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United State of Terror: Is Drone War Fair?

Wednesday, December 28, 2016

"Go to the Devil!", Blares Pravda.


The Horror of fossil fools.


In this morning's NYT, we're treated to two stories that demonstrate the questionable news stories of the NYT, one right on top of the other:

Russians No Longer Dispute Olympic Doping Operation

The response from Pravda:

Russian Sports Minister Pavel Kolobkov questioned the (NYT's) interpretation of Anna Antseliovich's words immediately.

"Our position in relation to this situation remains the same. I assume that The New York Times has misinterpreted the words from Anna Antseliovich. I think one needs to ask her to explain what she wanted to say," the minister told TASS.

The Kremlin has also commented on the article. Putin's press secretary Dmitry Peskov said the Kremlin strongly denies the involvement in the state in the use of doping by Russian athletes.
"From the very beginning, of course, we have denied any involvement of the state, the government, departments, services, or agencies in the possible use of doping by athletes," Peskov said.

The second headline:

California, at Forefront of Climate Fight, Won't Back Down to Trump

 In this quite extensive article detailing the stance of the 10'th largest economy in the world, the State of California's self-portrait as a leader in the fight against climate change is not only hailed as accurate, but puts California in the light of a stalwart opponent of such deniers as those being appointed to the new Trump Tower of Power elite.

Stating that, "Domestically, California has long been a leader on vehicle emissions" (which is true; only Texas spews more poisonous, polluting gases from its autos' exhaust pipes), they pretend to believe that such standards were introduced to fight against climate change (they weren't) even though they have only INcreased vehicular traffic since they were passed. Because, as there is no transportation infrastructure besides the automobile in the vast majority of the state, other than airplane travel (which is a far greater polluter per vehicular mile), their transportation sector is a 20'th century fossil-fueled fossil. So, while implying that therefore California is a leader in reducing greenhouse gases because of its more stringent exhaust regulations, the article omits the fact that the very legislation that cut down on the individual exhaust, was followed by an explosion in the number and size of the vehicles plying California's roadways, thereby causing the aggregate amount of greenhouse gases exhausted into the atmosphere to actually increase.

But, as pointed out in the last post, if it doesn't follow the narrative, it 's not deemed to be News Fit to Print. A further demonstration of which is the fact that, although the referenced article is quite long, there is absolutely no mention of the fact (one of which most of the urban Californian elites who really believe this trope are completely unaware of ) that California is the country's second largest producer and refiner of petroleum and its products, its industry leaders having lobbied heavily to convince Obama to lift the ban on oil exports that had been in place since 1973.

This allows California to become the stalwart leader of the clean energy meme while simultaneously enriching itself and filling its state's coffers with tax receipts from the export of every last drop it can squeeze out (California is also one of the leading fracking states, despite its known history of earthquakes).

So when the same newspaper that says Russia no longer disputes the doping operation of which it's accused, and you think well, just because Pravda disagrees, it is after all, Pravda, remember that it is after all, the NYT, and they have their own agenda, too, and, as the article about California shows, when the data doesn't agree with their narrative, that data is simply omitted. After all, how can being the second largest oil-producing state, one that has ensured it can now export its oil reserves until the last drop is exhausted, have anything but a salutary effect on Global Warming?

But as California's governor made clear at Copout21, even as Porter Ranch was spewing out more methane than even the North Dakota Bakken formation, whose flaring of methane is on such a monstrous scale it can be seen from space, Jerry Brown, fully cognizant of what was happening in his home State, had the audacity to  proclaim that:

"For governments to sit and do nothing, accepting 'business as usual', is unacceptable. "States should do something to reduce their carbon footprint", he urged (apparently that "something" is giving free rein to Fracking companies to squeeze out every last drop of hydrocarbons left in the ground).

He goes on to insist that:

"Tens of trillions of dollars will be wasted and the lives of hundreds of millions of people will be impacted if we don't stop the horror of burning fossil fuels and replace it with renewable energy."

 All the while knowing that, under his administration, which gave its blessing to the Porter Ranch project, the worst disaster in the history of energy exploration, had already been spewing unburned fossil fuel (a far worse horror, as it is providing 25 times the warming potential of the CO2 that would have resulted if it had actually been burned to generate energy) into the atmosphere for two months.

There seems to be a battle going on between whether the people in the Trump camp who are right-wing conspiracy theorists that claim climate change is a hoax, are worse, or the self-congratulatory Climate Change opponents, such as the hypocritical, spotlight-basking Jerry Brown, who actually believe their own rhetoric even as their lifestyle and the industry on which that lifestyle depends, flies in the face of reality as determinedly as any Hoaxer's inane belief in crackpot conspiracy theory does.













Tuesday, December 27, 2016

GWOT's New? Global War is World War.


Smooth: To cause to appear less harsh or severe than is the case.


An example of news as raw data: The Russian ambassador has been assassinated, and a plane full of Russian patriots has been blown out of the sky.

People's reaction tends to be "as if" there will now be war rather than "that" we are already at War: almost more appropriate to make-believe than to belief.  Because this War, a War that neither US citizens nor their allies, really consider to be a War at all, is a War that has been defined (by the very Nation that declared it) to be a World War, because the fine distinctions that may be made between a Global War and a World War are simply too subtle for me to discern. The word "Global", however, was decided upon for a specific purpose: to disguise the frightful dimensions and generations-long ramifications of the Bush administration's economic stimulus plan of declaring War on the entire World.

And the Global War on Terror has neither been won nor declared to be over.

 Which shines a light on why a very well-known fact, a fact familiar to journalists more than in any other profession, but one that is never mentioned, least of all by the NYT:

 In War the first casualty is the Truth.

The second is your soul, but no one really cares about losing that, certainly not  the NYT.

This quote is anything but new, and in fact dates all the way back to the Greek dramatist, Aeschylus.

No one know this better than our embedded media, which is what the western media has been for more than a decade now, which is what gave rise to alternative reporting on the internet in the first place. And is what made Jon Stewart, a comedic hack of mediocre talent, carried by a lowly rated cable TV station, Comedy Central, a highly praised place in the News firmament for reporting what he unabashedly referred to as Fake News since it didn't jive with the Real news being propagated by the rest of the media.

Because Jon lifted the curtain to show how the Ministry of Truth operates as an echo chamber such that he could show clips of the various MSM outlets, not only covering the exact same stories, but having their "analysts" all using the exact same phrases. The US may be the "Indispensable" nation it claims to be, but it is still a nation, and it's a nation at War, and nations at war do not honor the truth, they honor whatever version of the truth is good for morale, and will therefore allow continuation of hostilities. It is historically called propaganda, and it is all the American public is fed unless they take the time and effort to investigate themselves, and the tool most used for that investigation is the good ole internet.

Case in point:

Today, the NYT reported on "Advertising's Moral Struggle". Yes that's right, this "news" source is declaring that "the marketing industry is facing a moral quandary". The advertising industry! The industry wholly dedicated to deception, false representation and conniving chicanery to entice readers to spend hard-earned dollars on what they most decidedly do NOT need, and use seductive imagery, flattering depictions and the stoking of envy as the tools of their trade, and NYT is publishing as NEWS, no less, that that same Advertising Industry is in a moral quandary.

 Advertising is the Karl Rove of industry, it not only eschews morality, but brags about its lack of it, as that is its strength. Like the ratings agencies, you pay them and they will make up the most beautifully adorned lies to blanket your product with, and have no compunction whatsoever, as to what effect falling for their lies will have on your intended victims' health or well-being. How soon we forget beer and liquor ads, never mind the star of Advertising's power: Cigarette ads. Lies. Cancer. Emphysema. Shortened life span: All portrayed by the moral advertising industry as being instead, a source of popularity, pleasure, sheer spasmodic, mad joy. And all for under a dollar! Whooohoooo!

Alive with pleasure ... Dead from Cancer.


Remember Joe Camel?

Joe Camel was emblematic of what were the insidious, underhanded marketing gimmicks by which cigarettes (any product, the truth be told) are sold in America, using  slick, colorful presentations of a grinning cartoon animal churlishly intended to appeal specifically to children to entice them to take up smoking. (This verbiage is right out of the referenced article in the NYT itself).

