the matrix, brave new world, 1984, and so on clearly explored here in this twenty minute video that you are signing up for;
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5tn4P7IBqoQ&feature=youtu.be
Monday, July 30, 2018
i have rarely found anything by father or son i didn't find to be well thought out;
If you had five minutes to speak before the secretary of Defense, what would you say?
At this point, I’m sure, if Gen. James Mattis is reading this, he is probably muttering to himself: “Here we go again.”
You see, every time I run into the secretary of Defense, I try my best to make the point that we’ve been at war too long in too many places.Gen. Mattis, as well as the head of NATO, the head of the UN, and virtually every voice of reason in the foreign policy world, acknowledges that there is no military solution to the unending Afghan War.
For that matter, most agree that there is no military solution to the Syrian civil war or the Yemeni civil war. And yet . . . the same voices that admit there is no military solution keep sending more troops.
The Vietnam War strategy of taking one more village to get a better diplomatic deal still rules among many decision-makers.
I, for one, will keep pushing for a declaration of victory and a grand celebration as our troops come home.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/399187-secretary-mattis-heres-a-roadmap-to-peace-in-the-middle
At this point, I’m sure, if Gen. James Mattis is reading this, he is probably muttering to himself: “Here we go again.”
You see, every time I run into the secretary of Defense, I try my best to make the point that we’ve been at war too long in too many places.Gen. Mattis, as well as the head of NATO, the head of the UN, and virtually every voice of reason in the foreign policy world, acknowledges that there is no military solution to the unending Afghan War.
For that matter, most agree that there is no military solution to the Syrian civil war or the Yemeni civil war. And yet . . . the same voices that admit there is no military solution keep sending more troops.
The Vietnam War strategy of taking one more village to get a better diplomatic deal still rules among many decision-makers.
I, for one, will keep pushing for a declaration of victory and a grand celebration as our troops come home.
http://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/399187-secretary-mattis-heres-a-roadmap-to-peace-in-the-middle
haven't read it all yet but the beginning certainly is a clear picture of the scene around the hildabeest;
https://pjmedia.com/trending/5-reasons-hillary-clinton-was-the-worst-presidential-nominee-in-history/
Like every presidential
election that liberals lose, years later we’re still hearing about how
unfair it all was. Of course, the favorite complaint of liberals this
time around is “Russia did it!” Even if you accept for the sake of
argument that Russia wanted Trump to win and hacked John Podesta’s email
(and neither of those assertions may be true), buying some
inconsequential Facebook ads for both sides and revealing the contents
of John Podesta’s emails (none of which turned into truly major stories)
wasn’t exactly a game changer.
Liberals also noted that
Hillary would have won had the election been decided by the popular
vote. This is like noting that if football games were decided by passing
yards instead of the score, the Patriots would have beaten the Eagles
in the Super Bowl. It doesn’t work that way, by design. We’ve also heard
complaints that Bernie Sanders is responsible, presumably for daring to
run against Hillary at all and we can’t forget “sexism.” That’s always a
liberal rallying cry.
Moreover, it is impossible to
overemphasize that, other than a few true believers, almost all of the
political professionals (myself included) thought Hillary would win. In
fact, if you believe Michael Wolff’s book, Fire and Fury, even the Trump campaign thought it was going to lose – and no wonder.
https://pjmedia.com/trending/5-reasons-hillary-clinton-was-the-worst-presidential-nominee-in-history/
i've pasted the lead in to the main piece here below and it speaks for itself clearly;
It’s been almost eight years since Chalmers Johnson died. He was the author of, among other works, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and Dismantling the Empire. He was also a TomDispatch stalwart and a friend . As I watch the strange destructive dance of Donald Trump and his cohorts, I still regularly find myself wondering: What would Chal think? His acerbic wit and, as a former consultant to the CIA, his deep sense of how the national security state worked provided me with a late education. With no access to my Ouija board, however, the best I can do when it comes to answering such questions is repost his classic final piece for this site on the necessity of dismantling the American empire before it dismantles us. He wrote it in July 2009, convinced that we had long passed from a republic to an empire and were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a “military Keynesianism” run amok. He saw the Pentagon and our empire of bases abroad as a kind of Ponzi scheme that would, someday, help bankrupt this country.
