As the US Dissolves: Mad Max Monday
by ilene - July 26th, 2010 4:42 pm
As the US Dissolves: Mad Max Monday
Courtesy of JESSE’S CAFÉ AMÉRICAIN
Lots of gloom to be found as witnessed in the two stories below, counter-balanced by the shameless cheerleading on the financial news networks that are celebrating the rally in US equities and the economic recovery.
Both points of view are a bit extreme and probably unrealistic for my palate, although I am in a sufficiently grumpy mood having spent the weekend cleaning, waterproofing, painting, and reshelving our storeroom, workroom, and pantry. Herself and the children return this evening from holiday, and so the repairs must be completed before the horde is once again underfoot. Oh head is spinning from fumes, and oh my aching back. lol.
I have to wonder if the mass of the people will ever do something and react to the abuses of government in cooperation with the corporations, or if they will seek to lose themselves in the day to day of their lives, allowing a minority to set their course. The next twelve months should prove interesting, especially around the mid-term US elections. Although eyes are on the US, the UK and Europe will likely lead the way.
When Globalism Runs Its Course…
The Year America Dissolved
By Paul Craig RobertsIt was 2017. Clans were governing America.
The first clans organized around local police forces. The conservatives’ war on crime during the late 20th century and the Bush/Obama war on terror during the first decade of the 21st century had resulted in the police becoming militarized and unaccountable.
As society broke down, the police became warlords. The state police broke apart, and the officers were subsumed into the local forces of their communities. The newly formed tribes expanded to encompass the relatives and friends of the police.
The dollar had collapsed as world reserve currency in 2012 when the worsening economic depression made it clear to Washington’s creditors that the federal budget deficit was too large to be financed except by the printing of money….
Read the rest here
Emergency Care Drugs In Short Supply
Warren E. Pollock
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“National Security:” A Global Police State-Within-a-State
by ilene - July 22nd, 2010 1:41 am
"National Security:" A Global Police State-Within-a-State
Courtesy of Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds
The Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) has spawned a national security "state-within-a-state" with essentially unlimited funding and support of America’s political machine. This National Security State has infected domestic policing and courts; it is both ubiquitous and completely unaccountable.
The Democrats and Republicans have enthusiastically joined hands to create a global police/national security state-within-a-state of unimaginable reach and power. Frequent contributor Michael Goodfellow sent me this investigative report, which I consider one of the most important of the decade: Top Secret America: A hidden world, growing beyond control (Washington Post).
Let’s go back briefly to September 1, 2001, before the 9/11 attack. The national security "assets" of the nation had all the information needed to stop the attack. The various agencies did not stop the attack because there was essentially zero coordination and data-sharing between the CIA, NSA and FBI.
This was laid out in the PBS program The Spy Factory.
Now the national security "assets" have metastasized into a gargantuan national security state-within-a-state--and the exact same problem not only exists, it has become even more intracable.
Now that the national security state (NSS) has become much larger and even more unwieldy, coordination, collaboration and data-sharing have been rendered essentially impossible. This report makes that absolutely clear.
Rather than fix the problem of coordinating our national security assets, the Federal government and its leaders have amplified the problem. At the same time, they have created a monster which is beyond the control of elected officials or the citizenry, a secretive state-within-a-state which protects itself behind the inpenetrable shield of "national security" and "need to know."
The national security state is the ultimate protected fiefdom. Cutting one dollar of funding would be instantly characterized as "weakening our fight against global terrorism," as would any limits on the NSS’s powers.
This is in effect a new arm of the "military-industrial complex" which dwarfs the power of the traditional military-industrial complex: "defense" contractors and the revolving door between the DoD (Department of Defense) and these Pentagon-dependent industrial corporations.
GWOT is the perfect defense for a state-within-a-state that is insatiable and beyond accountability. Even simple inquiries are quickly dismissed as "dangerous"--as if global terrorists would glean some useful information from knowing just how many hundreds of billions of dollars are being spent tracking them.
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW.