Conflict is Inevitable
Eddison Flame
Photo by Jonathan Harrison on Unsplash
If you’re anything like me, you’ve been absolutely apoplectic this past week watching the United States orchestrate a coup in Venezuela. It has been truly horrifying to watch these things play out in real time. How bold and brazen these thugs have become! They are doing this right out in the open, they hardly even try to hide it.
Sure, they try to whitewash it with their typical propaganda. They obfuscate key facts. They paint Maduro as a criminal. They pass around cheap slogans. Where once we heard, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists”, now it’s, “either you stand with the forces of freedom, or you’re in league with Maduro and his mayhem”. It’s disgusting.
It’s disgusting and horrifying and saddening, but if there is one thing we gain by watching this tragedy unfold, it is a certain clarity about the state of affairs in the world. It makes it clear that conflict is inevitable. I’m not talking about conflict in Venezuela, although conflict is likely to unfold there too, I’m talking about a much larger conflict. I’m talking about a global conflict that must eventually occur between two ideologically incompatible groups.
There is one group of people which considers war both necessary and routine. Some members of this group make their money building and selling bombs and guns and tanks and missiles. These people need wars, otherwise they don’t make any money. Other members of this group make their money by taking and selling the natural resources of other weaker nations. These members need wars to ensure they get easy access to the resources they want. Other members of this group make their money enslaving the poorest people in these subservient conquered nations, putting them to work in factories with inhumane working conditions for inhumane wages. Other members of this group are facilitators, working in government or media. They plan, organize, fight, and sell these wars to a largely unwitting public. All these groups of people have formed a close knit coalition, working together to control and exploit the people of the world for their own collective material gain.
But there is second group of people which is the polar opposite of this first group. These people hate war and love peace. They hate the idea of exploiting the poor. They hate the idea of destroying lives for profit. These people cannot and will never accept such exploitative behavior. Period.
Herein lies the conflict. One group wages wars for profit, the other cannot bear to see people slaughtered. One group exploits the poor, the other cares for the poor. One group destroys the environment and pollutes the earth, the other cares about sustainability and the health of the planet. One group rules by might, the other by principles of individual sovereignty, equality and justice.
This is the inevitable conflict which must eventually occur. These two groups will eventually clash, because there is no way for the one to reconcile with the other. As long as one group is making war, killing people for profit, the other group must struggle against them.
Of course this struggle is already taking place, probably it began a long time ago. Certainly battles between these groups raged in the 1960’s during the anti-war and civil rights movements, but for a time the people of peace were largely beaten back. For a few decades the rulers of this world went largely unchallenged, but tensions are rising again as the battle resumes.
For now the battle is being waged mostly as an information war. The peace loving people are fighting to expose the truths of what is occurring around the world, and the war mongers are fighting to keep those truths hidden. For some decades the rulers mostly maintained information superiority, they managed to keep the truth of their affairs hidden, but lately they are making mistakes.
Hence the silver lining to this Venezuela coup. It is truly disgusting to behold, but it is being done very carelessly and very much out in the open. Hopefully it will fail, hopefully Guaido will realize he’s a stooge and have a change of heart, hopefully the people of Venezuela will come together and not be overcome by the U.S. imperial efforts to destabilize their nation, but if this coup attempt does lead to chaos in Venezuela, it might nonetheless work against the war-mongers in the end. The whole world is watching these events unfold, people in all the nations of the world can see ever more clearly what is being done by these criminals, and they will not remain silent forever.
The people saw what happened in Iraq, they saw what happened in Libya, they saw what happened in Syria, and now they’re seeing the U.S. imperialists go to work on Venezuela. Each time, with each new intervention, the truth about what is actually going on becomes clearer, and this inevitable conflict gets nearer.
That this conflict is inevitable is obvious. That tensions are rising, especially as the imperialists have in recent years gone into a kind of militaristic overdrive, is also quite clear. What I believe is not so clear to many people, especially the peace loving people of the world, is that this conflict will eventually be incredibly violent. So this is the final point I want to make in this piece, that eventually this conflict is going to become violent, even for us peace loving folk.
That this conflict will eventually become violent derives from the very nature of the war-mongers who currently control the world. These people end human lives for profit. If some group of people joins together to stop them, what do you think their response will be? Will they simply step down? Will they acknowledge their crimes and submit to their fate? Will they relinquish their positions of power without a fight?
Why do you think the police all over the Western world have been militarized? Is it really, as they say, simply a kind of accident, the result of having a surplus of military equipment, or have they been preparing for an eventual popular uprising all along? These people are in the business of controlling populations. Do you think they have not considered the possibility that people might one day stand up against them? But of course they have considered this. They know as well as anyone that this conflict is inevitable, and so they have taken measures, well in advance, to protect them when it happens.
So this is the point, whoever is on side of peace needs to be prepared. Conflict is rising, and soon it will come to a head. When it finally does come to a head, there will be a great struggle, and great violence will be perpetrated against all those who stand up for peace. All of us should expect this, and we should prepare for it. If we truly want to succeed in this, if we want to end their tyranny once and for all, we need to be prepared to meet it and overcome it.
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Violent conflict on a wide or mass scale between “peaceful people” and the american state or even our own is not inevitable. There are other ways of bringing them crashing down. Think about non-payment and about non-violent resistanc, about non participation.
Venezuelans are tired of eating dogs while the fat bus driver dines on steak.
Becoming the reality in Murrka as well.Maybe we need regime change ,huh?
Is the ‘regime’ the fungi that appears above ground or the underlying interconnected ‘deep state’ of unconsciousness.
In which case is what we think of as regime change the propagating means of the fungi?
I like the idea of fungi here when we understand that on of its functions or gifts to the whole is the clearing up of the dead. In other words the terrain is the major factor, not that ‘pathogen’.
Its also true that we could not be able to live in the body at least, without fungi and microbiota.
The ‘we’ that has made an enemy of life itself is an insanity given power of identification.
As if gaining control or dominion OVER life could be anything other than some kind of death walking.
The strands of ‘geo-politc’ or global power struggle are firstly the undermining and subversion of our thought. This operates via a broad spectrum of influence such that we are effectively captured or contained and managed not least by the way our thought and societies are structured and surveilled. Insider information is the basis for being one or more steps in front of those who chase what they think they see or or predictably expected to see.
The United States of America is being used and destroyed by its own paranoid delusions – of the thinking it has accepted, run with and made its own. Fear does not really unite – but temporarily pushes other communications out while locked into fight or flight response against an ‘enemy’ on which fears are projected to be ‘overcome’ and threat neutralised.
Sunday night.
It has been one heck of a week since the Jan. 23 announcement by Trump, then Trudeau and the rest of the western world that they were supporting Regime change in Venezuela. It was a shock that jolted me to attention. I spent night and day reading tons of stuff and tried to educate myself. Spoke to family and got the “Oh dad you are making yourself sick again.” Even got to making a few comments here and there on great sites such as this. I especially liked this article of kits (Conflict Is Inevitable) that boiled it down from the complexity swirling in my brain. Like a roller coaster ride I was up-down and all around. One day I thought I could grasp it only to find it was a house of mirrors or a rabbit hole as some have suggested.
I am nobody really, an old hippie with the naive notion that his voice could make a difference. That illusion is gone after what I have learned. I know that sounds rather defeatist but I like to think of it as realistic and healthy. The world has changed. I want to believe that ultimately a new global order will emerge that values life and is based on the oneness of all peoples. Did I mention being naive? Maybe, but there are forces at play that we cannot account for at this point when you take into consideration the whole. (thanks binra)
So, as Leonard Cohen so beautifully puts it in his final album:
“I don’t need a reason
For what I became
I’ve got these excuses
They’re tired and lame
I don’t need a pardon
There’s no one left to blame
I’m leaving the table
I’m out of the game”
Every time we see through the illusion. We light a candle to the darkness. Every candle once lit. Sends its light into the shadows and exposes the illusion for more to see.
To be without apology or justification is to have not en-tranced the game of seeking to atone for or vindicate a sense of worth-lack or illegitimacy.
But this is no victory or achievement over the game or gamers so much as leaving the bait untaken. What we do not use becomes obsolete by neglect.
Conflict can be perceived outside us in discretely polarised forces. While this is our normalised or default worldview, I suggest it is so because it serves a hidden purpose. It puts our own ‘shadow conflicts’ outside and away from self. Shadow in the sense of a darkness within and beneath the ‘light’ of officially accepted narrative ‘reality’. Shadow in the sense of masked, hidden, unconscious or plausibly deniable – even to our ‘self’. Shadow in the sense that – seen in others and attacked or denied there – induces a personal sense of escape or mitigation of tension, conflict and stress by discharge or displacement to some other person and place. This literally is a form of scapegoat magic that underlies the idea of sacrificing others (or token and limited sacrifice of self) as the means to ‘top up’ or maintain a conflicted self dissociation.
The basis of conflict is a sense of lack, and fear – bolstered by an interpretation of deprivation and rejection or betrayal. Hurt feelings persisted in become a mapping out of self and world in terms of grievance and vengeance or self-vindication in relation to others and world, as the overcoming or atoning for guilt associated with self-dissonance.
The entanglement of the human conditioning is so complex – and so fast as to be unfightable and unescapable within its domain, but the persistence in so struggling is the action that never brings a different result no matter how oft repeated because its ‘nature’ is fixated in self-image.
The narcissist offers a reflection to a pervasive and therefor invisible and tacit ‘social agreement’. But – as described above’ the example is made ‘example of’ as a hate object – rather than a call to look within and notice the conditioning in ‘act’ – or reaction.
Addictive patterns compel insane behaviours that cut across Family, and relational honesty, as a seemingly private survival at expense of integrity. While members of our Human Family are acting from insane presumptions of broken relations – they teach or demonstrate them, in thought, word and deed.
Like toxic debt wrapped up in complex financial instruments by bankers whose appeal was that they are ‘too big to fail’, the presentation of self-conflict is masked in doublethink or reversals that are crafted to filter, distort and deny a true witness or account.
Negotiating who pays – whether by coercion or deceit, is the nature of power struggle.
But that is the ‘game’ of musical thrones, in which someone else has to lose for the winner to maintain power as a private agenda.
The nature of conflict then is the denial and overriding of relational being – or relationship and communication – as a sense of segregative self-interest at odds with others and the whole – but masking as if the voice for the power that belongs to the whole – and the right to put others in their ‘place’.
This is a dissociative state or mind and teaches dissociation as ‘survival and ascendence of the powerful, or the cunning and deceitful who manipulate those entrusted with power. The call to war as the effecting of rejection and denial of the feared or hated ‘evil’ other.
If truth is the first casualty of war, then deceit is its first act.
And truth is the undoing of the capacity for insanity to be invoked and engaged.
Firstly of the illumination of the mask in terms of what it seeks to hide, rather than reacting in face value to what it presents. Desperate measures put everything on fronting the assertion – there is no ‘looking within’ – only strategising. Nor will attacking the assertion do more than reinforce the mask of self justification.
‘Speaking truth to power’ is the phrase for a willingness to bring the conflicts of identity in power TO communication which is power – but which the mind can choose to deny under the belief in reversal. For taking something partial as the whole truth, and defending it, is defending against truth in belief it fights an enemy to its truth.
Division has to be re-envisioned. A house divided cannot stand – but is open to thieves and robbers. Vigilance for peace – no matter what, operates the alternative to fixation in what is wrong or evil in the other – as if it can be eradicated there. Yet it never leaves the mind of the thinker, where and only where it can be undone.
We have to live with ourself – and one of the ways we have tried is an extreme form of self-evasion or dissociation. This is always finding yet another way to persist, rededicate and intensify built-in conflicts to a state of increasing unconsciousness. But once we know, we cannot un-know, and what has revealed us to ourself cannot be altogether denied and the world put back together again.
There is a reintegrative ‘voice’ or teacher, to the willingness to hear it. the willingness to hear the call to war is deeply learned as a second nature usurping our first. The call to joy, is the choice to seek and extend a true appreciation in the moment at hand – and live that.
Ariadne’s thread was always here to follow, but we didn’t WANT it.
Knowing and aligning in acceptance of what we truly WANT is powerful, because we are no longer fighting or coercing and deceiving ourselves. In this step in this situation.
The forms and habits of conflict will persist even should we wake to Sanity – and perhaps tempt us to throw Sanity away in the belief the past is now. I wont invest in powerlessness for others and myself, and so I stay open for more to be revealed to the willingness to receive it. I do invest in willingness – and my appreciation of willingness in others is an extension of worth that I share in and am glad of.
Truth is inevitable.
This is only a matter of time.
But time can waste as well as be wasted, and delay can stretch out through the generations as unhealed trauma of hate and fear – repeating through the blind love and trust of the young to take on such burdens as their intent to live a love and share it.
Reconciliation arises from willingness to face and see our shadow – not ‘surviving’ its excommunication. And is a deep acceptance within ourselves from which a movement of release rises of itself. ‘Tuning in’ is consciously accepted purpose. We are moved or motivated by the purpose we are in effect holding dear – as our self.
Trumpetty joins Nutty as Wile E. Coyote strategist:
Putin authorizes development of advanced missiles in response to US suspension of INF
https://www.presstv.com/Detail/2019/02/02/587452/Russia-US-INF-missile-arms-race
(Of course this means more profit for the Military Industrialists; but I like to think of the POTU$ as a someone working for the interests of the U$A as a whole).
Hasn’t the USA been sold (bought) for asset stripping?
The setting up of Great Fears is the guarantee of funding or revenue streams.
But that doesn’t mean destruction is not part of intentionally reshaping the world-mind.
Wholeness is indeed the missing part that is ruled out by division and conflict.
Is the ‘populist’ ticket simply the exploitation of the charge of denied fears (and hopes) that became an opportunistic power grab?
The fact that popular is no longer any kind of democratic voice – is part of the mind-games going on.
Re-Educating ourselves that becomes a cultural movement savvy to the identity politicking is a ground from which wholeness can grow through. This also in the moments of giving true witness amidst the circus of fakery. Whoever becomes part of its pathways of expression. IE don’t invest in the persons so much as the purpose being served. Integrative to wholeness of being.
The Fear of God is Utmost
But beyond these, my son, be warned: There is no end to the making of many books, and much study wearies the body. When all has been heard, the conclusion of the matter is this: Fear God and keep His commandments, because this is the whole duty of man. For God will bring every deed into judgment, along with every hidden thing, whether good or evil.…. (Ecc12:12-14)
Exactly. James Douglass in his already classic history of 10 years ago, “JFK and the Unspeakable” says that only by walking through the darkness of our history here, in USAmerica, will we earn the clarity to heal our past.
That has been so true for me, and I was raised in the midst of much of this. Fear God and do what is right and you will become who you are. All the better to pray for the perps who have done so many ignorant things that have led us to one impasse after another.
Our ridiculous situation has had the effect of “reducing” us to prayer.
And that is a better thing than many yet know, as the end of that process, fully lived, will find us “anchored in the joy of serenity.”
There is another way of looking at this that may join with what I feel you intend.
Our true inheritance was ‘discarded or squandered’ in a mind that seemed to ‘go its own way’ as if a law unto itself. But remains our true inheritance because we did not and do not create ourselves.
The dread terror of guilt’s inheritance sets a mind in ‘sin’ and hiding beneath fig leaf thinking as fear driven necessity under a sense of irrevocable loss of deserving of love and of being unsafe in relation to love. And so in this sense fear of God is a fear for our selves in the light of what we have ‘made’ of our selves – as pain in the heart of God and as an evil in the mind of God that must be stamped out, denied, excommunicated or killed.
The projection of this judgement – which is our own – onto the mind of God which in truth embraces and sustains All that Is, sets up the masking of self-rejections that are projected onto God as if at the hand of God. In this sense we make an image of God as vengeful, terrible and unapproachable excepting in sacrifice of self – and even this is the self-usurping of feared penalty in the attempt to appease or mitigate a greater or indeed TOTAL loss.
The mind of projected fear and sacrifice is not God-given – but insofar as we believe and WANT it, we worship an image of terror as the Power over Life. Looking AT THIS is living through an opened awareness to fear and guilt thinking and feeling – INSTEAD of hiding and protecting it by living FROM ITS DICTATE.
How is this so?
The withdrawal of allegiance and protections of a false sense of self reveal or exposed it in direct awareness. An awareness that a mind and self were made to HIDE and look always AWAY from. As this active idea is revealed, it is revealed baseless. This is the equivalent of ‘bottomming out’ in terms of addictive substitution for genine relational being. In simple presence of awareness, the lack of foundation for all and any of this as your self or truth s that it is NOT THERE! You are not THAT – regardless it has been what you ‘lived’ and knew as yourself.
What IS – shines radiant through All That Is – where you thought to be set apart, alone and seeking dominion or restoration of a sense of lack or loss.
Truth extends Itself as the gift that gives on.
The mind as a subconscious HABIT is not who you are, but it is what you have made – of your past relational experience of personal and social adaptations. Confusion of conflicted identity is the interjection of triggered habit-reaction upon your peace or natural extension of being. This is exactly in the nature of a phishing ‘attack’ in terms of being deceived by the insinuations that match or resonate with hidden fears.
So the temptations, challenges or persecutions to our ‘old habit’ are the means of awakened self-responsibility for the recognition and release of what you are NOT – from a basis that knows instead of struggle and sacrifice. In this sense prayer is our communion with being, as well as the vigilance for our awareness of truth – which can be deceived and lost to self-illusion and conflict in a moment. And so also for the support in our willingness to abide with true amidst the temptations to fold to a sense of ‘self-protective’ dissociation – that can be invoked by terror symbols as by seductions. Not to become ‘worthy’ but as an expression of the extension of worth – where truth is valued and what follows is in its qualities.
The idea of raising the dead is not the sanctifying of the ego, so much as letting what is without truth and life ‘bury itself’ because we are giving our attention to the living. This is not speaking of bodies, but of purpose. The only hiding from Life is in forms of death – presented as life.
There is no Life but Life, and to worship the image or form in place of recognising Life is to take a mistaken identity from what we wanted to be true. Running on an error may seem impossible – but once the attack on the error is grievous, it is defended and protected as our very Self.
The term ‘God’ and indeed ‘love’ or ‘truth’ have all become degraded and adulterated by misuse, in terms of acceptable currency of exchange. Not least from a past in which collective self-illusion operated a manipulative and corrupt social order under the name of righteous dictate. The terms have changed, but the underlying deceit has not.
Laws of our being cannot be broken, but only covered over by the belief that they can be, and that we have such power. The desire to align in and re-integrate to our being, is served by the recognition and release of an insanity in our self and therefore in our world. As long as we think we can judge in righteousness set over our fellow beings, we are justifying our own ‘law’ instead of listening within for the truth here. Human laws can not only be broken, but made into weapons against our true being. In other words, everything we make or use can and eventually will be used against us.
As we sow, are we setting the nature of our reward. Nothing good will come from hate – excepting exactly that realisation – and thus a release to the willingness to learn of a different teacher. A mind cannot follow itself, but only the Idea it accepts as itself and acts from- as the experience or reward of it giving and receiving. We have our reward, but do not recognize the result as our own word going forth and returning with witnesses.
And so we say we hate it, but persist it. Not least by the insistence in projecting hate under the aegis of righteous justification, provocation or lack and deprivation of power, sustenance and support.
“Why isn’t everyone supporting MY version of what I wanted or thought life should be? Especially when supported by ‘authority’?”. We are predicated to see backwards. Is that because we imagined and committed to a way of turning our back on truth – by MAKING our own entanglement of ‘versions’?
Once again binra I am drawn to your words as being relevant to my own journey in seeking peace within while contributing to a world peace without. This is the intention in attempting to educate myself and others – to call out the lies and deceptions that foster wars of aggression. I realize that the western attack on Venezuelan has triggered outrage. How can it not when one is even dimly aware of the horrors wreaked upon the meek by CIA sponsored death squads for example or my revulsion for the likes of an Elliot Abrams who make it happen in the guise of democracy. In the face of such injustice are we not called to action in the very nature of our being? I think I get that “to fold to a sense of ‘self-protective’ dissociation” is not effective or even counter effective. I offer this with sincere respect.
Right. And too much intellectualizing will lead to no action as we stand by and watch the horror unfold. Evil thrives when good men stand by and do nothing. The time for action is upon us. Put on your safety vests and take to the streets! Pray for strength!
Part of the CIAs ‘scubbed’ version of interference in Venezuela…oops sorry Chile….. (of course its all different now folks😑, please note as they say themselves it is not all they did) ………’CIA’s response to the Hinchey amendment should be viewed as a good-faith effort to respond in an unclassified format to the three questions, not as a definitive history of US activities in Chile over the past 30 years.
[Top of page]
Summary of Response to Questions
Q. All activities of officers, covert agents, and employees of all elements of the Intelligence Community with respect to the assassination of President Salvador Allende in September 1973.
A. We find no information—nor did the Church Committee—that CIA or the Intelligence Community was involved in the death of Chilean President Salvador Allende. He is believed to have committed suicide as the coup leaders closed in on him. The major CIA effort against Allende came earlier in 1970 in the failed attempt to block his election and accession to the Presidency. Nonetheless, the US Administration’s long-standing hostility to Allende and its past encouragement of a military coup against him were well known among Chilean coup plotters who eventually took action on their own to oust him.
Q. All activities of officers, covert agents, and employees of all elements of the Intelligence Community with respect to the accession of General Augusto Pinochet to the Presidency of the Republic of Chile.
A. CIA actively supported the military Junta after the overthrow of Allende but did not assist Pinochet to assume the Presidency. In fact, many CIA officers shared broader US reservations about Pinochet’s single-minded pursuit of power.
Q. All activities of officers, covert agents, and employees of all elements of the Intelligence Community with respect to violations of human rights committed by officers or agents of former President Pinochet.
A. Many of Pinochet’s officers were involved in systematic and widespread human rights abuses following Allende’s ouster. Some of these were contacts or agents of the CIA or US military. The IC followed then-current guidance for reporting such abuses and admonished its Chilean agents against such behavior. Today’s much stricter reporting standards were not in force and, if they were, we suspect many agents would have been dropped.’ ……. Please note this is not conspiracy theory but from the CIA website itself (and only the unclassified stuff). Lots more to read if you wish https://www.cia.gov/library/reports/general-reports-1/chile/
You are referencing the CIA website as a source?
President Truman ruefully called that remarkable agency, “The American Gestapo” for a reason.
And that was at it’s dawn, when it employed a lot of well-meaning assets like Edward R. Murrow and Sen. George McGovern.
I spoke with Dave Emory (one of the most knowledgeable observers: spitfirelist.org ) two years ago and he called it, straight up, “the world’s biggest Mob.” His site is a one stop shop for real facts about The Company.
Going to the CIA site about the scoop on Chile, is like interviewing the fox outside the henhouse with bloody feathers still dangling on its maw.
Or the Nazis. Reinhard Gehlen was made its first de facto head and the first thing he dead was to set up Otto von Bolschwing in Sacramento in a plum job, saying he’d been “de-Nazified”.
Von Bolschwing was the architect of The Final Solution and Eichmann answered to him. The Langley Nazi cadre, substantial in numbers and including Dr. Death himself, Josef Mengele, set the tone for post-war Intel.
Horrible. They are like the U.N. in that they operate on U.S. soil, but nowhere do I see that they actually work for us (the humble Public). They work to protect the interests of the elites.
Not really a trustworthy source of information. Ever.
I wish I could say that, at least like a broken clock, they tell things straight twice a day, but I would almost start out disbelieving anything coming from them, until I saw it etched in stone by a (provably) independent source.
Wasn’t it their original czar of Counterintelligence, Angleton, who said THIS:
“Deception is a state of mind, and it is the mind of the state.”
Curious as a bona fide.
Correction: spitfirelist.com -a truly awesome 30 year plus compendium about all of this. A five minute perusal should confirm that, not to be missed.
One minute was enough: clueless guy who hit upon a few pearls..
Ijjit.
https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/02/03/wsj-venezuela-coup-leader-juan-guaido-neoliberal-capitalist-shock-therapy/
This is one of the best dissident pieces I’ve seen in a long time. Yes, conflict is inevitable and yes, we shall have to give the warmongers a bit of their own murderous medicine. Flame at this point does not yet address the question: How can we fight back against people who control a vast military, financial, information, and surveillance machine? One possible answer is provided here: http://www.veteranstoday.com/2014/06/17/the-al-sabbah-brigade/
I don’t think we can, FJ. We just have to let these people destroy themselves. Their system of crony capitalism and bogus democracy is falling apart at the seams. It is bankrupt economically, financially, politically, socially, racially, morally and spiritually. The United Snakes has a current military budget of $1,134 billion. Russia $61 billion, being reduced to 46. It has trillion dollar budget and trade deficits. It has been borrowing $4 billion a day. Debt levels are out of control, maybe $250 trillion. It has been de industrialised. Cities like Detroit have lost half their population and look like Wild West ghost towns. It has a corrupt, broken, dysfunctional political system incapable of reforming itself, throwing up monstrosities like Clinton and Trump. A society so polarised and divided it is on the verge of civil war. The crude threats and criminality of psychopathic, repulsive, cretinous, recycled thugs like Bolton, Pompeo and now Abrams should be seen as evidence of weakness and growing desperation, not strength. The western world has the worst leadership in its history. Even the most loyal satellites and satraps are like rats leaping overboard from the sinking ship. The same can be said for the crudely mendacious transparent propaganda and blatant repression and ever growing censorship. This does not reflect strength or self confidence.
Systems that lose legitimacy, as western crony capitalism and sham democracy so obviously have, can collapse overnight without warning, like eastern bloc countries 30 years ago. The same will happen to the US Empire, sooner rather than later. It has all the warning signs of an empire in terminal decline. A bloated, out of control, and very inefficient military establishment. A gross disparity between rich and poor and the flaunting of wealth. The debasement of the currency and looting of the public treasury. Irreversible and increasingly apparent decline in all areas. Excess, spectacle, flaunting of perversion and degeneracy in all its forms.
The system is falling apart. It is going down – soon. The only question is when and exactly how, what the catalyst for the collapse will be.
Don’t wait for it to happen. Don’t even want it to happen. Just watch and see what does happen. It will all happen in time – probably a lot sooner than anyone expects. Like France in 1789 or East Germany and Rumania in 1989.
that link was dead, try this one:
https://www.veteranstodayarchives.com/2014/06/17/the-al-sabbah-brigade/
Binra
What happened to peak oil? Nothing. The pertinent question is “what happened to cheap, readily accessible oil”? Apart from the Middle East – it has all peaked and in decline. What is the shale revolution, tar sands wonder, or Venezuela’s ‘largest proven reserves’? It’s oil, Jim – but not as we know it!
I’ve already dealt with Venezulean extra heavy crude in passing. So, what is shale? Sandstone impregnated with fissures of oil – that has to be shattered (hydraulically fractured – aka ‘fracking’) to make the oil accessible. I’m sure you are aware of many of the issues: water table contamination, high pressure earth tremors, polluting tailing ponds, gas flaring as a waste product (making unconventional oil 3-5 times as polluting as conventional); etc all of which have cost (financial and environmental) implications.
That is what people don’t get about peak oil. It does not matter how much sludge, tar, kerogen, we find. It is not an economically viable resource. It’s an economic drag and liability. All the debt funding is being deferred in the magic realist hopium of a ‘recovery’. One that EROEI confidantly predicts will never occur. Then the accumulated debt becomes an economic liability. Debt funding (monetising) and rolling over debt on the never never forecloses the future for millennials.
Oil may never truly peak or run out: but that is not the point. It will, and is, declining in quality – not quantity. The decline in quality means less and less energy will be available for socialised societal needs. None, whilst the Carbon Aristocracy maintain their level of accumulation. Addiction to oil means permanent austerity and imposed impoverishment for all human societies (socialist societies will not be allowed to socialise: all oil producing countries are essentially targets).
The current shale revolution is for the gullible. BTW; Engdahl makes many of the points I have made elsewhere. Shale is a flash in the pan, that changes nothing. It has already peaked and is in decline itself. Did you notice the benefits? You might notice the international effects of the bill.
https://www.globalresearch.ca/fracked-shale-oil-wells-drying-up-faster-than-predicted-wall-street-journal-finds/5665323
That was a reply for further down the page.
BigB: Scarcity is maintained by design for the expansion of the power of possession and control.
The energy cartels allied with financial and corporate power through oil and coal (and pharma) intends to upgrade (sic) to energy control via carbon-guilt indenture along with the Internet of Things for the real-time surveillance and control of transactions of energy (and money).
The psyoperative subliminal of the article is ‘Conflict is inevitable”. This can be seen as already de facto true – and equated with ‘progress is inevitable’ where ‘progress’ operates the devaluation and destruction of the past as the ‘getting’ or becoming of victory over it.
I read some Illich in the bath earlier – I feel it speaks to the issue profoundly:
Toward A History Of Needs – Introduction (clip) ~ Ivan Illich
The five essays in this volume reflect a decade’s thinkng on the industrial mode of production. During this period, I have focused on the process through which growing dependence on mass-produced goods and services gradually erodes the conditions neccessary for a convivial life. In examining a distinct area of ecnomic growth, each essay demonstrates a general rule: Use-values are inevitably destroyed when the industrial mode of production achieves the prominance that I have termed “radical monopoly.” These pieces describe how industrial growth produces the modernisation of poverty.
Modernized poverty appears when the intensity of market dependence reaches a certain threshold. Subjectively, it is the experience of frustrating affluence which occurs in persons mutilated by their overhelming reliance on the riches of industrial productivity. Simply, it deprives those a effected by it of their freedom and power to act autonomousl, to live creatively; it confines them to survival through being plugged into market relations. And precisely because this new impotence is so deeply experienced, it is with diffculty expressed. We are the witnesses of a barely perceptible transformation in ordinary language by which verbs that formerly designated satisfying actions are replaced by nouns that denote packages designed for passive consumption only: for example. “to learn” becomes “acquisition of credits.” A profound change in individual and social self-image is here reflected. And the layman is not the only one who has difficulty in accurately describing what he experences. The proffessional economist is unable to recognize the poverty his conventional instruments fail to uncover.
Nevertheless, the new mutant of impoverishment continues to spread. The peculiarly modern inability to use person endowmments, communal life, and environmental resources in an autonomous way infects every aspect of life where a proffessionally engineered commodity has succeeded in replacing a culturally shaped use-value. The opportunity to experience personal and social satisfaction outside the market is thus destroyed. I am poor, for instance, when the use-value of my feet is lost because I live in Los Angeles or work on the thirty-fith floor.
This new impotence-producing poverty must not be confused with the widening gap between the comsumption of rich and poor in a world where basic needs are increasingly shaped by industrial commodities. That gap is the form traditional poverty assumes in an industrial society, and the conventional terms of class struggle appropriately reveal and reduce it. I further distinguish modernized poverty from the burdensome price exacted by the externalities which increased levels of production spew into the environment. It is clear that these kinds of pollution, stress, and taxation are unequally imposed. Correspondingly, defenses against such depredations are unequally distributed. But like the new gaps in access, such as inequities in social costs, are aspects of industrialized poverty for which economic indicators and objective verification can be found. Such is not true for the industrialized impotence which affects both rich and poor. Where this kind of poverty reigns, life without addictive access to commodities is rendered either impossible or criminal. Making do without consumption becomes impossible, not just for the average consumer but even for the poor. All forms of welfare, from affirmative action to environmental action, are of no help. The liberty to design and craft one’s own distinctive dwelling is abolished in favor of the bureaucratic provision of standardized housing, in the United States , Cuba, or Sweden. The organization of employment, skills, building resources, rules, and credit favor shelter as a commodity rather than an activity. Whether the product is provided by an entrepreneur or apparatchik, the effective result is the same: citizen impotence, our specifcally modem experience of poverty.
Wherever the shadow of economic growth touches us, we are left useless unless employed on a job or engaged in consumption; the attempt to build a house or set a bone outside the control of certifed specialists appears as anarchic conceit. We lose sight of our resources, lose control over the environmental conditions which make these resources applicable, lose taste for self-reliant coping with challenges from without and anxiety from within. Take childbirth in Mexico today: delivery without professional care has become unthinkable for those women whose husbands are regularly employed and therefore have access to social services , no matter how marginal or tenuous. They move in circles where the production of babies faithfully reflects the patterns of industrial outputs. Yet their sisters in the slums of the poor or the villages of the isolated still feel quite competent to give birth on their own mats, unaware that they face a modem indictment of criminal neglect toward their infants. But as professionally engineered delivery models reach these independent women, the desire, competence, and conditions for autonomous behavior are being destroyed.
For advanced industrial society, the modernisation of poverty means that people are helpless to recognize evidence unless it has been certified by a professional, be he a television weather commentator or an educator; that organic discomfort becomes intolerably threatening unless it has been medicalized into dependence on a therapist; that neighbors and friends are lost unless vehicles bridge the separating distance (created by the vehicle in the first place). In short , most of the time we find ourselves out of touch with our world, out of sight of those for whom we work, out of tune with what we feel.
I wish to thank you Binra for sharing these insights. If I am understanding, ‘modernized poverty’ helps to explain the freak out of the more affluent Venezuelan population to commodity shortages externally manipulated to create anxiety within and thus the foundation for the coup de tat. It helps to understand my own poverty since losing my place and identity in the neoliberal order as well.
You are welcome. The charged nature that I see is of a self-disempowering under the fear-illusion of gaining possession (that adds anxiety) and increasing control (along with denials that increase distrust and disorder).
At the personal level we are generally experiencing others positively (reinforcing), or negatively (undermining).
The system itself is deeply set, but the thinking that it depends on is ours – or rather our fear arising from a sense of lack or as Illich calls it poverty. I usually put it all in terms of living or acting out from a sense of lack. Like the addict, the more we feed the hole, the more lost we are from our wholeness. How we come back into our lives is obviously a rediscovering of what we truly what and are – despite the fears and resistances set against that. But instead of thinking ‘about it’ we can start now, with what we have – and keep starting now – until the new habit replaces or offset the old.
The experiencing of conflict is inherent to recognising we do not want to cultivate and feed it in our self. But yukky as that may be – it is very different from trying to get rid of it on others in negatively defined powerlessness in search of a circuit of discharge.
When we read something, or find the thought running in ourself or another that – actually TELLS us into a belief as if unquestionable, the moment of noticing, stopping and wondering, is an invitation to other ways of seeing and being that never get a voice when crowded out or trodden underfoot.
We can only live the life we have – but nor do we need be less than we are. Now and now.
BigB: As hydrocarbon extraction becomes less profitable, solar and wind become more profitable. And on a longer time scale. So, in a strange way, does the chemical energy of hydrocarbons. Because chemical energy is measured in volts (only 1-3volts) solar, wind and the photosynthesis that renews carbohydrate fuels all are driven by the nuclear energy of the sun, which is measured in thousands of volts. So is nuclear energy from uranium and thorium, with the promise of hydrogen>>helium fusion always round the corner. But none of these are get-rich-quick schemes.
To extract hydrocarbons and burn them to CO2 & OH2 takes little time; one can recover one’s investment in a few years (even less if, like the Rothschild gang, one steals somebody else’s oil). But using the nuclear power of the sun to synthesise 2OH2 & CO2 back into Cn(OH2)2n + nO2 for re-burning takes longer. (Rothschild owns the land, of course, but they will have to wait longer for their profit). Solar, wind and hydro power take 10-30 years to recover your investment, but after that it’s _pure profit all the way, as long as the machinery lasts_ (say 50-100 years?). If you get rid of the Land Lord, photosynthesis is pure profit for thousands of years. In fact, for millions and billions of years the earth has been running an extremely profitable photosynthesis development. The earth’s is not a profitable business as Rothschild understands business, but as humankind and the rest of Creation understand it..
Un poquito pazienza.
The idea of the Sun as nuclear fusion is – I believe – completely wrong.
There are nuclear reactions within the surface of the photosphere.
The development of energy solutions is – I believe – tightly controlled and managed – as with health ‘solutions’.
Life is managed as risk of sickness and of threat. killing Life before it kills us, is not so far from the nature of the current consciousness.
The development of convivial technologies and cultural value through such active expression is suppressed and denied by a top down centralism of corporate canopy that effectively denies light and life to all that its covers. This includes the substitution of a regulated and managed life for relational freedom of being.
The chokehold on the creative – is the sticking point or log jam of an arrested development – that has polarised to become a negatively aligned agenda of a predatory class upon the whole.
The ‘lack’ of solutions is regulated and managed.
In this sense humans are factory farmed assets – for what can be gotten from them, or what they can be used for.
The willingness to see a fellow being for what we can get from them, or get away with putting onto them and thus using them for private agenda, is nothing new. It is socially normalised in bubble realities of managed identities.
The primary resource is that which we discarded first. Our brother – sister or fellow being.
Energy is inspiration, integrative, balancing, restorative. The short circuit of energy to weapons and markets is loss of held charge conductivity to ‘getting and being got from’.
I sense that while we lack responsibility for energy and currency of being – nothing else will really line up – but glimpses will come through as inspirations in which to align. But that also means that any such alignment will be weaponised and marketised as a source of ‘energy’ for control by the mind that is set in terms of fear of loss of energy and control.
The Safire Project relates to current science being done to illustrate an Electric model of the Sun (and indeed the Universe) – as opposed to a gravitic model of impacts and explosions that yaws its black holes and dark matter in ever more fantastical ‘fake science’ (narrative ‘control’).
Two vids on this page
https://safireproject.com/project/presentation.html
The core manipulation is not the evil bastards who are the frontmen or agencies of its expression, but the mistaken idea that inherently locks us into a false, conflicted and limiting paradigm. While I hold that idea to be the ‘self’ its presumption to ‘separate thing-ness’ links with a deeply anthroMORPHic identity in forms, objects and ‘space’ between as distinct from a Relational field of charge relation.
Unclear energy – No Thanks! 😉
Technocratic global energy control – backed up by the internet of Things?
No Thanks!
Freedom is responsibility.
If we want freedom we have to extend or demonstrate responsibility.
If we want blame and punishment as the substitution for real relational learning and being – then that’s easy – just keep doing more of the same.
I’m not entirely pessimistic about Venezuela. With crude third rate psychopathic thugs like Pompeo, Abrams and Bolton running the show, the Three Amigos, or the Three Stooges, I’m sure this will be as much a case of the Sorcerer’s Apprentice as Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, Syria, Yemen, and everything else these no hopers have touched over the past 30 years. It could be the final nail in the US Neocon/ neoliberal coffin.
I often think that they are so substandard that they are our best allies, but it is a cold comfort to have to test it.
I fear Guaido is too dull-witted to realize that he is a stooge and have a change of heart.
And large financial rewards are particularly appealing to the dull-witted.
I like this article because it is KISS (keep it simple stupid). For me the issue is apolitical. I don’t much give a damn about Left Vs Right, Socialism Vs Capitalism. These paradigms divide people. What I care about is Peace and the denunciation and renunciation of war as a means of solving geopolitical problems. We have a chance to solve many other problems together if we start with that premiss. Wars of aggression always create more problems than they solve. Unity among people is what will be required to build a lasting peace. A unity that is apolitical and universal. I too have been accused of being naive but when I interact with people directly outside of politics I discover wonderful people wherever there from, whatever their class or whoever they voted for. That is not to say that we should not defend ourselves from, or turn a blind eye to those who’s intent and motivation is in fostering war. That is what has disappointed me to the point of outrage – to be witnessing the colossal mistakes of our current leadership in the west abetted by greed, racism and ignorance in fostering more war. Seems we are making the same mistakes that were made at the turn of the last century. Peace.
I hope the person who voted against jeremmy hardy made a slip.that’s all i can say.
If it was me it was unintentional for sure.
Framed in conflict.
The mind of man is (currently) framed in fear, conflict and guilt.
The use of conflict as a weapon is the assigning of blame and penalty to others (away from self-set-apart), and taking power from their lack, loss, or destruction.
One-up-man-ship that can seem absent in alliance with others in group-up-man-ship or mutual self reinforcing segregation.
Conflict, identified as saviour and protector, divides in order to rule out the peace in which truth is recognised, lived and shared. And so the conflicted, in self-asserting possession are weaponised in vigilance against peace by the purpose of conflict given worth-ship and protection.
Thus seeking to see in our brother the justifications for our withholding or withdrawal of worth and justification for attack – masked perhaps in feigned kindness, or held back in conditions where alliance serves to hide a secret hate. Presented as reluctantly forced into justified reaction to a sense of intolerable or outrageous victimisation.
We see our brother as ourself, and hate attacks them as the sense of self specialness in power of their denial, as if we escaped it thereby.
The conflicted mind is at war within itself and yet presents as a narrative continuity or identity by which a world of conflict is made real – as if it could be won, subjected and set over in victory.
The absence of conflict is not a truce, but a true peace. Because the world gives witness that there is none, the gaining of such a world is the loss of direct Soul awareness.
In order to attract witnesses for peace, we have to send out from at leat a willingness for peace instead of from a mind in conflict that allows an idea of peace only in victory or vengeance. For such a mind takes joy in every seeming step to victory or in exacting vengeance of a self-vindication instead of being the embodiment of joy that rises from peace as surely as does peace accompany a true joy.
Aligning in peace may first of all need an honest recognition we are NOT at peace.
The mind that hides its own agenda in self-masking justification is not a reliable guide. It has to be paused, in order to be evaluated as a false or misguiding basis to rely on.
How does the individual and interpersonal honesty of relational communication apply to the collective embodiment of global conflicts?
This is a choice to be a gift into the whole – and receive in like measure, or be victim to circumstance in grievance and loss. We have already learned the latter as a second nature – which runs ‘automatically’. Learning to consciously align from a different purpose is a result of having learned the old purpose is both blind and blinding, futile and fruitless.
Fighting against the ego (self or other) is the ego for both – though the other does not HAVE to choose to share it with you. Embodying an integrity that stands for the truth of self AND other is not a ‘doormat’ to abuse or appeasement to the posturing of worldly power.
The difference is not necessarily in what we do, but where we are coming from.
Everything that comes from a sense of lack – embodies lack in the world by finding shared currency. This is challenging to our learned sense of safety in littleness, frailty or limitation.