How fascinated he would have been by the first candidate to ride an escalator into a presidential contest on a singular message of American decline. (“Make American great again!”) And how much more so by the world that candidate is creating as president, intent as he seems to be, in his own bizarre fashion, on dismantling the system of global control the U.S. has built since 1945. At the same time, he seems prepared to finance the U.S. military at levels, which, even for Johnson, would have been eye-popping, while attempting to sell American arms around an embattled planet in a way that could prove unique. What a strange combination of urges Donald Trump represents, as he teeters constantly at the edge of war (“fire and fury like the world has never seen”), more war (“never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before”), and peace in our time. Amid all the strangeness, don't forget the strangeness of a mainstream media that has gone bonkers covering this president as no one has ever been covered in the history of the universe (something that would undoubtedly have amazed Chal).
Think of what President Trump has launched as the potential imperial misadventure of a lifetime, while checking out Chal's thoughts from so long ago on a subject that should still be on all our minds. Tom
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176453/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson%2C_dismantling_the_empire/
It’s been almost eight years since Chalmers Johnson died. He was the author of, among other works, Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire and Dismantling the Empire. He was also a TomDispatch stalwart and a friend . As I watch the strange destructive dance of Donald Trump and his cohorts, I still regularly find myself wondering: What would Chal think? His acerbic wit and, as a former consultant to the CIA, his deep sense of how the national security state worked provided me with a late education. With no access to my Ouija board, however, the best I can do when it comes to answering such questions is repost his classic final piece for this site on the necessity of dismantling the American empire before it dismantles us. He wrote it in July 2009, convinced that we had long passed from a republic to an empire and were on the downward slide, helped along by what he called a “military Keynesianism” run amok. He saw the Pentagon and our empire of bases abroad as a kind of Ponzi scheme that would, someday, help bankrupt this country.
How fascinated he would have been by the first candidate to ride an escalator into a presidential contest on a singular message of American decline. (“Make American great again!”) And how much more so by the world that candidate is creating as president, intent as he seems to be, in his own bizarre fashion, on dismantling the system of global control the U.S. has built since 1945. At the same time, he seems prepared to finance the U.S. military at levels, which, even for Johnson, would have been eye-popping, while attempting to sell American arms around an embattled planet in a way that could prove unique. What a strange combination of urges Donald Trump represents, as he teeters constantly at the edge of war (“fire and fury like the world has never seen”), more war (“never, ever threaten the United States again or you will suffer consequences the likes of which few throughout history have ever suffered before”), and peace in our time. Amid all the strangeness, don't forget the strangeness of a mainstream media that has gone bonkers covering this president as no one has ever been covered in the history of the universe (something that would undoubtedly have amazed Chal).
Think of what President Trump has launched as the potential imperial misadventure of a lifetime, while checking out Chal's thoughts from so long ago on a subject that should still be on all our minds. Tom
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176453/best_of_tomdispatch%3A_chalmers_johnson%2C_dismantling_the_empire/
this piece explores the alleged differences in 'our' leaders of 'our democracy';
Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the “rise of strongman politics”.
Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports assumed that Obama was taking a swipe at these two leaders for supposed growing authoritarianism.
Obama’s casting of the “strongman” as a foreboding enemy to democracy is a variant of the supposed threat of “populism” that Western political establishments also seem concerned about.
Trump, Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, Italy’s Salvini, Victor Orban in Hungary and Sebastian Kurz in Austria, among many others, are all lumped together as “strongman politics”, “populists” or “authoritarians”.
Here we are not trying to defend the above-mentioned political leaders or to make out that they are all virtuous democrats.
The point rather is to debunk the false narrative that there is some kind of dichotomy in modern politics between those who, on one hand, are supposedly virtuous, liberal, democratic, multilateralists, and on the other hand, the supposedly sinister “strongman”, “authoritarian”, or “populist”.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-29/western-collapse-scapegoating-trump-putin
Former US President Barack Obama was in South Africa last week for the centennial anniversary marking the birth of the late Nelson Mandela. Obama delivered a speech warning about encroaching authoritarianism among nations and the “rise of strongman politics”.
