plus Germany) to be the motors of global recovery.

Another example of how the U.S. has lost its grip on global economic leadership is its failure to prevail over the Europeans (read: Germany) in the transatlantic "austerity versus stimulus" debate that commenced in late 2009. Reflecting their different historical experiences, the United States and Europe (more specifically, Germany and the European Central Bank, or ECB) adopted divergent fiscal policies during the Great Recession. Obama administration economic policymakers were guided by the Keynesian lessons learned from the 1930s Great Depression: to dig out of a deep economic slump, the federal government should boost demand by pump-priming the economy through deficit spending, and the Federal Reserve should add further stimulus through low interest rates and easy money. Obama administration policymakers and leading American economists were haunted by the "1937 analogy"!FDR's "recession within the Depression''!demonstrating that if stimulus is withdrawn prematurely, a nascent recovery may be aborted.

On the other hand, Germany!the EU's economic engine!has long been haunted by the "1923 analogy": the fear that inflation can become uncontrollable, with disastrous economic, social, and political consequences. From the founding of post-World War II West Germany until the advent of the European Monetary Union and eventually the Euro, Germany's central Bundesbank maintained a primary mission of combatting inflation and preserving the Deutschmark's value. For the German government, assurance that the new ECB would follow the Bundesbank's sound money policy was a sine qua non for Berlin's decision to give up the Deutschmark in favor of the Euro.

This U.S.-European divide on austerity versus stimulus was apparent as early as the April 2009 London G20 summit, where the United States wanted to rebalance the international economy by inducing the Europeans (most particularly, Germany, which, with China, was one of the two large surplus economies) to lift the Continent out of the Great Recession by emulating Washington's use of deficit spending to galvanize economic revival. Washington wanted Germany to export less and import more. Berlin flatly refused. German Chancellor Angela Merkel argued that for states!especially ones already deeply in debt!to accumulate more debt in an effort to spend themselves out of the Great Recession would only set the stage for an even greater crisis down the road.

Washington's inability to prevail over Berlin in the stimulus vs. austerity debate highlighted waning U.S. power in the international economy. Jack Lew, then Treasury secretary, implicitly said as much at the October 2015 IMF-World Bank annual meeting when he stated that the United States could not be the "sole engine" of global growth.

But America's inability to get Germany to give up austerity was not the only indicator of America's decreasing ability to shape the international economic agenda. During the Obama administration's first term, the United States was unable to persuade China to allow the renminbi to appreciate to Washington's preferred level (which the United States hoped would reduce China's export surplus to the United States while simultaneously boosting American exports to China).

U.S. economic and fiscal troubles have contributed significantly to the fraying of Pax Americana's institutional global framework. The Great Recession spurred calls for a major overhaul of the international institutional order as evidenced by the emergence of the G20, demands for IMF and World Bank reform, and a push for expanded membership of the UN Security Council. The past decade or so also has seen the creation of new international organizations and groupings such as the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, the Collective Security Treaty Organization, and BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa). As American power wanes, a parallel or "shadow" international order is being constructed as an alternative to Pax Americana. Perhaps the most dramatic example of his is Beijing's Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank.

As Beijing rolled out its AIIB plans, the Obama administration kicked into high gear diplomatically in an attempt to squelch it. As the New York Times reported, Washington "lobbied against the [AIIB] with unexpected determination and engaged in a vigorous campaign to persuade important allies to shun the project." Washington's attempt to dissuade its allies from joining the AIIB failed. The dam burst when, in an Ides of March 2015 decision, Britain announced it was going to become a member of the AIIB ("Et Tu Britain?"). London's decision to join the AIIB set off a stampede as other states on the fence rushed to sign up for membership. Those joining included U.S. allies such as France, Germany, Italy, Australia, South Korea, even Israel and Taiwan. Beijing's diplomatic coup in attracting widespread support for its AIIB initiative from long-standing U.S. allies was viewed as a direct challenge to America's global geopolitical and economic leadership.

Writing in the Financial Times , former Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers said that London's AIIB decision and its aftermath "may be remembered as the moment the United States lost its role as the underwriter of the global economic system."

Summers was both right and wrong. The U.S. role as the hegemonic power in international politics and economics indeed is being challenged. But this did not start when Britain and the others decided to sign-up with the AIIB. America has been slowly, almost imperceptibly, losing its grip on global leadership for some time, and the Great Recession merely accelerated that process. China's successful launch of the AIIB and its OBOR offspring merely accentuates that process.

Not surprisingly, U.S. policymakers and the wider foreign policy establishment brush off any possibility of diminishing U.S. power. Recent books by leading foreign policy analysts (including Josef Joffe, Robert Lieber, and Joseph S. Nye Jr.) assert that U.S. power is robust, and that the 21st century, like the 20th, will be an "American century." Meanwhile, during the Obama administration U.S. foreign policy officials never missed a chance to assert America's continuing role as a global hegemon (though President Obama's own views on U.S. primacy seemed more nuanced). For example, the Obama administration's 2015 National Security Strategy, a twenty-nine page document, invoked the term "American leadership" more than 100 times.