In other words, to deceive children in order to get them addicted to a product known by government, industry, and advertisers alike, that would destroy their health and eventually lead to their premature death. Cigarettes, not marijuana, was THE gateway drug. People smoked as though they were paid to, like it was their part-time job. All thanks to the advertising industry, the industry that the NYT, reports as news, is in a moral quandary "because it bankrolls sites that are toxic to society".

How do they drudge these items up and then present them to the public as news? Well, naturally, to pretend that advertising, their only source of revenue, is a legitimate source of information. One that actually ponders the negative results their activities might have on the citizenry. LoL!!

So keep that in mind when you read the NYT: they are embedded propagandists intent on selling their paper using any scheme that they can come up with to push products that are not only harmful, but deadly, onto a public they have convinced they exist to serve its interests. It doesn't; it has an agenda:

"By and large, talented reporters scramble to match stories with what internally is often called “the narrative.” We were occasionally asked to map a narrative for our various beats a year in advance, square the plan with editors, then generate stories that fit the pre-designated line."

This is what happens even to a newspaper with the prestige of the NYT when it becomes a tool for the propaganda of a War-mongering elite, to which they then become beholden. Garbled news is Goebbeled news, no matter how lofty your intentions. After all, Subarus may be made with Love (LIARS!!), but they still spew death with every mile driven. That's about as "toxic to society" as you can get, and I can assure you they experience not a jot of moral quandary whatsoever ... and never have.















             

Wednesday, December 14, 2016

My Kremlin Ties.

 Kremlin Ties.
 It seems that there's a brouhahahahaha being made over the fact that both the Donald and his pick for Secretary of Scapegoat are being excoriated for having the audacity to have "Kremlin Ties". (Which kremlin they have ties with, there being a multiplicity of them, is not mentioned). The fact that the leaders-to-be of the Greatest country ... ever ... in the history of the world even unto the end of the world, (since its ascendancy marks the end of history), should have its leaders consorting with the proclaimed, Orwellian-named enemy, that other oil-rich nuclear power, is presented as an OHMYGOD! horrifific (sicsic) development, apparently means that we should all either quail in fear or turn ourselves into a rabble in arms to protest against the horrendous possibility that the US and Russia should have a rapprochement (a Detente, perhaps?).

So the CEO of Exxon/Exxoff is now going to be Secretary of State, oh my. How terrible that one of the men running things behind the scenes where he can hide from the political flack caused by his decisions should now be in a position where he has to face the music for them. A case in point being his saber-rattling over China's South Sea islands, which are little more than an ginormous oil Platform. Isn't it better that his conflict of interest is so glaring as opposed to his use of the usual hand-puppet to disguise his self-aggrandizing machinations? If we actually had any journalists left to hold his feet to the fire, definitely. As it stands, well, perhaps not.

What a world, what a world.

And all the howling coming from the failed Clinton camp fails to mention the Secretary's twice-repeated claim to the American people during the 2nd Presidential debate that the USA is "Energy Independent" a bald-faced, stupid lie that even the Wapo couldn't ignore, printing the fact that it was a lie in their fact-checking column the next day, after which it was never brought up or mentioned ever again. But importing the energy the US and its oil-thirsty military machine needs to run itself into the ground is at the very center of US foreign policy, a fact, I suspect, any former Secretary of State is well-acquainted with.

The Russians are slumming the Russians are slumming. Using what , you say? Oh, Cyber attacks?

You mean by using the internetwork that was developed by the US military, and then turned loose to private enterprise, much the same way computer technology and microchip manufacturing technology was released by the private sector to our enemies, because that's what communist countries such as China are. Aren't they? Or was it only Cuba that was our enemy? Cuba which, of all places, has been the recipient of intractable intransigence from the sole Super power, one that couldn't find any other place in the world to sequester (never imprison, since that would make them ... prisoners) their non-POW POW's, (since actually calling them POW's would bring them under the treaty obligation, to which the US is signatory, of the Geneva Conventions).

Not that I consider China our enemy, mind you, but, since the largest Communist country is not only a strategic trading partner with the US, but the strategic trading partner of the US, one to which sophisticated, taxpayer-funded technology was simply handed over in order to improve the profitability of US corporations, such as Apple Computer. Corporations which would never exist if not for the Federal Government, of which I believe the military is still a part, but that now refuse to pay taxes on their overseas' earnings. This to such a debilitating extent that the Bush administration had to grant a tax holiday in order to get them to repatriate their earnings. This leads one to wonder exactly why Russia was singled out as the enemy against whom all these multifarious industries were larded with US taxpayer dollars in order to build an information superhighway across which anybody in any country could thereby attack the US.

Because the collateral damage wreaked by turning over the government functions to the private sector are nowhere more glaring than those the USA has turned over to private industry that were previously functions of the military, such as cyber-security, the ramifications of which are the same as when any revolving door between public/private sectors are built: they leave open to the highest bidder secrets that were paid for and developed, not by the private sector which reaps the profits therefrom, but by the American taxpayer, who's now on the hook to pay for said development (and its onerous, never-ending finance charges and interest), yet has no way to collect the revenue from the very entities that became fat from it because all those fat cats pay fat lobbyists who pay fat-headed Senate and House representatives of the people to betray their constituencies.

Yet it's Russia you have a problem with?

It's like building the Emerald City and then building a road right to its heart paved with gold stolen from your own citizens, but that anyone else can then have access to as long as they lay a brick or two along the way, and then exclaiming, "Russians and commies and spies, OH My!", when they use those very instruments we ourselves have provided to them, to further their own interests.

And all this is assuming that the Russians did what they were accused of doing in the first place. But to check whether it's true we're supposed to ask who? The CIA? Are you kidding me?

The treaty President Obama recently concluded with Iran after decades of strife was necessary for one reason: the CIA involvement in overthrowing a legitimately elected leader of a sovereign State, because they believed he was too "left-leaning", and installing their own autocratic right-wing stooge in his place. And Iran never built a Super highway to facilitate, nay, practically invite, us to use to undermine their elections, as we have.

That one, and there are many more, unconstitutional interference with the election results of a Sovereign State, eventually precipitated the Iranian Revolution for which the USA has blamed the Ayatollah-so Khomeini (a cleric who would have had no power without the CIA's interference in another State's election), and the resulting Theocracy against which the right-wing now fulminates so self-righteously. Yet it is their right wing counterparts in the fifties, Allen Dulles being among the most notorious, that are responsible, not the Iranian revolutionaries, who we would today call terrorists, although they were clearly freedom fighters, for the current state of affairs.

That's the whole point of secrecy; never having to take responsibility for the consequences of your actions because you can always deny them. Kissinger called it Realpolitik, but the operating thesis is the same, They, not the ill-informed electorate, know what's good for the country (their country, not ours).

And now this nest of vipers, the same nest which fed the Bush administration false information to get us into yet another War, one that is still wreaking havoc in the world, and which thereby increased both their power and budget, while leaving the rest of us mired in intractable, unpayable debt,  is saying that the Russians are responsible for the US electorate giving the Presidency to an autocratic right-wing stooge of their own?

If they only had a heart, they'd shut up; if journalists only had the courage, they'd tell them to; if  we only had a brain we'd know they have their own agenda, and that our well-being is not on it.









Monday, December 12, 2016

COPout22's Catch22: Clean Energy is a Misnomer.


Devon Energy: Houston's flood, made possible by an atmospheric river, was just a hoax.


Hashing out what was thrashed about in COPout22, Sophie Yeo, in an article originally published by Carbon Brief, and posted on Resilience.org, briefly summarizes what was accomplished by the teams from 200 countries burning up more jet fuel to consider how to stop burning up more jet fuel.
Aghast at the election of climate-change-denier Trump to the presidency of the United States, they decided to continue their roadshow nonetheless, since, well, it's only for show anyway. Consequently, most of the time seemed to be spent on discussing where to hold the next conferences, but at some point they had to wonder where the money was coming from to implement all their high-minded ideas.

One of those things needing financing being their salaries and travel/entertainment expenses which resemble those of the Clinton foundation (which they had no problem with, considering they had all assumed, like the media, that said organization was in fact doing such a bang-up job of alleviating the Secretary's financial problems via a facade of humanitarianism). Naturally, they were delighted to find such a ready-made structure to copy in order to fund their own particular sinecures while expressing such heart-felt concern for the fate of the world.

But in our now completely capitalist world, (except Cuba. It's notable that the one country closest to fitting the environmental model needed to cut carbon emissions yet retain a rather modern lifestyle is never ever mentioned at any of these conferences, the fantasy being that the capitalist model, the one that got us into this intractable mess, will somehow serve to extricate us from it ... it however, won't, but better not say that or your place at the conference will be forfeited thereby) where do you suppose the money comes from to 'finance' these projects? The fairest and most expeditious means would be something akin to a carbon tax.

That would be a good thing, but, at least as evidenced here in the US of A, after 8 years with a climate-change-believing president, the price of gasoline is now as low as it's been for the entire century, and Americans are buying internal-combustion-engine-propelled vehicles with a larger carbon footprint than ever, at a faster clip than ever, (undoing all that good work the Bush administration did by jacking the price of oil up so high it crashed the global economy thereby decreasing the carbon footprint of the USA for the first time ... ever), specifically because the price of gas (-oline as well as natural) is so unconscionably low, yet no attempt has ever been made to put as little as a penny tax on said fossil-fuel-derived combustibles. The reason? Without affordable motorized personal transport, there is no modern life as we know it. So people will sell their own children to be able to keep driving ... they, in fact, ARE selling their own children's future for precisely that reason, either because, like Republicans, they deny climate change, or ridiculously call it a hoax (a hoax is by its very nature a conspiracy, making the President-elect of the most powerful economy in the world a conspiracy nut), or, like the Democrats, they are in denial about climate change, a subtle, but very important difference. Those paying attention to COPout22 belonging to the latter, those ignoring it completely, the former.

It has been my argument for some time now that it is actually those in climate change denial who are the more dangerous of the two groups, because those claiming it is a hoax (as demonstrated by Trump's admitting that, "There is some connectivity there") become more ridiculous as time goes on (like Marco Rubio wading out to his car through Miami's flooded streets after giving a speech wherein he called climate change a hoax), while those who don't deny it but are in denial about it, give plausible reasons for their continued blindness. But every mitigating ploy they come up with in order to ameliorate the condition instead exacerbates it as evidenced by the financing schemes that COPout 22 is trying to hammer out.

But all of their finance plans smack of Trudeau-ism:

"Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has tried to balance the growth of the oil industry with environmental progress, so while he approved pipelines, he's also approved a national carbon tax".

Note that the attempt being made is not to balance the oil industry with environmental concerns, but to balance the growth of the oil industry. Not its managed decline, or even its stasis, but it's planned growth. And how does he do that? With a national carbon tax, so that the government itself is dependent upon not only the revenues it receives now, but becomes progressively more dependent on these tax receipts as time, and the growth of said industry, funnel more revenues into government coffers, putting the government's stated intentions in direct conflict with their fiduciary outlays. To see where that dynamic is heading, one need merely to recall the Deepwater Horizons disaster of BP's where their executives helicoptered off the exploding platform right before it blew up in their faces. The technology used and the players deploying it were all operating on the edge of a needle point, disregarding dangers, with our government's blessing, as they were right behind them salivating for the tax benefits.

The tax will begin at C$10 (USD$7.60) per ton in 2018, rising by C$10 per year until it reaches C$50 in 2022, quintupling the amount of leverage the tar sands operators will have over their government overseers, who will likewise be 5 times more likely to find ways to keep the cesspool of dirty-oil-derived filthy lucre from being depleted. But since Cenovus Energy and Canadian Natural Resources have both announced plans to expand existing projects, adding 50,000 bpd and 40,000 bpd, respectively, the first such expansions since the collapse of oil prices two years ago, indications are net positive that Alberta is ready to pour money into these, the dirtiest oil projects in the world, as it celebrates the OPEC/NOPEC agreement to curtail their production of cleaner-burning, less energy-intensive oil from existing wells.


That's the Catch22 the Copout22 conference never addresses, although it's in play right now, and demonstrated by Canada's plans for increasing their output as OPEC decreases theirs, is that, as the price of oil rises, the amount of it on the world market that is derived from the most polluting and energy-intensive sources rises with it. And as that price rises, it crashes economies that can't operate with such expensive oil prices. Hence, the demand shrinks crashing the price yet again and curtailing the output of the more expensive sources, as the price they can get for it can't cover the costs of extracting, refining. and shipping it. Seesaw economics.

This, together with the uptick in fracking in the USA immediately following the agreement, goes further to show the actual intentions of the world, which, (something the COPout22 attendees seem to have forgotten), is no longer the province of the Sovereign States that pretend they're still relevant, but of the Corporations which those same States have given free rein over what used to be their province. And there is not a single Corporation that has signed any of these moronic agreements, and the probability that they will follow any of them is exactly nil. The Most powerful economic entity on the planet, the US of bloody A, can't even get them to pay the taxes they owe, and yet we all feel coddled in careless complacency by the pronouncement of this council that major corporations will stop doing business as usual, but, back to those taxes again, they can never pay any taxes if their only way of making profits is by turning energy into matter ... ie manufacturing, which, as industry cuts more and more employees, burns more and more fuel to make up with computer-mechanized, fossil-fuel-generated robo-labor what used to be done by carbohydrate-fueled human labor. 

(Now, let's think about this for a second. Henry Ford paid his workers more than his competitors in order to allow them to be able to afford the products he was manufacturing (well, they were manufacturing; he provided the facility that enabled them to do so) creating positive economic feedback, it is therefore simple economics that extracting those humans from the equation, and paying the humans remaining half the salary their older peers receive, means that robotics not only ensures negative economic feedback, but any positive feedback it does provide would, by Ford's logic, and the iron law of supply and demand, mean that the economy would then dictate that the needs of the robots be met first, and only secondarily those of humans. Thus, one would suspect, we should expect the manufacture of robotic, or pilotless, cars: automobiles manufactured by robots to be driven by robots. Soon, it would matter not a whit how much demand for fossil fuels declined among humans, because that slacking off of demand by humans would be more than made up for (is already being made up for) by a concomitant increase in demand by the Brace (an amalgamation of "manufactured Base" and "race") of Robots).

And Canada is just one oil project in one country. You can look at the countries of Brazil, Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria, as well as the US states of Texas, California, Alaska and North Dakota, and see that, based on the loan portfolio's already on their balance sheets, on which future tax revenues, and therefore, pension liabilities, depend, that the COPout 22 conference is a boondoggle, a distraction, a mere sleight-of-hand calculated to ease the anxiety of those who realize global warming is going to make their offspring's future untenable, but ceaselessly, selfishly, inexplicably, keep having more and more children, keep pouring their money into investments to 'save' for a future that isn't possible, because to imagine a future different from the present is, despite humanity's high-flown, overblown vision of itself, beyond its capability.

Because the story that those moneys already garnered and spent years into the future tell is far different than the narrative the signers of those non-enforceable agreements would have you swallow, because they are based on agreements that actually DO have teeth in them, and those teeth are razor-sharp and ever-eager to clamp down and shred to bits any international accord that usurps their legally binding contacts to use the burning of fossil fuel to enable them to dig up more and more of those fossil fuels to then burn even more fossil fuel to deliver that fossil fuel to the place it will be burned, while, simultaneously in country after country, the mindless incineration of human bodies, referred to as cremation, using fossil fuel to burn flesh and bones to ash, continues to be a growth industry, pouring the carbon from billions of people, carbon sequesters, in a steadily increasing arc, into the atmosphere, by making them instead into carbon pumps. This is only one of many easily halt-able examples, of needlessly venting CO2 into the atmosphere, that, even as we have learned about global warming and its cause, has only increased, with no justification whatsoever, except that we can, helping the global temperature relentlessly do the same: increase.

So as we contemplate the selection of Oklahoma Attorney General Scott Pruitt to lead the EPA, in full knowledge that he is a known ally of the oil and gas industry, whose also a climate change "skeptic" (ie paid stooge of the hydrocarbon industries), and an expert in helping his unctuous buddies sidestep environmental law and regulation, we should remember these facts and then wonder, what about methane? Because even as the obvious contribution to its sudden rise since 2005 or so is fairly obviously co-incident with the frenetic pace of the growth of fracking in the US, Pruitt has spearheaded a fight against EPA regulations, suing the agency over greenhouse gas rules: The New York Times wrote in a Dec. 2014 article that Pruitt submitted a letter to the EPA, disputing the agency’s calculation about methane emissions from natural gas wells. A letter that was secretly written by lawyers for Devon Energy, demonstrating Pruitt’s close ties to the industry. 

But, with the emphasis on CO2, CH4's dramatic increase in the atmosphere, and most especially in the Arctic, where it bubbles up in long plumes kilometers in breadth, is rarely mentioned, despite its far greater impact on global near-term warming (over a 100-year period, it traps 29 times more heat per mass unit than carbon dioxide). And this increase, although agriculture and animal husbandry are blamed as co-factors, is directly related to the ring of fire that's been lit all along the littoral area of the Arctic Ocean, from Russia, to Alaska, from Norway to Scotland, North Dakota to the Athabasca, these far-flung oil developments vent un-flared methane into the atmosphere where there is no one to either monitor nor complain about such emissions, and a thin atmosphere is ill-equipped to lower escalating levels, since, although uncontrolled build-up of methane in Earth's atmosphere is naturally checked by methane's reaction with hydroxyl radicals formed from singlet oxygen atoms and water vapor, as more and more of those oxygen atoms are bound onto carbon atoms, becoming CO2, the earth's atmosphere contains less available oxygen, so methane stays in the atmosphere longer and at higher concentrations. But this rapidly accumulating gas is not even on the COPout22's agenda, and even if it were, the new EPA appointee, has a pseudo-science partner in the form of Devon energy, to name just one, to spew out false data that's far more accepted than simply denying global warming. Ironic, ain't it? The same person who denies global warming exists can turn around and say that methane isn't escaping as fast as the EPA (which has nothing to gain by inflating the amount at which it's escaping) says it is, is somehow, without any data to back his nonsensical claims, believed, despite the knowledge that he is a known conspiracy-theory-addled idiot.

I just don't get this. A hoax is, by definition, a conspiracy. In any other realm, conspiracy theorists are dismissed (admittedly ofttimes unadvisedly) as irrelevant tin-foil-hat crackpots. But in the realm of climate science, they can and do regularly get appointed to high government offices, responsible for making decisions that impact the future of the entire world. In this context, holding conferences that jet people around the globe to pretend they are "doing something" to ameliorate the problem their own mindset enables, is pure hokum, and should be called out as such. Get Exxon/Mobil/ Devon, all the nationalized oil companies, including Rosneft, to this table and then perhaps something concrete will get hammered out, but until then, or unless that happens, this is just a sideshow; a circus to keep us entertained while our world is burned to a cinder.

 

Wednesday, December 7, 2016

Hail Trump Triumphal.

                               
                         Among Oakland’s dozens of artist warehouses is one called Deathtrap.

The Ghost Ship of Fools gutted by fire and reported on ad nauseum.


Russian Hospital base destroyed by "Freedom Fighters". Not a word from the MSM; posted by "Faux News" sites.


 As the tempest about faux news sites goes postal, the NYT published an article excoriating a site that published material that supposedly caused an addled-brained psycho to attack a pizzeria. The journalism was yellow, the intention to inflame hysteria against faux news, which the MSM publishes on a regular basis under a different guise (although they do warn us that it is breaking, they never admit that it is, in reality, already broken), to a red hot inferno, hinting that we need a Ministry of Information. Yet some of these so-called faux news sites, working tirelessly without compensation, were the very sites that, pre-2008, were busy publishing articles and analyses detailing the real crisis threatening the economic system while the NYT, as well as, well, ALL the other news outlets in the country, had their collective noses so far up the Bush administration's ass they couldn't see beyond the foggy bottom of malodorous dung they were shoveling out for the American public to digest, purportedly for their edification, but in reality to keep them in line with the war-mongering reality of Full Rectum Domination promulgated and mercilessly enacted under that administration's tutelage, that is now so enmeshed in our foreign policy that even after eight years of Obamamama, the man who would be  President, but settled for Caretaker-in-Chief, still holds sway over our affairs of State.

Although more subtle than the lies published by some of the worst sites listed, Brietbart being among these latter, the misinformation and bias of what came to be termed the 'liberal  press' ( although it was only superficially liberal and unworthy of the name "Press") is the reason that the newspapers across the country were abandoned by their readership en masse, a phenomena still blamed on the internet, but which started long before there was any such entity.

You can find an example every day of their yahoo reportage, the latest evident today in the blurb announcing,

"Another defeat for the Islamic State as its ambitions for a militant empire buckle on multiple fronts." 

Now those ambitions are in direct conflict with the US policy of Full Spectrum Domination, which, if we had newspapers, you know, real newspapers with reporters, not just rats scurrying through the halls of power looking for breadcrumbs, would inform (oh, that's right, that's not their job, is it?, the job of newspapers in a system that has had any non-capitalist motives wrung out of it, is to sell their rag so that advertisers will pay their outlandish rates), would have objected to that term and at least explained to their readership that Full Rectum Domination is simply an overblown, propagandist invention to enable us all to feel comfortable with the fact that it is used to provide a cover for the ambitions of a militant empire. A thin veneer, to be sure, but that's all we need, because our own belief in our evangelical mission to go forth and subdue all opposition to our Superior Will is so entrenched that we don't bother to question such high-minded-sounding, but undemocratic to the bone, verbiage.

Yet, despite the fact that the very name "The United States of America" was decided upon because the founding fathers had every intention of stretching forth their power and adding to the territorial extant of the newly-won country, all to fulfill the Manifest Destiny of the fledgling nation to overcome all opposition and thereby bestride a continent, the United States has always been, and is now, an Empire. A militant Empire. One of unparalleled ambition, as evidenced by such soaring propaganda that is created to lull a populace too busy struggling to make a place for themselves in the world to bother about parsing what the actual ramifications of such a philosophy of Manifist Destiny, such as the utter annihilation of an entire way of life that had been extant on their land for thousands of years, might entail.

Yet, just as the US Constitution was crafted so as to deliberately legalize the subjugation of an entire race of men to the will of their racial superiors, building an empire on the backs of slaves while proclaiming themselves a Beacon of liberty and a fount of Freedom, so today the NYT can blithely declare that, "its ambitions for a militant empire buckle on multiple fronts", and not see the irony in those words, as the "End of History", USA!USA! Triumphalism of the 90's, following the demise of the USSR as a Ghost Ship of fools, did more to transform the militant empire of the USA than it did to change Russia. 

Because they needed communism more than Russia did, as a bugbear to scare the  populace into surrendering more and more of both their hard-earned dollars and much-touted freedom to a cadre of lobbyists in the swamps of Washington, the ability of the military to continue to siphon off more and more of the productive capacity of the country in unproductive arms manufacture, a dizzying array of alphabetic alpha-male-run intelligence agencies, and a proliferation of military bases around the globe to which the economic benefits of Army bases, long nurturing otherwise dead-in-the-water communities in the mainland,  were shut down and moved, along with that economic stimulus they once provided to US citizens, to the lands of those we would soon enough be bombing, so thus delivering economic growth to them, "the enemy", instead, as that's what filled the coffers of the heavily-invested-in-the-defense-industry American oligarchs; but all to the detriment of the American worker, and all done like a sly pickpocket, making sure your attention is elsewhere before pilfering your person, ever ready to jump back and claim himself innocent of any evil intent. It is, after all, a racket, and it ain't for tennis anyone.

But the authors of the PNAC had no intention of allowing the shrinking of the defense budget to happen. They had worked too hard during the Reagan/Bush years to:

  • End the draft, so that there would be no more Vietnam-like opposition to their Empiric schemes, as the sons of the elites no longer need worry about their own sorry asses being blown to bits in foreign lands,
  • Cemented in the ascendancy of the military via Military Keynesianism whereby not only did/does the government spending that goes to militaristic enterprises escalate decade after decade, but becomes so entwined in the real economy that any reduction in military spending creates a crash in demand, to avoid which they employed the Fed to stimulate demand by blowing a series of speculative bubbles and:
  • Use debt to finance a huge expansion in deficit spending, as then its burdens would be more diffuse. Federal spending began a debt-fueled escalation during the Reagan administration that was purposely obfuscated by issuing debt at high levels of interest that the 1% purchased with their tax-cut bonanzas, establishing a tax-free/risk-free money conveyor belt of government money, garnished from the paychecks of Americans labor, and deposited directly into their accounts, thus
  • reaping hoards of cash to, using "Free Enterprise" as a mantra, buy up and export America's industrial base to the largest Communist country in the world, China, while simultaneously claiming that all this 'defense'  spending, for which they had mortgaged the entire economy of the USA, was to "fight Communism".