Coming on the heels of the summit in Helsinki between Donald Trump and Russian President Vladimir Putin, media reports assumed that Obama was taking a swipe at these two leaders for supposed growing authoritarianism.
Obama’s casting of the “strongman” as a foreboding enemy to democracy is a variant of the supposed threat of “populism” that Western political establishments also seem concerned about.
Trump, Putin, Turkey’s Erdogan, Italy’s Salvini, Victor Orban in Hungary and Sebastian Kurz in Austria, among many others, are all lumped together as “strongman politics”, “populists” or “authoritarians”.
Here we are not trying to defend the above-mentioned political leaders or to make out that they are all virtuous democrats.
The point rather is to debunk the false narrative that there is some kind of dichotomy in modern politics between those who, on one hand, are supposedly virtuous, liberal, democratic, multilateralists, and on the other hand, the supposedly sinister “strongman”, “authoritarian”, or “populist”.
https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2018-07-29/western-collapse-scapegoating-trump-putin
special posting for those who believe mcstain is honorable;
Via History.com
A fire on a United States Navy carrier stationed off the coast of Vietnam kills 134 service members on this day in 1967. The deadly fire on the USS Forrestal began with the accidental launch of a rocket.
During the Vietnam War, the USS Forrestal was often stationed off the coast of North Vietnam, conducting combat operations. On the morning of July 29, the ship was preparing to attack when a rocket from one of its own F-4 Phantom jet fighters was accidentally launched. The rocket streaked across the deck and hit a parked A-4 Skyhawk jet. The Skyhawk, which was waiting to take off, was piloted by John McCain, the future senator from Arizona.
Fuel from the Skyhawk spilled out and caught fire. The fire then spread to nearby planes on the ship’s deck and detonated a 1,000-pound bomb, which killed many of the initial firefighters and further spread the fire. A chain reaction of explosions blew holes in the flight deck and had half the large ship on fire at one point. Many pilots were trapped in their planes as the fire spread. It took a full day before the fires could be fully contained.
Hundreds of sailors were seriously injured and 134 lost their lives in the devastating fire. Twenty planes were destroyed. It was the worst loss of a life on a U.S. Navy ship since World War II. Temporary repairs were made to the ship in the Philippines before the Forrestal headed back to Norfolk, Virginia. It was repaired and put back into service the following April, but never returned to Vietnam.
John McCain narrowly escaped the fire and, afterwards, volunteered
for duty on the USS Oriskany. Just three months later, his plane was
shot down over North Vietnam and he was taken prisoner. He was not
released until five-and-a-half years later, in 1973.
aircraft carrier – 1967
A fire on a United States Navy carrier stationed off the coast of Vietnam kills 134 service members on this day in 1967. The deadly fire on the USS Forrestal began with the accidental launch of a rocket.
During the Vietnam War, the USS Forrestal was often stationed off the coast of North Vietnam, conducting combat operations. On the morning of July 29, the ship was preparing to attack when a rocket from one of its own F-4 Phantom jet fighters was accidentally launched. The rocket streaked across the deck and hit a parked A-4 Skyhawk jet. The Skyhawk, which was waiting to take off, was piloted by John McCain, the future senator from Arizona.
Fuel from the Skyhawk spilled out and caught fire. The fire then spread to nearby planes on the ship’s deck and detonated a 1,000-pound bomb, which killed many of the initial firefighters and further spread the fire. A chain reaction of explosions blew holes in the flight deck and had half the large ship on fire at one point. Many pilots were trapped in their planes as the fire spread. It took a full day before the fires could be fully contained.
Hundreds of sailors were seriously injured and 134 lost their lives in the devastating fire. Twenty planes were destroyed. It was the worst loss of a life on a U.S. Navy ship since World War II. Temporary repairs were made to the ship in the Philippines before the Forrestal headed back to Norfolk, Virginia. It was repaired and put back into service the following April, but never returned to Vietnam.
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