While President Trump lacks any serious, coherent worldview, there are more than enough Republican members of the foreign policy establishment to ensure that he doesn't break with America's post-1945, bipartisan policy of primacy. And Trump's slogan "Make America Great Again'' certainly puts him in the camp of U.S. global dominance.

But Paul Kennedy was correct when he noted in The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers that in the history of the modern international system (since around 1500) no state has managed to remain permanently atop the great power pyramid. "American exceptionalism" notwithstanding, the United States will not be an exception.

Pax Americana was the product of a unique post-World War II constellation of power. As scholars such as Kennedy and Gilpin have pointed out, when World War II ended the United States accounted for half of the world's manufacturing output and controlled some two-thirds of the world's gold and foreign exchange. Only America could project air and naval power globally.

And, of course, the United States alone had atomic weapons. America used its commanding economic, military, and political supremacy to lay the foundations of the post-World War II international order, reflected in such institutions as the United Nations, NATO, the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (which has morphed into the World Trade Organization). Additionally, the United States kept the Soviet Union at bay until that artificial regime collapsed of its own weight.

All this represented a remarkable achievement, ensuring relative peace and prosperity for more than half a century. But today China's AIIB presents a double-barreled challenge to U.S. leadership of the global economy as well as to Pax Americana's institutional (and ideational) foundations. The AIIB aims at enhancing China's role both in managing the international economy and in international development. With AIIB China means to demonstrate its seriousness in demanding a share of decision-making power in the Bretton Woods legacy institutions, the IMF and World Bank, reflecting its current economic and financial clout. The AIIB's impact, however, transcends international economic affairs and reflects the shifting Sino-American balance of power.

Washington said it opposed AIIB because of doubts that it would adhere to the same environmental, governance, lending, transparency, labor, and human rights standards practiced by the IMF, World Bank, and Asian Development Bank. But Treasury's Lew was more candid when he said that, because of the AIIB, America's "international credibility and influence are being threatened."

For their part, the Chinese regarded the U.S. stance as an attempt to counter China's rise and its ambition to become the dominant power in East Asia. As China's former Vice Minister of Finance, Wei Jianguo, put it, "You could think of this as a basketball game in which the U.S. wants to set the duration of the game, size of the court, the height of the basket and everything else to suit itself. In fact, the U.S. just wants to exclude China from the game."

The Obama administration's ballyhooed Asian pivot was based on the assumption that, although the ASEAN nations of Asia, along with Australia and South Korea, are being pulled into China's economic orbit, they will turn to the United States as a geopolitical counterweight. However, Beijing's ability to get ASEAN, South Korea, and other neighboring states to jump on the AIIB bandwagon suggests this assumption may be erroneous. The pull of Beijing's economic power may override security concerns and draw these states into China's geopolitical orbit. The trajectory of ASEAN's trade flows is revealing. In 1993, the United States accounted for 18 percent of ASEAN's total trade (imports and exports combined), and China for only 2 percent. By 2013 the United States' share of ASEAN's total trade had shrunk to 8.2 percent while China's had jumped to 14 percent. The trend lines indicate that in coming years China's share of regional trade will continue to rise while that of the U.S. will decline.

Thus while OBOR and the AIIB don't get the same attention from U.S. grand strategists as does China's military buildup, they are equally important in signaling the ongoing power transition between the United States and China in East Asia. Among American security studies scholars, even those who once firmly believed that unipolarity would last far into the future now grudgingly concede that the era of American hegemony may be drawing to a close. They console themselves, however, with the thought that the United States can cushion itself against future power declines and the loss of hegemony by taking advantage of what they see as a still-open window to "lock in" Pax Americana's essential features!its institutions, rules, and norms!so that they outlive unipolarity. As Princeton's G. John Ikenberry puts it, the United States should act today to put in place an institutional framework "that will safeguard our interests in future decades when we will not be a unipolar power."

Ikenberry argues that China, having risen within the post-1945 international system, has no incentive to overturn it. His argument is superficially attractive because it posits that, even if the material foundations of U.S. dominance wither, its institutional and ideational essence will live on. This almost certainly is incorrect. China's rise within the post-1945 international order doesn't mean it has any interest in preserving Pax Americana's core. On the contrary, the evidence suggests China wants to reshape the international order to reflect its own interests, norms, and values. As Martin Jacques puts it:

The main plan of American soft power is democracy within nation-states; China by way of contrast emphasizes democracy between nation-states!most notably in respect for sovereignty!and democracy in the world system. China's criticism of the Western-dominated international system and its governing institutions strikes a strong chord with the developing world at a time when these institutions are widely recognized to be unrepresentative and seriously flawed.

Thus the "lock-in" concept isn't likely to work because China, along with much of the developing world, does not accept the foundations upon which the post-World War II liberal international order rests.

For many American scholars and policy makers the notion of a "liberal, rules-based, international order" has a talismanic quality. They believe that rules and institutions are politically neutral and thus ipso facto beneficial for all. Many proponents of "lock-in" have constructed a geopolitically antiseptic world, one uncontaminated by clashing national interests. In this world, great power competition and conflict are transcended by rules, norms, and international institutions. The problem is that this misconstrues how the world works. Great power politics is about power. Rules and institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system. In global politics, the rules are made by those who rule.

As E. H. Carr, the renowned English historian of international politics, once observed, a rules-based international order "cannot be understood independently of the political foundation on which it rests and the political interests which it serves." The post-World War II international order is an American order that, while preserving world stability for a long time, primarily privileged U.S. and Western interests.

Proponents of "lock-in" are saying that China will!indeed, must!agree to be a "responsible stakeholder" (with Washington defining the meaning of "responsibility") in an international order that it did not construct and that exists primarily to advance the interests of the United States. In plain English, what those who believe in "lock-in" expect is that an increasingly powerful China will continue to accept playing second fiddle to the United States.

But Beijing, by all the evidence, does not see it that way. And OBOR and the AIIB prove the point. Instead of living within the geopolitical, economic, and institutional confines imposed by Pax Americana, an increasingly powerful China will seek to revise the international order so that it reflects its own political and economic interests. Thus are OBOR and the AIIB straws in the wind. And, as the great Bob Dylan said, you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing.

Christopher Layne is University Distinguished Professor of International Affairs, and Robert M. Gates Chair in National Security, at Texas A&M University.

ds9 , says: August 9, 2017 at 12:30 am

Thank you for a very interesting article. Still, I think there is a large issue not addressed: Isn't China on the verge of a now unstoppable demographic catastrophe? How do you see that affecting China's "rise" long term?
RVA , says: August 9, 2017 at 12:34 am
Professor Layne: You left out something very significantly causal re: decline of American power. It is not mysterious or a deeply historic twist of inevitable fate.

Rather, we have spent TRILLIONS in vain military blood and treasure over the past 17 years, with NOTHING to show for it – besides a destabilized region raining the most refugees since WW2 onto our allies, the Europeans (destabilizing THEM as well.)

This failure is not even being addressed, let alone changed. Policymakers responsible apparently have clearance to continue this uselessness indefinitely.

A Chinese sage named Sun Tzu said it best, some 2500 years ago, in The Art of War:

" When you engage in actual fighting, if victory is long in coming, then men's weapons will grow dull and their ardor will be damped. If you lay siege to a town, you will exhaust your strength.

3. Again, if the campaign is protracted, the resources of the State will not be equal to the strain.

4. Now, when your weapons are dulled, your ardor damped, your strength exhausted and your treasure spent, other chieftains will spring up to take advantage of your extremity. Then no man, however wise, will be able to avert the consequences that must ensue.

5. Thus, though we have heard of stupid haste in war, cleverness has never been seen associated with long delays.

6. There is no instance of a country having benefited from prolonged warfare. "

No mystery here. America is proving not to be Exceptional enough to survive elite mismanagement.

Catalan , says: August 9, 2017 at 1:02 am
No. The rest of the world is merely catching up. The wealth that the US enjoyed relative to the rest of the world in the decades following WWII was unprecedented, and is probably not a repeatable phenomenon. If we are declining, it is only because we fail to appreciate the multi-latereral nature of our world, and stick our nose where it doesn't belong.
hn , says: August 9, 2017 at 2:20 am
too long of an article to read.
Nelson , says: August 9, 2017 at 9:14 am
We're in decline not because of China but because of the decisions we make (or fail to make). We devote too many resources towards wars and asset appreciation (financial bubbles) and not enough into investing in ourselves (education and infrastructure). In the short run, the strong military made us look strong to the world snd ourselves but we never examined whether that was the most judicious use of our resources for the long run.

This is not anything new. Eisenhower spoke of this 50 some odd years ago.

EliteCommInc. , says: August 9, 2017 at 9:33 am
If we are in decline and there are signs that is the case. It is by our doing. Over expanded strategic goals and dismantling the very social structure(s) that maintains, sustains and protects longevity.

The abandonment of national identity by our leadership class. They claim in the national interests, but upon examining their policy agendas, immigration, bailout, lobbying rules, domestic agendas and management, there's plenty to be concerned about.

EliteCommInc. , says: August 9, 2017 at 9:41 am
" For Britain and the United States, economic expansion resulted in the inexorable expansion of their military power and diplomatic sway. We can expect OBOR to have a similar effect on China. It is a powerful incentive for China to expand its military projection capabilities."

The trick here is managing the relational dynamics so that whatever mechanisms one uses in maintaining that power don't backlash to the point of disruptive violence or using sufficient force that such backlash doesn't occur.

The British/European model model of colonial rule was unsustainable. It might be wise to examine Switzerland, Sweden, Denmark, maybe Germany but comparing these socialist smaller states would be a tricky comparison.

bkh , says: August 9, 2017 at 10:07 am
The idea that the US would maintain its world standing has been laughable for decades. A nation cannot excel when you have a population as narcissistic and willfully ignorant like we have now. The economic downfall is only a symptom of the ever deepening moral failures we find ourselves fighting over and even clinging to. I am no fan of socialism or communism, but what we have created here in America is an out of control monster set to destroy all in its path.
Kurt Gayle , says: August 9, 2017 at 10:22 am
A valuable analysis, Dr. Layne:

"The Obama administration's ballyhooed Asian pivot was based on the assumption that, although the ASEAN nations of Asia, along with Australia and South Korea, are being pulled into China's economic orbit, they will turn to the United States as a geopolitical counterweight. However, Beijing's ability to get ASEAN, South Korea, and other neighboring states to jump on the AIIB bandwagon suggests this assumption may be erroneous. The pull of Beijing's economic power may override security concerns and draw these states into China's geopolitical orbit."

It is in this context ! South Korea, Japan, and other south Asian nations being drawn inexorably into China's geopolitical orbit, thus overturning US post-WW2 hegemony in the region – that current, much-exaggerated US concerns about North Korean nuclear weapons can best be understood.

The US is using North Korea's nuclear development – undertaken by North Korea as a defensive measure against regime change by the US – as one of a series of pretexts aimed at preserving its ever-diminishing post-WW2 hegemony in Asia.

At some point the US will begin to withdraw the 30,000 US troops stationed in South Korea and the 30,000 US troops stationed in Japan – and will stop conducting military exercises and shows of force near the Chinese border – and will sit down with China, North Korea, South Korea, and Japan and begin the long process of negotiating the gradual, peaceful US acceptance of the new geopolitical reality in east Asia.

John Gruskos , says: August 9, 2017 at 10:28 am
The lesson I took from reading Paul Kennedy was, decline is a choice.

China, India and the Middle East could have competed with early modern Europe if centralized multi-ethnic empires (Manchu, Mughal and Ottoman Empires) hadn't stifled the energy of those civilizations.

The Spanish could have stayed on top if, beginning in 1559, Philip II, III, and IV hadn't stubbornly clung to ethnically dissimilar European territories such as the Netherlands, and if they hadn't wasted their nation's strength in the wars of the Counter Reformation.

Beginning with the 1670 Treaty of Dover, the French under Louis XIV and XV fell into the same trap, wasting their strength in the service of the Counter Reformation and territorial ambitions in the Netherlands.

The British could have stayed on top if they hadn't alienated the Americans, wasted their strength on tropical imperialism and balance of power wars, and then surrendered their industrial lead to Germany and America via the dogmatic embrace of free trade.

Germany might have replaced Britain as the new leading power if they had maintained the peace with a simply foreign policy based on a strong alliance with Russia, instead of the Byzantine complexity of Bismark's diplomacy followed by the belligerent buffoonery of Kaiser Wilhelm.

Prior to the Cold War, Americans did everything right. We grew from a tiny settlement in 1607 to a colossas possessing half (!) the world's GDP in 1947. We maintained the homogeneity, without stifling the energy, of our people. Most of our wars were fought to obtain sparsely populated temperate zone land for the colonization of our people – not for tropical imperialism, balance of power, or international ideological crusades. Pragmatism, not ideology, guided our economic policy. During the Cold War, we began sacrificing the interests of the American nation to the newfangled ideology of "Americanism". Tentatively under Truman, and definitively beginning with Kennedy, we undermined the homogeneity of our people with mass immigration from the whole world, undermined our traditional morality with liberal social engineering, became the policeman of the world intent on exporting "Americanism", and assumed an attitude of lofty contempt for our own trade interests.

The Chinese, on the other hand, chose ascent when they purged The Gang of Four and substituted Chinese ethno-nationalism for feverish Maoism as their guiding principle.

ScottA , says: August 9, 2017 at 10:30 am
It is obvious that we are now in the decline phase of the life cycle of empires. See the British general Sir John Bagot Glubb's book "The Course of Empire" and other writings.
Kurt Gayle , says: August 9, 2017 at 10:31 am
@ "hn" who said (2:20 a.m.): "too long of an article to read."

Luv it!

That comment belongs in a time capsule.

Michael Kenny , says: August 9, 2017 at 10:50 am
Blue chip stocks yield to blue chopsticks! Human civilisation is a forward-moving perpetual motion machine. It never stops and it never goes back. There is no "end of history". There is no point at which human civilisation just stops dead in its tracks and never moves again until the sun implodes in 10 million years and roasts us all. The world has always had its revisionists and reactionaries who want to take their countries back to some real or imagined golden age. If we're lucky, such people eventually disappear into Trotsky's famous "dustbin of history". If we're not lucky, they start a war, lose it and then disappear into said dustbin, destroying their country in the process and opening up the way for a new dominant power to emerge. Just as Britain dominated the world by 1850 and the US by 1950, China will dominate the world by 2050. I don't really see what disadvantage there is in that for Americans and for us in Europe, it looks very positive. Machiavelli said that as between two tyrants, always choose the most distant. China is Europe's distant tyrant. OBOR seems to be very much to Europe's advantage, displacing American hegemony and undermining US hegemonists' attempts to use Putin's Russia as an instrument to keep Europe under their control.
Dan Green , says: August 9, 2017 at 11:24 am
Being a confirmed Realist and having researched Realism what is going on today between ourselves, the Chinese Reds, and Russia is quite understandably. Few share our Democracy model, it is too messy.
Jon S , says: August 9, 2017 at 11:34 am
"the liberal rules-based international order."