So you can see how the fall of the USSR caught them with their rants down. You can search the pages of the NYT all you want, but neither Paul Krugman nor Ben Stein, David Brooks, or any other "reporter" will have pointed out this hypocrisy and scandalous legerdemain during all the decades it's been promulgated.

Thus are we now a populace so completely befuddled by how the fuck we got to this morass that we've voted to put into the  office of the Presidency of the United States a man who accused both the sitting President and his Presidential opponent of creating Isis, yet has no coherent plan, well, no coherence at all, really, to stop them, and hails from the very elite who most profited from Reagan's largess. And then the same rag that did nothing to publish the truth about how Washington was enabling the undermining of Democracy, turns on small, Onion-like internet sites and spuriously accuses them of inciting nutjobs to acts of violence, ignoring that they have been doing the same thing for years as they rail against Syria, get in bed on the attack on Libya, support dangerous saber-rattling at the sovereign Nation of Russia, and - their plum of violence-inciting mania -  provided rabid support for attacking the Iraqi people. And then, after these monstrous examples of inciting an entire population to use their overarching military superiority to launch attacks resulting in the obliteration of entire countries, they use their undeserved position of moral authority to chasten a site they claim is responsible for one single person's idiotic rampage? 

 This century has already handed so many military failures to US citizens who quail in such fear before their own military might they dare not speak a word against it, never question the lavish expenditures squandered on it, as it delivers them failure after failure, but drains US citizens of more and more of households' earning power until it will simply take everything. That's when the stage is set for what the MSM has been screaming about is another Mussolini, but it is this same MSM that has been ignoring the militarization that is so extreme it leaves everything else starved of investment, yet unstoppable because of the sacrosanct status so-called 'defense spending' has been granted by the very press we need to expose its fundamental takeover of the reins of power. The military in this country has become unassailable, and such invincibility invites corruption and the internal rot that comes with it ... it ain't called corruption for nothing. Yet we will never see the headline:

"Another defeat for the United States as its ambitions for a militant empire buckle on multiple fronts." 

Even though that is exactly what has happened over and over again in just the last ten years.

The world has surely gone mad, or at least blind, if this mindless crime (which, if there really is such a thing as the fourth estate, it most surely is a crime (a lie of omission is still a lie ... a deliberate lie)) goes uncensured, as it will. 

So there should be little wonder in the corridors of the NYT as to the outcome of the election, as it was they, using the logic they use to accuse faux news sites for the actions of a fruitcake, who were the most instrumental in enabling the very thing about which methinks the grey lady doth protest overmuch. And yes, I use that Shakespearean wording with the same tongue-in-cheek intention as its speaker does in Hamlet, because I don't believe their protestations of shock and aw-gee, for a minute. As Marco Rubio would say, "They knew exactly what they were doing".







Tuesday, November 22, 2016

Money: Buy a Meal's Oh-La-La!

OPM Addiction: 'Tis Madness, not Reason, that rules Mankind.

Being as this blog is called, USA's War against the Dollar, and considering India's cashless-meme chaos and the fiscal/monetary chaos The Donald has decided to plunge the rest of the world into, I thought it would be alright to talk a little about Money. and how it's not a simple printed piece of paper unless your using it right now to persuade me to render my shelved goods up to you. That's just the form of money we're the most used to and the only concept of it that millions restrict themselves to.

or used to

Money's what I used to buy things

Money's what I used to have

to buy.

Which is currency.

Or is it Cash?

Which is currency and which is cash? For while cash is always currency currency isn't always cash, and, as India's turmoil demonstrates, sometimes neither one is money. All of a sudden the friendly rejoinder, "You're money's no good here", holds rather dire implications.

 Currently, I don't have to buy, I have credit, so i don't buy things, I buy money, but not cash, I use credit as currency, which is more like a license to procure goods today that will be worth less tomorrow since inflation is wrapping around deflation, as asset purchases by a central-banked monetary mischief splashes QE-trillions to speculator minions who love to use credit, wear credit is dew. They call it Trickledown but it's more  like a flash-flood, of such torrential power, it's waters are forced up hill, dissipating so much of its energy to go against the will of the market that much of it gets dissipated in the effort. But not to go to job creators, instead to job-destroyers fueling spectacular speculator blowout sails that ride the winds of investment cash until invest 98 spins rapidly up into Hurricane Matthew and small nest eggs people had thought were nicely tucked away get sucked right out the portholes and engulfed in a destructive maelstrom churned up by the inevitable financial storm, destroying retirement plans along with future dreams, while pushing lives lived on the jagged edge right down onto it and then, ripped and smashed on the snaggy reef, over it into that final abyss, the grave.

So credit's become a form of money, currency instead of voltage, used to amp up the volume of your hair. So the sale for the merchant is the end of the bargain, while for the customer, it's just the beginning. The purloined letters part of Trickle down, those always seen but never heeded, are 'T-r-i-c-k'. A trick of the cards, and the house always wins.

Gooses the golden egg of financing. The Speculation. It's VC, The Compost for growing fertile ideas. Many make money, most lose it, but it's the ideas that make lots of dollars but little sense that somehow most firmly take root.

It all begets the moving swindle. The gentleman who leaves on deposit in his margin account a small amount of money, then like the old kiting operation in banking where the depositor used the float, that time between when a check was cashed and when the funds were transferred from the issuing institution, as an opportunity to write another check  to cover that one drawn on another institution (preferably in another state and without a hold put on it, extending the float from a couple of days to a couple of weeks), which is why it's called kiting. The entire operation can never be allowed to come to ground, the ball's always in play, up in the air, the check's in the mail fraud, unable to bear up under even the slightest scrutiny, else the lack of funds to cover the level of economic expenditure becomes evident, at which point the jig, as they say, is up. The poor man's embezzlement game runs onto the rocky reefs of reality quite easily. When the embezzlement is being done by the Central Banks of the world, however, the chickens of the currensea take much more time to come home to roost. But eventually, they always do. By which time, I'll be gone and can blame it on you (Bankers' mantra).

Similarly, that ploy can be used on the Stock Exchange. Perhaps using an original covering of only two thousand dollars, one starts with only a very modest speculation. Then, demonstrating prudence, await the day when the paucity of the guarantee is forgotten, while raising the level of orders but only gradually, until the day when, toppling into a big settlement order, clear out the account and disappear. Especially in the modern world of spike haircuts, shabby dress, and questionable hygiene, how can one show any distrust towards a charming Armani-clad young man who has become a friend? How could one doubt his solvency when one sees him looking happy and apparently rich, with that elegance of dress that is indispensable to - indeed almost the uniform of - larceny on Wall St.?

Very nice, very intelligent. Just the sort of chap you want to make a mental note of for when you might need to find someone both discreet and unscrupulous. And then pray the little preyer's next prey's not you.

Whereas Mr. Ingott owned warehouses and offices, occupying a vast expanse of what used to be cow pastures on the windswept plains of South Dakota. A network of buildings constructed out of that corrugated iron looking like the roofing had been torn from third world huts then incongruously patched together to garage data centers, telephony hubs, and plant manufactury, millions of dollars worth of infrastructure supporting billions in operations conducted in ragtag structures that looked like they were the desperate last outpost of a nomadic tribe, all appearing as if, there in the midst of tornado country, a strong wind would collapse the whole lot.

But Ingott had got, via some chance incident, some idle speculation entered in on as a lark with the encouragement of a friend and, after two consecutive considerable wins, set the fire of speculation ablaze in his heart, whence it spread right through him scorching a path of violent destruction that was evidenced by how much he had gone right out of his head. What was the point of slowly building up a business, seesawing between bare solvency and utter ruin year after year, suffering the on and on of it, as its demands were just as insistent as those of a living being, when one could pocket that much in one hour with a simple transaction or two on Wall St? With this philosophy taking him over, Ingott gradually lost all interest in his business, leaving it to underlings, living instead entirely on the hope of engineering some financial coup on Wall St.. His first winnings, however, being the result of a lucky tip or two, were not succeeded by others, and, feeling that it was simply that bad luck had come his way, Ingott continued his speculations until his investments, which is what he liked to refer to his gambling as, began to swallow the profits from his business. It only made sense to use those funds to drive the Wall St. trades, as he had come to imagine that legitimate earnings were a suckers' game, thereby ending up with no clear idea whatsoever about what money really was. This was an attitude he fostered, not only in his own prideful fantasy of reality, but it had sprung up like mushrooms in a forest, fully formed, sprinkling millions of spores made from the underlying rot championing the adulation of earning without effort into a greed-driven religion, a mandate, the quintessential American Exceptionalism whereby we do the thinking, you do the hard work, trickled onto the rest of humanity. Neither Neo nor liberal, it was championed by those who were nevertheless thus monikered. The poster boy of whom was that larry, Summers.

Luckily though, only the inept are destroyed by speculation.

 Speculation speculation, ah it fills my troubled heart with anguish!

But speculation is the very spur of life itself! Why does it frighten you? It's a manifestation of the desire to struggle and go on living   ...

Without lust there'd be no children. Nature encourages, ... demands ... Excess!

Without speculation there would be no business. Why else would I  risk my fortune if not for the promise of some extraordinary reward?

With the strictures placed on the lawful and mediocre rewards of work, the prudent balance of day-to-day transactions, life is just a desert of extreme platitude, a swamp in which all energies lie dormant and stagnant; but if you forcefully set a dream ablaze on the horizon, promising that with one dollar a hundred will be gained, followed by a thousand, then invite all those who lie asleep to get up and hunt for the impossible, millions won in two hours, in an atmosphere fraught with danger, then the race, yes the rat race, as it were, begins in earnest with ten times the energy, and there is such a scramble that even while sweating solely for their own pleasure, people sometimes manage to produce children, living things. Yes there is a lot of useless filth, but the world would be finished without it.

Life isn't clean.

In the nineties, Beany-babies; in the aughts, fracking, had further disturbed people's minds, lighting a spark of intoxication, a passion which would grow and carry away all common sense. The ground had been prepared, the Fed's compost, made of trillions of dollars of fermenting rubbish, and heated by exacerbated appetites, again created an extremely fertile ground for one of those mad surges of speculation which, every ten or fifteen years, choke and poison the NYSE, and leaves behind them only blood and ruins, defenestrations and evictions, homelessness and despair. They spring up like wildfires, burn hot, and leave utter destruction and smoldering ashes being picked through by avaricious strangers in their wake. Big companies promise risky financial ventures they claim are insured, hedged, and default-swapped, and thereby presented as so risk-free as to add up to free money. Thus is an intense gambling fever passed on as investment advise and as the rowdy prosperity of Cowboy Capitalism reigns, all the razzle-dazzle of pleasure and luxury obtained without effort is on full display, its risks and inevitable crash scoffed at and carefully hidden in obfuscating language and peer-pressured cheer-leading. Like a gigantic powerful engine destined to madden and destroy everything in it path, it is stoked and fueled by violent hands that insist on heating it to the point of explosion.

What worried Ingott above all was the terrible pace of it all, the way Wall St. was urging investors along at such a gallop, like an engine crammed with coal, launched along diabolical rails, stoked to the point when everything would shatter and explode in one final crash. Not that he was naive, or easily fooled; but even though he was ignorant of technical market and banking operations, he well understood the reason for this overdoing of things, this feverish pace, all intended to intoxicate people, and whirl them in to the epidemic madness of the dancing trillions. Every morning had to produce a rise in the price, people had to be made to believe in ever greater success, in monumental trading desks, inexhaustible liquidity, enchanted shares, that took in streams of gold and sent back rivers, oceans of gold that threatened to flood everything one day in a tsunami of disastrous wealth that would crash down and drown them all and then rapidly subside leaving a smoothly sanded beach wiped clean of all wealth, nary a structure still standing, leaving in its wake only broken dreams and suppurating wounds.

It was hard to reconcile the devastation from specualtion with the justification, the idea that it is the excess of passion, and that this base expenditure and wasting of life is necessary for the very continuation of that life, or, at least, for it was all that he knew, this way of life. If oil rigs were being thrown up at a frantic pace and oil was being fracked, cracked and clakety-clacked inside speeding, non-complying, railcars filled to the brim and shooting across the continent, it was because, back in Washington, and on Wall St, which now amounted to the same thing in this, the New Economy we've been shanghaied into, money was pouring down, a cascade of QE'd trillions  raining in a fine mist as penetrating as an oil geyser, greasing everything in a madness of speculation. Money, poisonous, destructive money became, or was seen to be, the ferment of all social vegetation, providing that necessary compost for the accomplishment of the great works that would bring nations together and create peace on the earth. Lol.

It's easy to curse money, but it is even easier to fall into a terrified admiration of it: for was it not money that alone had strength enough to raze a mountain, fill up a stretch of sea, and at last make the earth more easily habitable for men, delivered from toil and now merely the drivers of machines? From money, which did so much evil, (no .. people did evil things using money .. so money, which enabled so much evil) everything good was being born.

But at the end, the same question always arises, once the true state of exhaustion to nothingness has been revealed: where could all that money have gone?

In that great swallowing of hundreds of billions, of losses soaring into the trillions, if some pockets, if everyone's margin accounts, had been picked cleaned, it followed that other pockets must have been filled. The bears never rake in the whole of the fortunes sucked into the abyss; a terrible leakage occurs that carries away at least a third. The very ground around Wall St., that epicenter of catastrophe, carnage, and crime seems to drink up the money, while some merely wanders away, with a little of it sticking to every finger. CEO's, of course, like common crooks, pocket billions, hedge fund managers, billions more, stuffed away like the SIV's created by the banks, in offshore/off-book accounts and thence into illegal drug enterprises.

Many more would certainly have been ruined if there were not later the forgiveness of debt, the government guarantee of Fanny Mae, Freddie Mac, the FDIC, and other government institutions that themselves have a vested interest in rampant speculation and tax-loopholed ventures. Once declared insolvent, all the debts owed cancelled, they are left in the enviable position of seeing themselves as lucky clever individuals who, thanks to such a happy turn of events - it makes one smile - by which, like Donald Trump's Tax return and lawsuit settlement so dramatically demonstrates, they get all the profits, without paying for the losses, which, making it even better, they have foisted onto the general public (the billion in taxes The Donald didn't pay, had to be picked up by someone), none of whom have any inkling of what's been done to them in the name of Freedom.

And as the damage reverberates, it shakes the very foundation of the edifice that most symbolized it: The NYSE, wrapped in its cocoon of Nationalism, shamelessly displaying and abasing the US flag draping its facade, an arrogant banner proudly proclaiming to all who had the temerity to heed such a brazen announcement, that within this building we hide a scoundrel's heart.  The fall of Lehman's, brought down after more than a century of staid guidance, was to shake the foundations of a whole city. An entire country. Its shocks crumbling the faith of Capitalism as completely as the destruction of the Berlin Wall did for Communism, both events having driven home to their adherents the facade of lies and the veneer of humanity that they had pretended to represent. Nothing had remained steady and solid; cracks were appearing in neighboring institutions, and every day brought new collapses. The investment banks, having overnight turned their operations into little more than casino gambling, were crumbling one after the other, with a sudden clatter, like stretches of wall still standing after a fire. People listened in mounting dismay and fear to this noise of things falling until none of them were left standing, and wondered where the ruin would stop. Because, unlike Kissinger's use of the term, "Domino theory", in this case, was apt. Because dominoes normally fall higgledy-piggledy every which way, not in the way said theory would have you believe ... unless: unless they have first been set up by someone with a conscious design in mind, someone who plans for them to fall exactly the way they set them up to fall. And there was definitely the feeling that, far from, "Nobody could've seen it coming," plenty of people not only saw it coming but were ready with their plans, their dominoes all lined up, to rake in the billions that would flow their way while the rest of the world, well, whirled.

"We take care of your money the old fascist way: We Burn it".