The deepest archetypes of self-strategy arise from separation trauma. That we all engage in this is not so much that we are all ‘sinners’ or guilty for making CO2 – but that we are living an entanglement of shadows or self-denial. Attending the practicalities of the day thereof do not preclude opening the deepest self-transparency and account (or observation) that we can currently access or allow, from which perspective and opportunity for a different quality of expression can meet or stir and seed a willingness in others.
The difference in some sense is that of a currently embraced relationship rater than a manually managed set of mind-ruled substitution or mapping out of a displacement model in place of receptive freedom and awakened responsibility.
I cannot translate into a ‘framing mind of conflict management’ because the very nature of its filtering is to weaponise or marketise ANY movement of life to serve a defended possession of an imaged or symbolic and conceptually reinforced sense of bonds, guilts, and derivatives.
Complex structures of deceit are warring with themselves and with Reality – and our part may be to re-evaluate whether we Really WANT to align in conflict because it is the devil we know and feel some sense of strategic adaptation to (the established order). Fear does not open choices so much as frame the mind without choice, in tyranny or believed necessity. But to choose NOT to protect fear by acting as if it is true, we have opened the choice to look at it.
The Denier of life and freedom, peace and joy, in the world can be an Imperial power or a sickness believed incurable or one’s own sense of inadequacies held in judgement. The FORM it takes is not where the answer is found, but in the meanings we give and thus receive as our ‘reality reinforcement’.
How to give a different meaning to appearances, events or situations that trigger negative outcomes? Not from further manipulation of the mind, but from resting or pausing it as the basis for decision – for actions are the result of decision.
Decisions are made on the basis of awareness and outcomes.
The boot of a past made in anger tramples the face of a presence rising to be shared. Until the ‘BOOT is inevitable’ is settled consensual ‘reality’ under which a pale copy of life has learned not to move. To this denial – rage MUST be invoked – because the Will IS to live. But the distortion of the Will in hate and grievance is the embodying of the ‘abuser; in a false righteousness. The boot is simply changing feet.
Great post Brian. I read most of it, but have to get ready to go into London to see two heavy rock bands. I very rarely travel into London, unless I have seen the bands elsewhere. I used to work in London for 13 years, a long time ago. The Noise of The Traffic is really going to hit me. The bands will be even louder, but by now, brought up on Motorhead, I’m getting a bit deaf. I like peace and quiet, until The tinnitus rings in my left ear.
Tony
Hey Binra,
Nobody wants to be lectured at.
You should try plain talking.
Fair Dinkum – you give the meaning you want to take. I reach for words to best serve the meanings – my person is not the telling not is yours ‘told’.
I have to live with myself-with-you and with the world as I meet it.
The strait talk is that if I deceive myself I meet a deceitful world. That puts me in the driving seat of the meaning I give and take from a situation… knowingly or in an unwatched mind.
The illusion is thinking to see the illusions or sins of others without looking through our own.
So everyone has their take, suss or judgement on anyone and everyone ELSE but NOT themself. And be-lives as if they are right and the world is what they ‘see’.
I am not offering yet another judgement – but an invitation to look at the mind that makes them – at our own mind – because judgement selects AND rejects and that IS conflict, and for that mind, conflict IS inevitable – which means all the results are built in.
If you don’t feel for what I say in your own terms then go well with what you do have a feel for, because hell is not a place, but a mind trapped in self-denial as if by the power of another.
What we give we get to keep. Not physically but spiritually – in terms of Purpose.
Is that true? I wrote it as a statement – because I don’t choose to sit on the fence, but you are free to relate or associate with anything anyone says as you are truly moved – or as your default reaction kicks in.
Do you find the main article is lecturing – telling you what to think and how to see?
Or do you mean something else by the term lecturing?
I am for aligning in integrity such as we are willing to own it and embody it.
I am not for moralising over others as if from higher ground.
If you read that in me it is neither my desire nor intention.
If I chose to I might qualify everything I write. I could couch it in – “perhaps – don’t you think, its seems to me, maybe if, it could be that, perhaps, its seems to me”
or to seem real or on your side I could extend the appeal to join in hating ‘Them’.
But I’m not looking to win a war, but to open perspective upon what seems to be inevitable – as a call to freedom and a true peace within.
Excellent article, but conflict is not inevitable. The vast majority of these evil people on the other side, have been clearly identified. They are even quite brazen about it, yet are very small in number. There are still graceful solutions to all the world’s problems. People are waking up, at every level of society, and every level of power. Even the world’s financial problems can be easily resolved. Almost the entire world is in debt, but they are in debt to ” these evil people on the other side”, who already have far too much power and money, than they know what to do with, and have an ideology that they worship, which is over 2,000 years out of date, and based on war and destruction. The debt, that cannot be paid, should simply be cancelled. This has been standard practice for thousands of years. It still is for individuals. They are made bankrupt. Their debt is written off, and they can eventually start again to rebuild their lives.
Judges, soldiers and policeman in the vast majority of cases are ordinary people who come from our peaceful side. They are not stupid, and have it within their power to arrest these criminals and put them on trial, with little if any bloodshed whatsoever.
Admittedly if they don’t act, and for example put Anthony Charles Lynton Blair on trial for war crimes against humanity, then the author is indeed correct, whilst these criminals continue to sit in their ivory towers enjoying the bloodshed and chaos, that they themselves have planned and caused.
I think the criminals are getting worried. The tipping point is very near.
Good usually triumphs over evil, or none of us would still be here.
Tony
We here in the disunited UK are again sleepwalking into another Iraq scenario. May and her little band of Tory thugs endorsing the criminal actions of America are walking down the same path as the war criminal Blair re supporting Bush in his greedy quest to control the Middle East. Mass protests are required to let these thugs know that we will not repeat this folly.
I can get behind this article. Disgusting is the most apt word for these events.
But when Left and Right are stealing each others lines like there are actually opposing sides I’m somewhat more pessimistic than the writer.
The irony in this is that we the people ( left or right ) pay for the States’ Military.
The One percenters have no army or air force of their own. They use what is ostensibly ours.
In the UK it is Her Majesty’s Armed Forces.
She is literally in charge despite us paying.
In the US it is different and if the alleged leaders had to stomach to take the peoples military back to serve the people
then a lot of warmongering would be de-escalated.
The Gilet _ Jaunes are being attacked by a force which they pay for as well.
These are the things that need doing but in order to do it you have to have changes of governments.
This change is what all governments fear the most.
It’s no accident that the most bellicose in military matters are two rapidly declining Empires.
China is not just on the rise – it has risen and continues to rise much to the horror of the declining economies.
Russia is connecting with China for energy supplies and the Belt Road is a serious attempt by the RICS ( Brazil is out of the game for now) to trade with the East and Germany is an interested party.
The US is overreaching itself but that doesn’t mean they are not dangerous or becoming a less of a danger.
Sadly people like Bolton genuinely think that if ordinary military means fails ( that is if the US can’t bomb from the air of from the deck of a ship ) then only nukes would win.
What Bolton and his acolytes don’t understand but us peacenicks do is that Russia and China’s nukes will get through no matter what the US does in attack. They don’t know where any incoming missiles will land in the US if it kicked off and neither do the 1 percenters.
They can all hide in their bunkers but eventually they will have to come out into the Post nuclear world and ( if there is anything left to work with) rebuild the US.
They will own a pile of ashes.
Bolton thinks that a ‘Limited ” nuclear war can be fought and won.
” We fought the first war in Europe – we fought the second war in Europe and if you idiots let us we’ll fight the third war in Europe.
He didn’t say that it was some Military General during the Cold War.
Pulling out of the INF is step towards this mad creed.
Europeans take note.
Hitler needed Vidkun Quisling. Trump needed Juan Guaidó. Look no further.
Admin et al.
Jeremy Hardy Died.
The only voice on the BBC that was truly socialist, is no more.
Any chance Off-G getting a piece on the great man?
Eddison, mate, really appreciate your words and your sentiments, aye. I too, see major conflict on the horizon, especially if theres a massive economic collapse, as some are predicting. As you point out, its absolutely no accident that the police have been militarised in Western countries, and protests involving rioting or violence, lengthy prison terms await. Psychopaths like Bolton, Pompeo, Abrams, Kagan, Haspel, Cheney, the entire cabal of Neocon nutters are Not going to willingly give up their power and wealth and beg forgiveness. Neither will those who run the multinational corporations and banks. It will Never happen. The really sad reality is lots of blood is going to be spilt. We are in this situation because of the sheer lust for power and control and greed of a tiny minority. Who bow at the altar of mammon. And also because they have the contemptible presstitute media in their pockets. And I havn’t even mentioned nuclear weapons, or full spectrum dominance or the crazed zionist regime in Israel. Its pretty bloody scary where the World is at. What would Ghandi do?
Mammon AND Moloch, actually.
What would Gandhi do? Nothing. He’d be dead by now. Gunned down by an “IDF” kiddie killer with dum dum bullets from a British sniper rifle. Or clubbed into a coma by Macron’s Zionist trained Boot Boys.
We are so close to the day to day .A long detached view is useful as your excellent analysis is. These two groups have been there all along ever since power and law and control replaced community and the general good. The present situation could be seen as the last dying attempts of imperialism to survive the information age and panic as obsolete energy sources run out.
Why no mention of Israel, the elephant in the room. They have been behind all the Middle East wars and have long been active in Venezuela given that their ambassador was kicked out of Venezuela in 2009 because of Venezuela’s objections to Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians.
It’s not the economy: it’s the EROEI – stoopid!
The current carbon capitalist world system does not understand surplus energy or EROEI, as it is so fixated on maximal short term returns for shareholders. It can’t comprehend that their entire business model is unsustainable and self cannibalising. Which is bad for us: because carbon net-energy (exergy) economics it is foundational to all civilisation. The ignorance of it and subsequent environmental and social convergence crises threatens the systemic failure of our entire civilisation. The Venezuelan crisis affects us all: and is symptomatic of a decline in cheap oil due to rapidly falling EROEI. This is a global concern that underpins everything.
I can’t find the EROEI specifically for Venezuelan heavy oil: but it is only slightly less viscous than bitumen – which has an EROEI of 3:1. Let’s call it 4:1: the same as other tight oils and shale. Anything less than 5:1 is more or less an energy sink: with virtually no net energy left for society. The minimum EROEI for societal needs is 11:1.
Do any of our leaders, managers, or ideologues understand surplus energy economics? Some do: but it plays no part in mitigation policy. If it did, a transition to post-carbon decentralisation would be well under way. Globalised supply chains are systemically threatened and fragile. A globalised economy is spectacularly vulnerable. Especially a debt-ridden one. Which way are our leaders trying to take us? At what point will humanity realise we are following clueless Pied Pipers off the Seneca Cliff – into globalised energy oblivion?
The rapid investment – not in a post-carbon transition – but in increased militarisation (including the potential reappearance of intermediate range IRBMs), and resource and market driven aggressive foreign intervention policies reveal the mindset of a denialism verging on insanity. This Wetiko materialism and imperialism will make conflict – not inevitable – but an unavoidable eventuality (even though it may be accidentally triggered). As people come to understand the energy basis of the world convergence crisis: the fact of permanent austerity and increased pauperisation looms large. What will the outcome be when an armed nuclear madhouse becomes increasingly protectionsist of their dwindling share? Or of already austerity fatigued and deliberately and systematically impoverished people begin to realise that the future is bleaker than the present?
Too alarmist, perhaps? Let’s play pretend that we can plant a few trees. End single plastic usage, and captive breed a few rhinos …and it will all be fine. BAU?
The world runs on cheap oil: our socio-politico-economic expectations of progress depend on it. Which means that the modern human mind is, in effect, a thought-process predicated on cheap oil. Oleum ergo sum? Apart from the Middle East: we are already past the point where oil is a liability, not a viability. Debt funding its extraction, selling below the cost of production – both assume the continual expansion of global GDP. Oil is a highly subsidised, with its environmental costs externalised – with our surplus socialisation capital – making it a strategically negative asset. For which we foot the bill, and inherit the clean up cost (or pass the bill inter-generationally). A bill that EROEI predicts will keep on rising. At what point do we realise this? Or do we live in hopium of a return to historical prosperity? Or hang on the every word of the populist magic realism demagogue who promises a future social utopia?
As the truth sinks in: conflict – including the real potential for a final global conflict – becomes inevitable. The alternative? If it’s based on cheap oil, it ain’t happenin’. Peace – or the potentiality of peace – is only actualisable post-carbon.
BigB,
I really enjoy your posts, and I also enjoy reading Dmitry Orlov. However, belief in Peak Oil is a large part of the problem, because Governments believe it too. This belief is based, on another belief, that oil is a fossil fuel. This belief is not supported, by the most fundamental laws of physics.
I researched the theory of Peak Oil, in great detail nearly 20 years ago, starting off with resources such as dieoff.org. I accept the logic of the arguments, in almost every detail, except they are all based on the belief that oil is a fossil fuel
. I have also researched a great number of the scientific papers, and other resources, which to me conclusively proved that oil is not a fossil fuel. I don’t expect you to believe me, and without a degree in physics and maths, you are unlikely to understand the scientific papers. None of these prove, that oil will not run out, nor do they suggest that burning a great deal of it is sensible. However, they do prove that oil is not a fossil fuel – yet hardly anyone at least in The West believes this. This is a major cause of the current mayhem, which has been going on for over 100 years.
Dmitry Orlov, will not even discuss it. However, I think he is a brilliant writer, and I do agree with him, about many other things including this.
“The Future of Energy is Bright, Part II”
http://cluborlov.blogspot.com/2019/01/the-future-of-energy-is-bright-part-ii.html
Tony
Thanks Tony
I am well aware of the Abiotic Oil Theory (AOT): and you are absolutely right – the science and physics might as well be in Martian to me. However, I am also aware of those, such as Ugo Bardi and Richard Heinberg, that would understand the papers. Basically, there are two AOTs: strong and weak. Strong means I would be three feet deep in oil right now. Weak means oil will reform over geological timescales. Which is no use to us. We need oil in the coming four decades to make any real impact.
Although the reserve replenishment ratios are at a low (basically, we can’t afford to explore …CapEx budgets are being consumed in capital expensive extraction of tars, etc) we will find more oil, there is no doubt. What we will not find is cheap oil. More and more expenditure will go into extraction, less and less into socialisation or even basic medical care. Welfare: forget it …what specious profit there is will go to the 0.7% (the recent historic 1% which will become the future 0.5%).
Anyone who is paying attention, such as your good self, must be aware that situation is the current – not a future scenario. The possessing classes are arming, not socialising, and para-militarising law enforcement in order to enforce private property laws. Rather than taking a ‘free market’ administrative, managerial role: states are reducing freedoms, normalising enforcement violence, surveillance, and information micromanagement (BigData) cultures …to manage perception and ‘protect’ us from externalised, state-created enemies (Russiagate; Skripalgate; etc). Plus, controlling propagandic information flows to keep us facile and consenting.
The reductive, common denominator factor is the EROEI of oil (and oil equivalent fuels; plus all other resources (including overconsumed ‘sustainable’ resources)). Even if it weren’t, supposing, for the sake of argument – oil remains patent and available, there is a convergence of other factors …predominantly debt; overconsumption; sink and waste crises; land usage changes (deforestation, desertification; etc); etc …that are all converging in space and time, limiting our options for mitigation. More oil would mean precipitating a catastrophic crisis sooner, rather than later. More oil is not a solution to the convergence of crises: the opposite in fact …it would mean an acceleration and exacerbation of the problem.
The solution is to take an integrated whole systems view of the interconnected factors …broadly degrowth and the metastabilisation of all psycho-social and politico-economic ecologies into a new paradigmatic shift – away from mechano-reductionist separational thinking – aka post-carbon-capitalism. The irony is that we will need oil to do that. Using oil as a militaristic promulgator in order to preserve oil and its short-term biophysical economic benefits (a vicious feedback cycle of imperialism, expansionism, extractivism – in pursuit and preservation of elitist privilege) is about the most insane thing we could do. More oil would only encourage the cyclical insanity.
Given that it is a common resource for all humanity: burning oil for military use and our current profligate energy usage is like burning Picasso’s for heat. The paradox is that we need that oil for our future: more oil forecloses that future quicker. Could there be a silver lining to EROEI? Yes, unless we burn it all in one final conflagration whose insane ethos was to preserve the priviliges afforded by cheap oil.
That would be madness. Unfortunately, that is the very path we are on.
http://www.williamengdahl.com/englishNEO31Dec2018.php
‘Whatever happened to Peak Oil?” – Engdahl
Great comment BigB : Less is more and more free time to enjoy learning, without poisoning our kids minds, hearts, Soul & Habitat and undermining their potential to exist equitably, with a physical balance that respects the scientific need to communicate, without damaging our Biosphere further, nor warping our Ionosphere with heaters like HAARP , which alter the Jet Stream currents.
Long ago, the rational conclusion in my humble opinion , was to Open Source intelligence & engineering in real time. Eg. if I am engineering the weather today (a reality nobody wishes to discuss), wherever I am , BigB has a moral right to understand my actions, in order to calculate collectively elsewhere , the supply & demand consequences of whatever forces of energy were applied to achieve my goal of going skiing on Sunday … or watering crops, or for the Chinese Olympics in Beijing: for which they openly declared building 500 installations in the foothills of the Himalayas. (RT published news).
Lol, greetings from Balky, who just chipped in that the IMF SDR BDL (Blockchain distributed ledger) will require quite a bit of energy, soon enough and he doesn’t believe that the FED, IMF or WBO give a damn about the planet, let alone understand scientifically how it all magnetically functions . In answer to a question you once put to him, it was entirely clear to him from the outset what could happen to the Central Banks, once Bitcoin was introduced and that it was also inevitable that ‘they’ would act to undermine the concept and introduce their own perversion of the science, a science of exchange that obviates inter state control mechanisms & central banks … so, now we have to make even more energy to support a diluted concept for multiple exchanges, that now have many partners in crime, same ole’ story . . . you having probably studied Roger Ver a bit , perhaps , BigB can see why Ver must feel a little perturbed that the overly passionate greedy barbarous multitudes were unprepared intellectually to receive & interpret the concept of peer to peer payment, (avoiding destroying trees and trucking ‘boat loads’ of worthless paper & heavy metal around, daily) … in fact shooting oneself in the foot with an Uzi, springs to mind.
Onto another fact, he just showed me an email to Richard Branson, from 2010 , with a great proposal for the Virgin group to improve their image and look to the future of evolving humanity & lifestyle in an environmentally friendly manner, focussed on 360º ecosystems, including electronic solutions & including people as a part of mother nature: unfortunately, their IP Lawyer (Mark James) responded with High Court legal threats & pressure: fortunately it appears from the text I just read , Balky politely told him , he won’t see him court in London, but Strasbourg , and told him to effectively ‘Naff off’ , and decided not to change the name , as instructed: so, Virgin Wilderness still exists and Branson can’t own it now, (or ever , if I know Balky 🙂 >>> the reason i mention this is because in that response to the Lawyer, back in 2010, he stated clearly that he might call it Trump Virgin Wilderness, (beat that, lol) , and capitalised the words, suggesting there is nothing the dumb lawyer could do , and Balky’s rights were reserved as pre-condition to opening the document . He never heard from Mark James apparently , after that …
“because unfortunately for lil’ Dick and luckily for the rest of humanity , not all virgins , belong to Branson.” (then he passed me the bottle of Virgin Olive Oil and said ” … wouldn’t it be nice if we could sample the Palestinian’s …” ). Made me laugh 🙂
Oh and i can truthfully confirm that he predicted Trump’s victory , well in advance , with very sound complex reasoning that could be simplified into binary deductions and even when the polls were saying 93% HRC … and so did I, just to add , it was a delicious moment , being on record @theG. well prior to the “Suchness” of life, with eyes wide open, amongst ‘stoned’ incredulity and informing them all about Cambridge Analytica > a story that Carole d’Cadsaladr. picked up on from my comments and yet she still doesn’t ‘get it’, still today , unbelievable.
Perhaps what I want to say the most, when it comes to excess energy, is that it is already possible to achieve, without leaving carbon deposits, if we learn to use pure carbon & other resources, as a ‘bridge’ in the right way, like the Chinese have been developing , not just for the internet of the future , but many other applications to do with Photons: we have to stop living like Las Vegans and re-Style-us and pick up on the value in consuming less, which in turn reduces corporate growth: lol, if i sound like an old record , just remember that old vinyl needs a stylus and can still out perform the digital , for ‘Klang’ in the gang. Diamond life – Sadé
When it comes to carbon footprint, we are like snails on wheels of corporate elitism.
Regards
Tim
One humorous correction :- Pavlov’s “… raBid investments in increased militarisation. . . bordering on insanity” , rapidly accelerating a deplorable demise to be despised by following generations.
One question: what is “Wetiko materialism” and have you ever thought of writing an article for OFFG on big oil dependency and shifting the shape of minds set on self-immolation to post carbon solutions?
Coz’ the truth is we are all presently functioning within systems that are morally & financially bankrupt, with Debt clocks ticking well out of control, for ages and yet, we can destroy one another and the planet completely already, without utilising Fossil Fuels at all. Fossil Fuels merely offer the illusion of military dominance & control, but in fact largely fund the very Deep State Governance that oppresses and wages daily war , against & in preference to …
Peace & Мип
Tim
Tim (and Balky)
I’m a bit wary of the techno-fix. Technological and efficiency revolutions increase energy and resource consumption (the Jevons Paradox) …whilst be limited by EROEI for all other resources. Beyond a certain level of efficiency: any further progress is subject to diminishing returns for marginal benefits. For instance, I think it is quite well accepted (outside magic realist imaginations) that a hydrogen economy would be an energy sink …and an evolutionary backwater. And just what would the energy footprint of a distributed ledger blockchain SDR be? That’s a lot of solar panels …or energy and resources that could be better deployed elsewhere!
‘Wetiko materialism’ is my term for the Western psychoses. It’s a Cree term for it : which is taking on a new meaning in the work of Paul Levy, David Ray Griffin, Fritjof Capra and others – in what I would describe as an emergent quantum-process philosophy-neuroscientific-spirituality nexus …i.e. a way of finding an antidote to the cannibalistic madness of a humanity consuming humanity to sustain a dwindling elitist anti-humanity. That’s wetiko!
The basis is the mind-body separation taking the form of an extreme metaphysical consumption of consciousness. Reality is externalised in a self-reinforcing projective feedback loop …taking the external object pole as a separate reality – creating the subject pole; recreating the object pole; confirming the subject/object polarity ad infinitum. But the misplaced concretised duality is mere projection – vijnaptimatrata …all phenomenal dharmas (exterior objective entities) are ‘consciousness only’. Various traditions are converging on the spiritual-scientific-quantum nexus confirming what our Wisdom Traditions have told us all along. We are not separate. Externally materialised objective reality is a mere illusion – Mara, Wetiko, parakalpita, samsara, etc. Capitalism is the reification of the illusion …as the illusion of the illusion. Being caught in the illusion is wetiko.
[Believe it or not: I don’t have time to write …but we were snowed in this morning!]
Peace is in the process of becoming real. Becoming real is in the process of peace.
Fuck wetiko!
From where I’m sitting, global conflict seems a very long way away. I’d say, with neoliberalism and home ownership, we keep ourselves on a short leash because a few crumbs are being brushed off the top table and those recipients of imagined wealth through debt (home ownership) are loath to give it up.
I base my argument on Brexit. The thought of a possible 30% drop in house prices is a disaster for many, no matter which party they support. And the probability of not being able to retire to Spain or France makes them very angry. They should be rejoicing for their children and the citizens of France and Spain who will not have to suffer house price inflation, but they don’t think like that.
With a defence budget 10 times bigger than the next country and an economic reliance on it staying that way, I’d say the inevitable economic meltdown for America and then the rest of us will bring about change. And given we’ve pushed the neoliberal managed democracy envelope as far as we can, I hope economic meltdown will come with a cyclical change in politics. We can’t go much further right, so we have to go left.
”A billion men seeking peace cannot be enslaved.”
”Only our desire for it can bring about a new and better world.”
So said Henry Miller in his book, ”The Colossus of Maroussi.” Old Henry was utterly scathing in his descriptions of the media, saying that they only bring death and misery.
In the context of the warmongering Guardian and its lickspittle contributors, I can only agree with him.
”This is the inevitable conflict which must eventually occur.” Eventually? I think that it has already started. And it is not going to be a long drawn-out conflict, like say the 100 years war. Climate change will make it short. Choose your side Eros or Thanatos, Life or Death.
Conflict is inevitable so choose the side you believe to be right and fight for your belief. Here is a brave lady who chose to stand and fight NATZO, the “irresistible armed might” of the evil powers discussed above — and is now fighting an even bigger foe: cancer.
Asma Assad wearing a gay chemotherapy headscarf, back to work after her operation, comforting the parents of a fallen Syrian soldier:
?w=700
Asma Assad recommends to women: Scan early and scan often.
“But there is second group of people which is the polar opposite of this first group. These people hate war and love peace. They hate the idea of exploiting the poor. They hate the idea of destroying lives for profit. These people cannot and will never accept such exploitative behavior. Period.”
Where does this second group buy its goods? Or do they not partake in the capitalist economy at all? The fact is, we all of us in this second group are hypocrites (though the degree of hypocrisy may differ) because we have to participate in the capitalist system to ensure our own survival. We also, if we live in the West, are obliged to pay taxes to fund these wars. And what if what we protest as capitalism’s excesses are not its excesses at all, but essential for/integral to its survival? I.e. there is literally no choice, other than *which* countries to attack, and ‘saving’ Venezuela only means another target being selected?
Also, to speak of the second group as being ‘peace-loving’ is to mistake the menu for the food. Being ‘peace-loving’ is simply a posture if one buys gas, eats food sourced from Big Ag, uses technology ft rate earth metals mined by children, etc. It’s idealism of the worst, most self-serving kind to want capitalism without war, like sugar-free chocolate or alcohol-free beer. The answer is actually to replace capitalism.
This article is far too simplistic in its analysis for it to be considered useful. The only answer is the overthrow of capitalism and the implementation of socialism worldwide. Those who have not done so, should serk out the superior analysis at wsws.org than this addled mish-mash.
Yes, we’re all in it together one way or another.
“We declare our right on this Earth to be a man, to be a human being, to be respected as a human being, to be given the rights of a human being in this society, on this Earth, in this day, which we intend to bring into existence by any means necessary.”
— Malcolm X, 1965
“By any means necessary” – indeed Malcolm’s words seem more vital and relevant today then they ever have – and for a wider range of critically important reasons.
“Victory achieved by violence is tantamount to defeat since it is temporary.”
_M.K. Gandhi
It is clear that Malcolm X was approaching that perspective, that wisdom, in his last months, since, like Gandhi, like King, he had come to see how the dialectic plays out.
All those who develop into that ineluctable wisdom of peace, and are also very politically potent and prominent, are men “marked for assassination”.
See a pattern here? X, Gandhi, King, JFK and RFK and Honest Abe. All executed in a shocking heartbeat by a bullet. And in public.
Remarkably consistent circumstances. Oligarchs maintaining their grip -their “Iron Heel” as Jack London called it memorably, “by any means necessary.” Ballots voided by bullets.
It’s almost as if the victims were “on” to something, and the ghouls who run this world didn’t want us to be too encouraged by peacemakers.
Any means necessary must be the right means or they are simply meaningless.
Especially in these latter times, when the advances of technology have put all the means in the hands of those who are the most meaningless.
“There is one group of people which considers war both necessary and routine. Some members of this group make their money building and selling bombs and guns and tanks and missiles. These people need wars, otherwise they don’t make any money. Other members of this group make their money by taking and selling the natural resources of other weaker nations. These members need wars to ensure they get easy access to the resources they want. Other members of this group make their money enslaving the poorest people in these subservient conquered nations, putting them to work in factories with inhumane working conditions for inhumane wages. Other members of this group are facilitators, working in government or media. They plan, organize, fight, and sell these wars to a largely unwitting public. All these groups of people have formed a close knit coalition, working together to control and exploit the people of the world for their own collective material gain.”
“Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres.” ~Julius Caesar, De Bello Gallico
Julius Caesar, as Michael Parenti masterfully documents and demonstrates in his book a dozen years ago, “The Assassination of Julius Caesar”, was intent on bringing democracy to the Roman Empire, having seen up close and personal what the oligarchs and their imperial lusts had occasioned, and for that he paid the price of many such reformers, murdered in full public spectacle, the Ides of March, as a “traitor to his class.”
Parenti, the paisano, no doubt had as one major motivation the desire to map out the mechanics of assassination, as it begs comparisons to the elimination of the Kennedy brothers, JFK and RFK. And so many others.
Jesus said similar things, and suffered a similar treatment, “You stone the prophets, then your children build their monuments.”
So, a lifelong study of this brings a certain serenity: “It is what it is.” And goes on and on.
But flash forward 2000 years, from then to now, and you might paraphrase Caesar, “Orbis terrarum est omnium divisum en partes duas.”
“All the world is divided into two parts.”
The author above points out,”to steal a page from Guy DeBord”, that “sociology is ideology” in our day, this world, and really there are only two camps. It’s all about the War or Peace. You have the Peacemakers and you have the Warmongers.
That’s all folks.
It’s a great organizing principle, for me, to see today’s world in such breathtaking simplicity.
Profits over people, or people before profits.
Simple as that. There really is no overlap, when you cut through it all. No matter what they say.
You start with that and everyone’s position becomes clear. Once you clear the smoke and remove the mirrors, everyone holds to either one or the other. At my churches in Orange County, California, they talk and quote a lot about peace, from scripture and much holy writ, from ages past.
But who do they support at the polls, with their votes? Here, almost exclusively the warmongers. Fr. Blase Bonpane has pointed out at his fifty years of broadcasting for Pacifica, that Islam itself can be seen as developing out of a spiritual and patriotic response to the quest by the West and its thirst for conquest and hegemony, in the Middle East. It’s surely hard to disprove that summary of the source of centuries of wars there.
Lord Godfrey and the other Crusaders suffered defeat after defeat, trying to implement the seizure of the Holy Lands by the sword, repelled repeatedly by one of the most impressive leaders in Muslim history. St. Francis pleaded with the Crusaders to “drop their weapons” and approach the Soldan/Sultan with terms of love and brotherhood and peace for all. They laughed at him, basically.
So. Many (more or less suppressed) “hidden” histories of the time, record that Saint Francis of Assisi then went directly to the Sultan, with one companion, in a daring gambit that clearly brooked martyrdom, and presented his simple message. The Sultan was so impressed that he became his first convert, in all of Islam, yet cautioned, “If my followers find this out, they will kill both you and me. As I would not bring about your death, and I have many matters of consequence to conclude, I will delay this….” Or words to that effect (Source: “Il Fioretti” ~The Little Flowers of St. Francis, chapter 24, and Bonaventura’s “Vita”, etc., etc.) That history is easy enough to find, if you’re inclined to believe the testimony of a gaggle of saints.
But, it does remain an undisputed and historical fact that St. Francis and his brethren were given a “passport” by said Sultan, of free passage throughout those Muslim territories, and were the only “Christian souls” allowed to be present and carry on there, in the Holy Lands, for centuries.
Coincidence or Conspiracy?
We report, you decide.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
In Matthew 5, Jesus says plainly, “Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be called the children of God.”
Which will it be, for “me and you,” for each (and every) one of us?
With all the staggering complexity of modern politics, the choice has never been clearer or simpler.
JFK said tellingly and underlined his cause in many ways in his last months before martrydom, in a similar quest, that it really was not at all about personal preferences or backgrounds or lifestyles, but just plain and simple necessity, as a practical matter.
Either learn to share and negotiate, or we all get blown away.
@ John Ervin. I enjoyed reading your comment but would disaagree with the Sainthood of JFK. He was responsible for escalating the IndoChina war(the vietnam war)by taking the number of US “advisors” from just under a thousand to 16,000 and presided over the Bay of Pigs incident and the Cuban Missile Crisis. To his credit, though, was his rejection of the JCS to orchestrate false flag attacks on American soil to promote sympathy for another invasion of Cuba, which I still believe was partly the reason he was assassinated by the CIA and LBJ affiliates who wanted further military conflict against communism.
Other than that I found little to fault your observations and affirm the sentiments underlying your narrative.
First, you might want to read James Douglass “JFK and the Unspeakable.” He speaks of Dr. Norman Cousins, one of my father’s clients, who was chosen by JFK as a liaison between the White House, Castro, Kruschev, and Pope John XXIII.
Anyway, the documentation of that seminal work by Douglass, a Catholic lay theologian and student of the assassinated Fr. Thomas Merton, is well sourced and will clear up any historical misunderstandings, OR long time CIA disinfo.
ALSO: “History Will Not Absolve Us” by E. Martin Schotz is unforgettably brilliant and contains many primary documents that are revealing of all this, to say the least.
The author has generously, and very patriotically, made a free copy available online.
“Something like scales” of long time PROPAGANDA fell from my eyes, to pataphrase the Book of Acts, as I read one document after another, all within the last year or so.
Douglass dedicates his JFK biography to Schotz.
So, take a proper gander at those two. You’ll be surprised!
I was going to suggest also “JKF and the Unspeakable” ,one of the best books IMHO on JFK.
I believe JFK also had an epiphany when discussions started with Khrushchev .
I would recommend it also to anyone wanting to find out more about JFK.
What you say is all based on CIA disinfo.
That’s not opinion, that’s “facts should be sacred” to quote someone’s tagline.
Read the books I referenced here. The Schotz book is free online.
They clear all that up beyond any doubt. Any shadow of a doubt.
PRIMARY SOURCE DOCUMENTS. Long suppressed or ignored by a lovely thug media.
And who said JFK was a saint? I wrote of his martyrdom for peace. And that’s clearly documented in NSAM 263 sent to A.G. RFK a month before the author’s murder, “most foul”.
Martyrdom of that kind trumps many kinds of mere sainthood!
(Just don’t tell the folks at Langley, VA, that. They still have a bottomless budget to disinform us endlessly, relentlessly, incessantly, about the Kennedys et al. A HALF CENTURY PLUS LATER.)
LOL
John
People who take the Douglass novella as some sort of sacred text can only do so if the do NOT reference the primary source documents. I’ve been referencing primary sources for years, and they paint quite a different picture of JFK, and particularly RFK. The area I am most au fait with is the incorporated ‘Thirteen Days’ propagandic narrative, which Douglass relies on as primary (but is a contrived fiction finished by Sorenson). Which can only amount to a deliberate historiographical rewriting of the primary documents to create a narrative fiction. Particularly as Douglass cited the primary ExComm tapes: then rewrote what they say – selectively creating a JFK/RFK against ‘the Unspeakable’ counterfactual fiction. RFK was the chief hawk pushing for invasion from day one to the end. Thus, the ExComm tapes and ‘Thirteen Days’ are incompatible sources: so blending the two cannot produce a faithful or historically accurate portrayal. The Cuban Missile Crisis, as retold by Douglass, is a fabrication – not at all faithful to the primary record. Which makes me wonder about the rest of the text. Saying that it removes any doubt – citing the primary record to substantiate this – can only mean you have not read Sheldon M Stern’s transcription of the primary record.
That Douglass did, then parsed out Operation Mongoose (presided over by RFK for his brother) reduces its worth to that of low grade fiction. As for NSAM 263: does anyone actually read it before they cite it as ‘Teshuva’: a turning to peace? He left 15,000 ‘advisers’ in harms way for a further two years (so he could win an election). Now research what those boy scouts were up to (‘counterinsurgency’; ‘pacification’; Operation Sunrise; Operation Ranch Hand; the forced collectivisation (and enforced Catholicisation) of the Buddhist majority in ‘strategic hamlets’; etc). Today, we would call it ‘ethnic cleansing’: so please explain how that meant ‘peace’ to the Vietnamese?
What is left is a work of literary fiction that is a selective retelling which substantiates and legitimates an American exceptionalist birds eye view of history. An exceptionalism based on overarching military and nuclear domination; economic subjugation, and the dominance of space. In his own words:
“Without the United States, South Vietnam would collapse overnight” [at 52:50].
Turning to peace – when peace means war – by doubling the nuclear arsenal? It is not a definition of peace I understand. It requires quite a substantial rewriting of history to convince anyone that war, or ‘pacification’, means peace. Fortunately, Douglass provides such a fictional exceptionalist account.
@John rvin. Thank you for the reply but with regard to JFK – you are batting on a losing wicket. I am not able to accurately refute what you reference as clearing up any doubt. The Schotz book did not cut it for me at all, neither was the Douglass mismatch and hotch potch. The tapes and wiretaps etc. that were released or “acquired” did nothing if not hang JFK and his brother by their own rope and whilst Nixon was a complete and utter monster along with Kissinger, JFK will forever have blood on his hands and as a Catholic, he should have had nightmares. He was most definitely a war hawking, self promoting sinner, as have most of the US Presidents been as weree the CIA and the JCS.
Sorry, but that’s the way I lean after hearing and learning of ALL the REAL facts.
“Profits over people, or people before profits.
Simple as that. There really is no overlap, when you cut through it all. No matter what they say.”
You are completely mistaken, and rather than being simple, you are guilty of being simplistic.
Oh, snap.
Whatever!
Life is so simple when you understand it, fully . . .
You don’t, yet: & your comments regularly demonstrate this >>>
Keep searching yourSelf, for the answers.
They will come first from within . . .
As science leads the way forward and shines the light on your weak comprehension of …
The End Game.
Logic determines only one permanent revolution and it will come from within.
Tone it down a bit with your categoric rhetoric & opinion, daily , free your mind and listen to others.
Perhaps you might come to comprehend , where Technology leads ,
if you take the time to question your values & core needs.
Ubuntu, have fun sharing & learn simultaneously, about yourself & from others.
Always Learning,
Tim
Union compounds strength / Съединението Прави Силата
Sadly too late for anything to be done – Germany the United States and the United Kingdom delayed the end of World War 2 while plans were hatched that allowed Germany to escape the wrath of Russia.
This has all been going on since World War 1 and now they have a corrupt foothold in China despite what they say in the media – we have all been marked with a star on our foreheads and are now carrying the coffins that we have each made for ourselves – fashioned out of human greed and stupidity.
Let us all march with our coffins to that safe haven called Dresden.
If enough people around the world become aware of the bombshell information on Venezuela compiled by journalist Ben Norton, there may yet be a chance for averting unnecessary war, violence, bloodshed and destruction becoming experienced by the good people of that nation. Please share the truth about Venezuela everywhere:
https://grayzoneproject.com/2019/01/30/us-economic-warfare-venezuela/
Jerry Alatal: “there may yet be a chance for averting unnecessary war, violence, bloodshed and destruction”.
Indeed. Chavez and Maduro were democratically elected, and the people of Venezuela showed their good sense by not following the capitalist MSM line.
Democracy is a two-way street; the people need good candidates, and good candidates need a people not a sheeple.
Like in Venezuela, Cuba, Syria, Lebanon, Iran, Russia and China: their people chose good candidates, and their choice showed good results in resisting the AZC. Resistance is fertile, and can be done by ballot as by bullet.
If we fight on their terms we will lose as we will become just like them ,violent and extreme just like them .There is another way and it has been offered to us by the peacemakers through time immemorial . We , the peace makers will not fail .It is time .Time for the new world to be born . Be strong and from the heart because that is where this battle will be fought .
I agree, summitflyer. For some reason, many people seem to regard peacemakers as anti-establishment …and even treasonous. This is promoted wholeheartedly and with glee by the MSM. I watched the BBC’s Question Time last night and was appalled at the nature of the discussions on the Venezuela situation. Most on the panel, who clearly knew nothing about Venezuela other than the US line of propaganda that they have read over the past few days in the MSM, endorsed the simplistic, naïve approach of ‘getting rid of Maduro’ as soon as possible to make Venezuela a democratic and wealthy country again. The only one on the panel to suggest otherwise was Labour MP Richard Burgon who made clear that he acknowledged the situation for the Venezuelan people was “dire” but supported the idea of mediated peaceful discussions to agree a solution. Unbelievably this was met with derision by others who almost spat at him venomously for “supporting Maduro” and took it as yet another tenuous opportunity to have a go at Jeremy Corbyn. Clearly ‘peaceful solutions’ are no longer to be regarded as legitimate – and, indeed, first – options for dealing with problems.
https://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/1080922/BBC-question-time-labour-venezuela-crisis-fiona-bruce-jeremy-corbyn-maduro
@JudyJ. You have some stomach lass or can afford new TV remotes. I can’t watch BBCQT without risking the telly or denting the wall next to it if my aim is off. Good for you!
Hi Susan,
It can only be the masochistic side of my nature! It is tortuous and depressing but for some perverse reason I like to keep abreast of the nonsense being spouted in public domains. My sanity and what remains of my faith in human nature do end up seriously compromised though!
J.
An idea heard so often: “…and we should prepare for it.” How?
Yup. Like being told to ‘prepare for impact’ on a burning plane.
This is the obvious question. I thought about addressing it here, but there is no short or easy answer. On the one hand, just being aware of the situation is a step in the right direction.
Beyond that I have two suggestions. First, if you’re willing to be open-minded, I suggest you pray for help and the wisdom to know what to do to get through these times ahead. Second, we get to work building and growing a network of enlightened individuals who are ready to work together to get ourselves and others through these events when they begin.
dhfabian,
Human beings inherently become concerned when knowing their fellow human beings face dangers of physical harm in the range which includes death from war. Whether conscious of it or not people will sense the reality that all people, all life and all things are sacred and one, and therefore protective actions in response vary in ways dependent on the intensity and/or awareness of each individual. A good example is Mohandes Gandhi and his deep knowledge of Hinduism reflected by his actions in India, illustrated by the fact Gandhi considered the sacred book Bhagavad Gita his personal equivalent to the Christian Bible. Your essential question is how can a human being prepare for life’s greatest spiritual battle.
Should people choose to read the Bhagavad Gita by clicking “Hinduism” at the following website, perhaps some benefit will manifest with respect to such an all-encompassing, profoundest of all preparation. Namaste.
http://www.sacred-texts.org