Let's not be obtuse. This order was put in place by individuals in the USA because it was to their economic benefit to do so. That in no way means that this order benefits all Americans or even a majority. And to the tens of thousands of American soldiers who have died maintaining this order it was to their great detriment.

I personally have no allegiance to "the liberal rules-based international order". If the Chinese can do better, let them have at it.

The important question is not whether America is in decline. It is whether the American people's living standards are in decline.

Gaius Gracchus , says: August 9, 2017 at 11:44 am
Empire is not cost effective or beneficial to the general welfare of a country. It only serves to enrich a few, while creating domestic corruption and inequality.

The post-WW2 American empire, allegedly to contain Communism, really didn't benefit America. And the costs have been enormous.

It did benefit bankers, defense contractors, scoundrels, and the Wall Street Washington cabal centered on the CFR.

We wasted the post Cold War era believing there was an "End to History". Anyone with decent understanding would have considered that trying for a unipolar moment was a huge mistake and a world with various Great Powers was a more likely outcome.

Unipolar attempts don't work. Acknowledging the US as the greatest Great Power, among many, is a much better idea than trying to keep the US as the sole Superpower. That isn't decline but breaking through illusion.

Michael N Moore , says: August 9, 2017 at 12:43 pm
The Soviet Union sustained 20 Million causalities in the Second World War while it moved its factories east to keep them out of German hands. Contrast this with the US imperial elite who simply handed over our industrial base to China. The result is that China's economy is growing a rate three times that of the United States.
Adriana I Pena , says: August 9, 2017 at 12:49 pm
What goes up must come down
Spinnin' wheel got to go 'round
Talkin' 'bout your troubles it's a cryin' sin
Ride a painted pony let the spinnin' wheel spin
Interguru , says: August 9, 2017 at 1:35 pm
This thoughtful article is followed by thoughtful comments. One commenter already mentioned demographics. Due to immigration, America is the only advanced country not facing a population implosion.

Another ace-in-the-whole is geography. We are protected by two oceans with weak friendly neighbors on our land borders.We are blessed with rich resources. This includes rich agricultural land reachable by navigable rivers and mineral wealth.

We have rich political and social institutions that hopefully can survive Trump.

While we are doing our best to squander these they give us a cushion.

SteveM , says: August 9, 2017 at 2:39 pm
The U.S. is in an inevitable decline. The only question is the extent of the economic sabotage and outright wars that the Deep State will instigate to try to forestall the collapse.

Washington will not tolerate a second axis of power arising even if it is strictly economic. Consider how American Elites used subversion to catalyze the coup in Ukraine. They will stop at nothing to sustain U.S. hegemony in the larger global sphere.

Should China, Russia and Europe seek to integrate into a huge, contiguous Eurasian economic marketplace independent of United States hegemonic interference, the Deep State will use all of its military power to prevent it. (Especially ironic since death and destruction are becoming America's primary exports.)

The current rumblings of American power projection in the South China Sea and Russian borders are a set up for future conflicts. The United States regime deluded by arrogance and stupidity and saturated by the cult of military exceptionalism can't say no to military coercion and war as its primary foreign policy instrument.

With the Neocon/Neoliberal militarists now running the show, it's only going to get worse

Peter , says: August 9, 2017 at 3:56 pm
We are in decline because the decisions we made during and after the cold war.
– we tried to buy goodwill ("allies") by using the "most favored nation" clause – outsourcing manufacturing jobs, starting at the bottom of the sophistication scale (apparel, appliances ).
And all we have left is defense manufacturing jobs. We have no more jobs to give away to buy goodwill.
– while reducing taxes, we kept increasing defense related spending by borrowing money.
With all the senseless wars, we have a huge debt, not exactly something which gives you clout.
– we wasted brainpower on financial gimmicks which have zero contribution to economic strength.
Such gimmicks might mess up the economy – and we did this, too – for the whole world.
China took the market driven part of communist economy which was viciously stamped out by Stalin – the New Economic Policy (NEP) – and built an economic powerhouse, with money to spend.
Phillip , says: August 9, 2017 at 4:06 pm
The decline of the United States can be directly correlated to the decline in our spiritual fervor and the absence of the fear of God. Falling morals precipitate the fall of the nation. It's not a question of if at this point, but when. You can argue whatever other factors you wish, but there is a direct correlation between strength of a nation and God throughout human civilization.
Dan Green , says: August 9, 2017 at 4:37 pm
Lots to chew on as they say, but a couple key points from the article. A US President represents how the world view's we Americans. From all the so called turmoil, with both political parties sent packing, Trump may in fact represent real America. The fantasy the left markets, of a social democratic welfare state is a myth. Next, we have grown up on a diet of our President elect, being Commander in Chief, of the worlds most powerful military. So I ask, did Bill Clinton or Barack Obama seem to Americans, like a commander in chief. Bush wasn't capable of responding to 9-11, he tried and failed. Last Commander in Chief we had in our image was Ronald Reagan. Any wonder our enemies are making hay while the sunshines. So now we have two very very admirable foes. China and Russia neither with western values. How we now fit is up in the air. Getting Trump impeached or forced to resign replaced with whoever won't change millions of Americans.
EliteCommInc. , says: August 9, 2017 at 5:28 pm
I would take exception to some of these comments about inevitable decline. The word decline suggests to some end. That is very different than retraction or change.

When one examines China, Russia, Europe, these nations have been in play as states for 1500 years. And despite periods of retraction have maintained some semblance of their origins, more than some. Their cores remain intact as to culture and practice despite differing polities What is key for the US is her youth. We are unable to match the strategic long term strategies as the states mentions because we have not been around long enough to seal our core existence as a nation.

Mistaking youthful exuberance for wisdom of age is where we are. There is no mistaking that the US can remain a major player in world events and we should. But that process need not be at the expense of who we are are becoming or in lieu of it.

I will have to dig out my Zsun Tsu. It is easy to apply those admonitions out of their intended context. Because so many different environmental war scenarios are addressed. For example, Asia plays the long game. They are not thinking merely about this century, this decade, this year, month . . . but the next century. Hence the idea of long war. Consider how long they have been on the Continent of Africa.

They are in a sense just waiting everyone else out. Iraq, blood in the water. Afghanistan, blood in the water. They are not the least troubled that we are embroiled in the ME.

The size of our debt is troubling and the size of how much of that debt is owned by other states is disturbing. China, some ten years ago, indicated that they are seeking a way around the power of the dollar.

I am fully confident that we can survive the rise of any nation on earth. I believe we are special unique, and endowed with an energy, ingenuity, vibrancy and psyche today's world. But we are so inundated with a kind of can't do ! must accept attitude in social polity that undermines sense of self. and that is where I think the force of a Pres Trump is helpful, reinvigorating.

Conserving a sense of self, identity is mandatory for survival.

And while I have opposed out latest military interventions as unnecessary, if we decide to make war ! we had better do it to the full and be done with. This is more in line with what I think Tzun Tzu ! destabilize the opponents psychology.

Here the importation of Doaist, Hindu, and other existentialist philosophies are upending western thought. The humanities are tearing asunder our social and psychological meaning of self. Whether it is soulmates, no anchored truth or reality or the notion of that human sexuality is malleable and no right no wrong save as to individual minding and social circumstance . . . the system of concreteness is being chiseled to nothingness.

And it shows. Europe remains a cautionary tale.

EliteCommInc. , says: August 9, 2017 at 5:36 pm
"Such gimmicks might mess up the economy – and we did this, too – for the whole world."

Actually we did something else, we embraced the world's standards – Basel I and Basel II. Which are major contributors to our economic system. When Pres Nixon pressed to go off the gold standard . . . huge error.

Last week one of the toughest hurdles was to avoid getting into that ambulance I knew the minute I did, I would be entering a system bent on bending me to its will.

Before we go about making the world ! we need a clear and clean sense of self and resist change, regardless of the pressure by friend or foe.

EliteCommInc. , says: August 9, 2017 at 5:42 pm
" The United States filled this role for half a century, from 1945 until the Great Recession. The world's economic hegemon must provide public goods that benefit the international system as a whole, including: making the rules for the international economic order; opening its domestic market to other states' exports; supplying liquidity to the global economy; and providing a reserve currency."

Uhh you are playing fast and loose here with one overarching reality ! there really was no one else left who could do so. And that lasted a good while. As those regions recovered, we continued to provide without ever adjusting to the their own ability to provide. Prime example, our presence in Europe, I would be interested in the ROI of defending the Europeans even as they make war on others or encourage conflicts they themselves ave no intention of supporting, but are more than happy that the US do so.

SteveK9 , says: August 9, 2017 at 7:31 pm
Paradoxically the acceleration in the decline began with the disintegration of the Soviet Union. Incredible hubris followed, and we are reaping the usual results.
philadelphialawyer , says: August 9, 2017 at 8:53 pm
I think just the opposite. OBOR, AIIB and the Shanghai Group show China playing precisely by the rules of the international, rules-based liberal order set up by the Western powers generally over the last few centuries and particularly by the USA after WWII. China actually follows the international rules. It hasn't invaded anyone since 1979. How many wars not authorized by the UNSC, and generally either dubious or flat out in violation of international law, has the US engaged in since that date? China does not interfere in the internal affairs of other nations. As the article states, China follows the rules of Westphalian sovereignty. But it also follows the rules of international law. China does not abuse its veto power in the UNSC, the way the Western powers, particularly the USA, does. China is not looking to impose its way of life on other countries. And its international initiatives, including the international organizations it has created and sponsored, are all about trade, tourism, and co operation and development, as opposed to the USA's, which are all about domination, ever expanding "defensive" military alliances, military bases everywhere, demeaning and degrading, not to mention hypocritical, "human rights report cards," endless "sanctions" and "embargoes" on everyone who does not do its bidding, covering up for the sins of its aggressive, horrible client states, particularly Israel and the KSA, handing out cookies to coupsters in the process of overthrowing legitimate, and even democratically elected, governments, and generally sticking its nose into the elections of other countries, and now, with Trump, threatening to upset the apple cart when it comes to international trade and tourism and cultural exchange.