But what ends up breaking the heart of anyone who hasn't had their humanity entirely sucked out by the greed that's been lauded as a virtue, is when they start counting their dead. Because it's not so much the bankers, the companies, the financiers and financial establishments destroyed and carried away in the storm, as all the little people, the shareholders, depositors, and speculators, who are always among the victims, not one of whom have other resources to get up and have another go. Such as the merchant, the only one she would've entrusted her last ten sous with, seduced away from a lifetime of laborious days of slowly building a fortune, succumbs to the siren song of gambling, forgetting that whereas, it may be true that all you have made throughout a lifetime devoted to your business and your customers can be won in an hour on Wall St., it can in the next hour, go up in flames as The Street takes everything, and more, back, even as the new crowd of suckers jostles to be let in. Even before the dust has finally settled, a new chimera is seen shimmering on the horizon, and a new venture is started to once again suck up capital into the eye of a new cyclone and a new disaster is set to spinning ...

But is there really a difference this time? Isn't it that people no longer think of the stock-market as anything but a gambling table? Everyone now seems edgy, poised on their seats, their hands nervously hovering above their piles of cash, ready to sweep it off the table at the slightest rumor, the least tremor, and stash it ... where? Wells Fargo? UBS? Citi maybe? Because, what we have chosen to ignore, and why I insist it matters when people say, "We have to save the planet", when in actual fact, it isn't the planet, but ourselves, that needs saving, it is in the same vein, not these vast vaults of hidden and shadowy money that need saving, no TBTF banks, which will always, as Wells so admirably demonstrated, find a new swindle, yet we rush to save them, not the people whose lives they destroyed that really need saving, those who can never regain their footing without help. The Banks, the insurance companies, the hedge funds, all the institutions the Government of the people threw the money of the people at in order to save, aren't, like the planet, in need of saving. They will continue to go on and rape the next generation of victims, because each generation believes themselves smarter than the previous one and therefore impervious to their idiotic rationalizations. Institutions, unlike individuals, live on. Because they live on other people's money, and those other people's money is taken from them before they even see it, their paychecks deposited into the banks vaults by mandatory EFT.

Because the biggest hoax in the history of the world, isn't climate change, but the idea that the stock market is a safe place (as many baby boomers really believed ... seriously ... many still do) to park your assets. But what the Greenspans and Bernanke's knew, what Blankfein and Paulson, Geitner and Mazillo, a list that goes on and on, what they all knew that you didn't, is that the financial crisis was but one of a series of fatal, periodic epidemics that ravages markets, sweeping through every ten to fifteen years. The black Fridays, and Mondays, the dreaded October surprises that shouldn't be, that strew the ground with the wreckage of people's lives. Usually it takes years for confidence to be restored, for the banking house to be rebuilt, rebuilt until once again the day comes when the passion for gambling gradually reawakens, blazes up and sets the whole process in motion again, bringing a new crisis, and sending everything crashing to the ground once more.

But this time, it seems like twilight is falling. As the summer skips through September and into October, a winter sky is creeping over the horizon, a leaden murky vista, laden with a grey mist where a golden glow was hoped for. In the natural world, as in the financial sphere, when a disturbance becomes apparent, it is called by weathermen, an "invest". It can roll along causing minor disruption to weather patterns, even bringing beneficial rain. However, it can also develop into a ferocious storm, a hurricane that rips out trees, and tears up infrastructure that had required years of planning and growth. Just as human "invests", when juiced with Fed largess, and handed to unscrupulous money-hungry wolves, have the same devastating effect on people's lives as the Hurricane in nature, whirling up into a financial maelstrom that shatters everything in its path. The cognoscenti are the only ones who know its projected route and intensity, and therefore have the foreknowledge and wherewithal to get out of its destructive path. Now, as one of its most unscrupulous members prepares to run the country as his own oh-so-private enterprise, while the Republic is reserved to  absorb the losses until he's bankrupt that as well, a reddish smoke veils the horizon, one resulting from the unprecedented burning of vast acres of forests all across the globe, a heretofore unfelt uneasiness, a peatering pall, seems to hang over humanity, as the real possibility that we face mankind's sunset finally dawns.



Monday, November 14, 2016

Deploribus Unum: The Making of Bedlam 1 - 2 - 3.



Les Fleurs du Mal.



So now we have a new president-elect. The man who claimed the election was rigged was elected, and no one has wondered why a man who admitted the election was rigged can simply saunter on stage and claim that victory is his. Oi.

Yet, as Democrats ponder, "How could  this have happened?", perhaps they should instead be wondering, "How could we thought it'd 've turned out any differently?" When I would ask people who were aghast at the Republican Circus put on during their "debates", well, yes, it's like a Ionesco play, but at least the GOP were putting on a display for our entertainment, but how are the Democrats better? Why is the party that calls itself Democratic putting forward a pol from the last century as if she were the Heir-apparent, offering as a bromide the mere fact that she "stepped aside" and united the Party in 2008 by not fiercely opposing Obama? It was even rumored that he had promised his support to her after his term was over. And that, as they say, was that. What voters wanted was never really part of the equation. Them? They'll do as  they're told.

Hillary was the nominee. It had been decided, not by popular vote, but by the self-appointed elites of the DNC. Although an upstart Bernie apparently never got the memo, he wasn't even really a Democrat, and he was scoffed at openly by the MSM as though it had turned into a twisted version of Fox gone wild. So we were presented by the party that calls itself Democratic with a 'fait accompli' in terms of the Clinton candidacy even as we ridiculed the ascension of the biggest windbag ever to blow into a political race and hoped that no one would notice, just because we refused to notice.

So now, we once again have selected atavism and a return to disastrous Republican rule. Within four short months after being elected in 2000, GW Bush was entertaining the Taliban in the White House and handing over US taxpayer dollars to the Afghanistan sect that was known to be harboring Osama Bin Laden, and Surprise Surprise, they used that cash to plan and execute the bombing of the US Pentagon and New York's Twin Towers, succeeding beyond their wildest dreams, while our president read fairy tales in Florida and was  then re-elected for "Keeping America Safe" (the absurdity of which no Democrat had the gumption to point out, but that The Donald had no hesitation about  highlighting, btw). Bush then went on to foster the most spectacular financial calamity in the history of the world, while, perhaps even by, presiding over the raising of gasoline prices to the highest level they had ever been, even higher than during the 70's oil crises. All while making empty, cynical promises, promises that no Republican even remembers, so they don't have to admit they were the cynical lies they were, to bring down the price of a barrel of oil to $22/bbl, appearing in the newspapers walking hand-in-jihand with the "King" of Saudi Arabia, who he assured us was on-board with the idea of lower oil prices (yeah ... sure he was). Under Obama, we are now enjoying the lowest prices for gasoline since the disastrous Bush junta left office. I don't even own a car, and I know this. Somehow, nobody else seems to.

All of that will now change. And that is a bad thing. But that is a good thing.

While denying climate change, Trump will do more for reining in its worse polluter, the United States, than Obama ever did for precisely that reason. As oil prices start to escalate, so will the pump prices in the US. As the ROW reverberates from the slap in the face they consider a Trump presidency to be, the cost to fund the giganormous National Debt and its associated ongoing annual fiscal deficits, the higher the interest rates on dollar-denominated-debt will go and the sale of all those ICE machines that have gotten larger and larger and purchased with ZERO percent interest loans, will plummet, as Free Money becomes anything but.

Last Saturday in Doug Noland's Credit Bubble Bulletin , he announced that he had already voted, for "change" (Like Obama's "Change?"), as he so cowardly put it (if you voted for Trump, fine, but at least have the gumption to say so outright, instead of couching it in such a high-handed euphemism). The real change he is talking about is depicted in this scenario from The Friends of Eddie Coyle (George Higgins' crime novel set in the seventies) he depicts the interaction between the sexes as a gunrunner delivers his load to a bankrobber:

   "Who is it?" the voice said,
   "Coyle," Eddie Coyle said. "I brought the groceries."
   "Come on in", Scalia said.
Coyle followed him into the trailer. "This is Wanda," Scalia said.
Wanda was five-ten, a hundred and thirty pounds. She had heavy breasts which Coyle noticed immediately because she was wearing a tee-shirt and a bra with bright red flowers. She was also wearing wheat-colored jeans. There were noticeable stains at the crotch, "Hi," she said.
   "What do you do?" Coyle said.
   "She words at Northeast," Scalia said.
   "I'm a stewardess," she said.

   "Yes indeed," Coyle said. Wanda  smiled.
   "What's in the bags, Scalia said.
   "Meat and beer and stuff," Coyle said. "Now you mention it, I could use a beer."
   "Wanda,"' Scalia said, get the man a beer. We'll be inna living room."

   "That's pretty nice," Coyle said, "She understand?"
   "What you don't know," Scalia said, "it doesn't bother you. She don't know."
   "She thinks You're off selling  magazines," Coyle said.
   "I don't know what she thinks," Scalia said. "I told her I had to go away for awhile. She don't     question it."
   "Jesus," Coyle said, "I got to talk to you some time. I don't know how you do it."
"It's confidence,"Scalia said. You look them right in the eye and say, "Hey I gotta go away for a while. They'll buy it."
"You got to meet my wife," Coyle said. "You said that to my wife, you was me, she'd get this look on her face. Oh yeah? Like you was trying to sell her a used car. I got to take the time and watch you. That's the only way."
Scalia laughed.
Coyle indicated the kitchen area by moving his head. "That's pretty nice, too," he said. "Where'd you get that"?
"Oh, you know," Scalia said. "I'm over at Arliss one night and one of the guys comes in with her. We more or less strike up a conversation . One of those things."

Coyle rubbed his crotch.

"Very warm there," Scalia said, "She don't wear no panties. I ask her why and she says she don't own no panties. Wears them pantyhose when she's working. She gets in them dungarees, no panties. Now and then I just come up behind her and reach right down there. She comes off like she was on electricity. I never see anything like it."
"Jesus," Coyle says.
"It's a great life, Scalia said, "If you don't weaken, it's a great life. You bring the stuff?"
"Out in the kitchen," Coyle said, "Right inna shopping bag, under the chair. All set."

   Wanda came in with a tray. It held a quart of beer and two glasses. "That's pretty nice meat you brought," she said. "I was putting it away there and I looked it over."
"Yeah, thanks," Scalia said. "How much I owe you for the groceries?"
"Well, let's see," Eddie Coyle said. "Twelve bucks for the first batch, then eight. Then there was another dozen, eighteen bucks for that. Now there's ten here, another fifteen hundred. Forty-five hundred. I'll throw in the steaks."

"My God," Wanda said,"that's a lot of money for some meat."
"Shut up, Wanda," Scalia said.
"You know my friend here, I think," she said, "very large gangster type."
"I told you," Scalia said, "shut up."
"Fuck you ," Wanda said. "I heard you talking about me, I was right there, I heard you. What business of his is it, I wear panties or not.  What am I, something you brag about? My kid brother talks about his goddamned Mustang the same way you talk about me. 'I just reach down there every so often and set her off.' For Christ sake. I thought we were friends. I thought we liked each other. Shit."

"You got this trouble?" Scalia said to Coyle.
"Yeah," Coyle said, "different, but the same. Hasn't everybody?"
"Fuck you too," Wanda said to Coyle.
"I think it's the Women's Lib stuff or something," Scalia said. "I'll be Christ if I know what to make out of it."
"I don't think they got enough on their minds," Coyle said. You know, hacking around all day. They stand around there thinking, you get home and  they're all pissed off and all you did was put the goddamned car in the yard, They need some good worries, is what I think."

"I work," Wanda said. "I probably work more'n you both of you bastards  put together. I earn my keep."
"I told you to shut up," Scalia said.
"I told you to go and fuck yourself," Wanda Said. Talking about me like that. How'd you like it if I was to start telling the girls at the store about your prick and what you like me to do with it?" With me, the things you like to do with me, would you like that?"
Scalia came out of the chair quickly and slapped Wanda  across the face. "I told you to shut up," he said. "That's what I want you to do. Shut fucking up".

Ah yes, the last malennium. I remember it well, when militarism and love of Government was at its zenith, and anti-female rhetoric like this was everyday. I never understood marriage, because, although the men depicted here are criminals, this is how most married men talked about women. As objects, or housemaids. In one of the Harry Potter movies, Potter performs some trickery that deprives one of his enemies of the hold he has over an elf such that the elf is now free from his tutelage. The man raises his cane and advances all hellfire, face livid with rage as he strides toward Potter intending to smite him, while yelling,

"You lost me my SERvant!"

That is the attitude toward liberals displayed by the rise of the Trumplestiltskins. It is their reaction to this very real loss of their servants that men have felt with the rise of fossil fuel-derived energy and the loosening of the economic bonds that tied females to the male gravy train. Wanna eat? Need a place to sleep? Then do the shopping. Prepare the meals for me and my progeny, then clean the dishes, and don't forget to sweep and wash the floor, get  me a drink, do my laundry, and suck my dick."

This is the "change" that the white American male has voted for, a back to the future world where they are again in charge, free to abuse women who get uppity, where American women are grateful again, instead of, "She's mad because I tell the goddamned truth, She don't wear no panties. So where's the thing, I mean? What harm does it do? The broad's great in the sack and she lights off real easy. So I say it, and now she's mad. I don't know."

The language, the attitude, and tone are the same as the Donald's in his taped interview with Bush. The criminality that's proud of itself and can't understand the rancor it rouses.

Recently, Nestle's CEO re-iterated his opinion that water is not a human right. The natural corollary to that is that neither is air. The fossil fuel industry, automobile manufacturers, power plant operators, cement pourers, and a myriad array of industrial corporations and each one of us driving around in our little chemical weapon of mass destruction, feel the same, as we nonchalantly change thereby   the very composition of the atmosphere, that is, in the very air that we breathe. Such a change is a criminal act unless that which you change belongs to you. But it doesn't. It belongs to not even all of us, but to all of the living organisms in the world, many of which we need for our own survival, but we usurp it and alter it as though it is our right and then put politicians in office, such as the Marco Pudio, who whines that, "Oh it's science. I'm a good little-dick Catholic Cuban, so I don't, and can't be expected to, understand something as complex as the idea that the atmospheres is composed of different gases, nor that billions of people taking one of them out and replacing it by pouring another one into it at an increasingly accelerating rate will change that composition. OW! My head hurts! Please don't make me think."

But, as the attitude toward their female partners illustrates,the Trumps of the world, DO believe they own them, along with everything else, including the very water we drink and the air we breathe. We can't stop them, so by default, they DO own it. And the hapless Left, by its refusal to admit that the manner in which we now inhabit the earth is ultimately destructive, insisting instead that ethanol and biodiesel, electric cars, and wind and solar panels can be counted on to keep the racket going, whether Bernie Sanders or Donald Trump is in the White House, are actually far worse. Because, the more the middle class grows and expands such that it now bestrides all countries all across the globe, becoming the burgeoning part of the population, which, the faster it grows, the faster those gasses are poured into the atmosphere, and the more rabid does the destruction of the rain-forests and every other habitation not yet overrun by mankind get demolished. These are the only places left on the globe capable of up-taking mankind-generated CO2 and replacing it with life-giving oxygen.

But since we ARE the middle class, it must be the one percent that's at fault. Then we can concentrate on their behavior and how evil they are instead of questioning our own middle-class values. Values that used to include thrift and industriousness, compassion and anti-militarism, but that now simply apes all the worse excesses of the same one percent we pretend to hate, even as we strive to become, not like them, but to be them, lording it over the rest of the world once we've pitched the current one percent overboard.

A case in point being the demonstrations against an election result, but not because it was rigged, which it very much was, the winner admitting, bragging even, of exactly that, but simply because they didn't like the result and couldn't, no matter how hard they tried, pin it on the one percent. So let's riot. Let's tear down the neighborhood. That'll show 'em. Mayhem, after all, has always proven so helpful in improving people's lives. This will not end well. What it suggests is that, as the emphasis is taken off of exporting our militarism in the name of 'Democracy' to the rest of the world, distracting us from undertaking any reform of our own, or building an infrastructure for the future, as opposed to pouring what's left of our treasure into the one proposed, one built for the past, copying the backward Chinese, fer chrissakes, then the resulting internal chaos is what we have been promised, by the Trump pets of Jericho.  And, considering the chaos we've so blithely cake-walked around the globe creating for the entirety of this century, feeling that this Wehrmacht of techno-militarism we have built around us makes us invincible from the worst excesses that the animosity of such wanton destuciveness has engendered, it is a chaos that we have most assiduously courted.