The USA is the rogue state, in regard to the very international order that it played a huge role in establishing. The USA can't even seem to go through an Olympic Games without making a fuss about something or another.

"Rules and institutions do not exist in a vacuum. Rather, they reflect the distribution of power in the international system. In global politics, the rules are made by those who rule international politics 'cannot be understood independently of the political foundation on which it rests and the political interests which it serves.' The post-World War II international order is an American order that, while preserving world stability for a long time, primarily privileged U.S. and Western interests. Proponents of 'lock-in' are saying that China will!indeed, must!agree to be a 'responsible stakeholder' (with Washington defining the meaning of 'responsibility') in an international order that it did not construct and that exists primarily to advance the interests of the United States. In plain English, what those who believe in 'lock-in' expect is that an increasingly powerful China will continue to accept playing second fiddle to the United States. But Beijing, by all the evidence, does not see it that way. And OBOR and the AIIB prove the point. Instead of living within the geopolitical, economic, and institutional confines imposed by Pax Americana, an increasingly powerful China will seek to revise the international order so that it reflects its own political and economic interests. Thus are OBOR and the AIIB straws in the wind. And, as the great Bob Dylan said, you don't need to be a weatherman to know which way the wind is blowing."

Of course the distribution of power matters. But China is using its power within the liberal, rules-based framework established by the West. It actually already behaves in a "responsible" manner. It didn't invade Hong Kong or Macao, rather it made deals with the declining colonial powers which controlled them. It doesn't invade Taiwan. Rather it uses diplomacy to slowly advance its cause with respect to "One China." It uses its economic clout to develop trading partners, not to try to bully them into political submission, a la the USA. It is patient with regard to North Korea. It is patient with regard to US sabre rattling and blustering right at its borders. It is patient and rule-abiding in just about everything. Its organization are bypassing the USA. Not confronting it. If China eventually eclipses the USA, it will be because China has beaten it at its own game.

Sam Bufalini , says: August 9, 2017 at 9:26 pm
Last Commander in Chief we had in our image was Ronald Reagan. Yeah, that invasion of Grenada was huge!
Dale McNamee , says: August 9, 2017 at 10:51 pm
Our moral decline leads to the other decline mentioned in the article. There's a statement that says :"America is great because she is good But, she will cease to be great because she ceased to be good" We've been in decline since the '60's and are coming to our "bottom" ( and end ) ever more quickly
Interguru , says: August 9, 2017 at 11:13 pm
"The decline of the United States can be directly correlated to the decline in our spiritual fervor and the absence of the fear of God. " @Phillip

Does China have a fear of God?

Misstique , says: August 9, 2017 at 11:37 pm
Sort of a silly question isn't it?
Student , says: August 10, 2017 at 9:40 am
One thing not mentioned in the article is how we lost our technological lead. This in large part due to our H1B program, which is a conveyor belt to transfer tech and organizational knowhow abroad. Most R&D operations seem to be staffed largely by guest workers from China and India. Yes, there is a saving on salaries, leading to profits. But in addition to the knowledge transfer, there is the discouragement to US natives from entering tech fields.

[Aug 11, 2017] Making Sense of the Google Memo

Notable quotes:
"... Neuroscientist Debra W. Soh, writing at Quillette, observes that ..."
"... It is well-established by Pinker and other scientists that women have higher IQs on average, while men preponderate the extremes of brilliance and dullness. ..."
Aug 11, 2017 | www.unz.com

...Damore has joined an increasing number of people from the worlds of business and academia to be sacrificed at the altar of diversity. In an unsurprising public relations move, Google has succeeded in saving some face by appeasing the partisans of political correctness and of so-called equality. Meanwhile, those who don't subscribe to the progressive delusion may feel more anxious at the prospect of failing to play the coward's game correctly. Can one sneeze these days without offending the HR department?

Google CEO Sundar Pichai, in a memo laden with incoherence and hypocrisy, says that

we strongly support the right of Googlers to express themselves, and much of what was in that memo is fair to debate, regardless of whether a vast majority of Googlers disagree with it. However, portions of the memo violate our Code of Conduct and cross the line by advancing harmful gender stereotypes in our workplace. Our job is to build great products for users that make a difference in their lives. To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK. It is contrary to our basic values and our Code of Conduct, which expects "each Googler to do their utmost to create a workplace culture that is free of harassment, intimidation, bias and unlawful discrimination."

The memo has clearly impacted our co-workers, some of whom are hurting and feel judged based on their gender. Our co-workers shouldn't have to worry that each time they open their mouths to speak in a meeting, they have to prove that they are not like the memo states, being "agreeable" rather than "assertive," showing a "lower stress tolerance," or being "neurotic."

At the same time, there are co-workers who are questioning whether they can safely express their views in the workplace (especially those with a minority viewpoint). They too feel under threat, and that is also not OK. People must feel free to express dissent. So to be clear again, many points raised in the memo!such as the portions criticizing Google's trainings, questioning the role of ideology in the workplace, and debating whether programs for women and underserved groups are sufficiently open to all!are important topics. The author had a right to express their views on those topics!we encourage an environment in which people can do this and it remains our policy to not take action against anyone for prompting these discussions.

What were those "harmful gender stereotypes," so "offensive" to the good team members at Google? Let's take a look at the first paragraph of the memo that has so many people worried about the white patriarchal obstacle that, now as ever, stands cruelly in the progressive path.

I value diversity and inclusion, am not denying that sexism exists, and don't endorse using stereotypes. When addressing the gap in representation in the population, we need to look at population level differences in distributions. If we can't have an honest discussion about this, then we can never truly solve the problem. Psychological safety is built on mutual respect and acceptance, but unfortunately our culture of shaming and misrepresentation is disrespectful and unaccepting of anyone outside its echo chamber. Despite what the public response seems to have been, I've gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired. This needs to change.

Surely no unbiased reader can fail to find Damore's words eminently reasonable. Though recently fired, the man is no enemy of diversity and inclusion, nor does he say sexism is not a real problem. There is nothing here (or elsewhere in the memo) to suggest he is not fair-minded. Indeed, if you read his memo, you will surely see!so long, again, as you are not biased!that as people go, Damore is exceptionally fair in his perceptions and reasoning, though it is well to remember Emerson's maxim: "To be great is to be misunderstood." Damore is concerned to give some nuance to understanding the issues since, after all, it is not prima facie evident that men and women are utterly the same; with the result that, where a corporation's representation of gender does not wholly reflect the national population, sexism is present by definition. The crucial phrase is "differences in distribution." Though feminists, progressives and Leftists generally are keen to deny it, men and women are not mere blank slates on which the "unequal" environment imprints its ink; we should not assume as a matter of course that something is awry if the workplace reflects! as it inevitably must !those gender differences which we all seem to notice the moment we leave it.

Neuroscientist Debra W. Soh, writing at Quillette, observes that

within the field of neuroscience, sex differences between women and men!when it comes to brain structure and function and associated differences in personality and occupational preferences!are understood to be true, because the evidence for them (thousands of studies) is strong. This is not information that's considered controversial or up for debate; if you tried to argue otherwise, or for purely social influences, you'd be laughed at.

Sex researchers recognize that these differences are not inherently supportive of sexism or stratifying opportunities based on sex. It is only because a group of individuals have chosen to interpret them that way, and to subsequently deny the science around them, that we have to have this conversation at a public level. Some of these ideas have been published in neuroscientific journals!despite having faulty study methodology!because they've been deemed socially pleasing and "progressive." As a result, there's so much misinformation out there now that people genuinely don't know what to believe.

Also at Quillette , eminent evolutionary psychologist Geoffrey Miller remarks that "almost all of the Google memo's empirical claims are scientifically accurate. Moreover, they are stated quite carefully and dispassionately. Its key claims about sex differences are especially well-supported by large volumes of research across species, cultures, and history."

Steven Pinker himself!he of the very solid liberal credentials!has published much rigorous work on natural gender differences, in both intelligence and personality traits. Here he is on YouTube, giving a talk which might be used to support James Damore's case:

Note, what is so revealing, that Pinker takes care to appease the dogmatic academic crowd via the usual trite and simplistic reduction of human history to patriarchal oppression, lest, like Ibsen's Dr. Stockmann, he be thought an enemy of the people. It can't be that man simply found himself in a harsh world in which his superior brute strength was an immense advantage. It can't be that a severe division of labor was for most of history inevitable for the sexes. Like the Jews, man has always been behind the scenes, conspiring to oppress everyone. Well, at least Pinker was prudent. After all, those aggressive, broad-shouldered feminists have been known to body slam many an hysterically logical speaker.

Like Geoffrey Miller's, Pinker's work helps us to see better what ordinary people already know well enough from everyday life (and which, thankfully for them, they feel no need to deny, outside of the increasingly touchy workplace, anyway): that men and women are indeed different; nor is it obvious, in a sane world, why that should be such a scandal. For these differences, qua differences, are value neutral. My working-class mother, who never finished high school, is not obviously inferior as a person to Heather MacDonald, despite my own admiration for that excellent and courageous scholar-journalist.

It is well-established by Pinker and other scientists that women have higher IQs on average, while men preponderate the extremes of brilliance and dullness. Many if not most Google employees surely do have exceptionally high IQs. That men should so excel at the Google corporation!as they do at so many other things at the highest level!reflects Nature itself and is co