The definition of fascism used by Mussolini is the “merger of state and corporate power“.
Government and the big banks are in a malignant, symbiotic relationship. And our economy now exhibits a merger of state and bank power.
Prominent economist Robert Kuttner said in 2009:
What we have is something perilously close to a dictatorship of the Fed and the Treasury, acting in the interests of Wall Street.
The government and banks use anti-terror laws to stifle dissent.
As Naomi Wolf reports, they joined efforts to violently crush the occupy protests:
The violent crackdown on Occupy [which was protesting the SAME THING as the Tea Party ... and the Boston Tea Party] last fall … was not just coordinated at the level of the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security, and local police. The crackdown, which involved, as you may recall, violent arrests, group disruption, canister missiles to the skulls of protesters, people held in handcuffs so tight they were injured, people held in bondage till they were forced to wet or soil themselves –was coordinated with the big banks themselves.
[A newly-released document] shows a terrifying network of coordinated DHS, FBI, police, regional fusion center, and private-sector activity so completely merged into one another that the monstrous whole is, in fact, one entity: in some cases, bearing a single name, the Domestic Security Alliance Council. And it reveals this merged entity to have one centrally planned, locally executed mission. The documents, in short, show the cops and DHS working for and with banks to target, arrest, and politically disable peaceful American citizens. ….
Plans to crush Occupy events, planned for a month down the road, were made by the FBI – and offered to the representatives of the same organizations that the protests would target ….
The FBI – though it acknowledges Occupy movement as being, in fact, a peaceful organization – nonetheless designated OWS repeatedly as a “terrorist threat”….
[The executive Director of The Partnership for Civil Justice Fund - the group which obtained the document] points out the close partnering of banks, the New York Stock Exchange and at least one local Federal Reserve with the FBI and DHS, and calls it “police-statism”:
“This production [of documents], which we believe is just the tip of the iceberg, is a window into the nationwide scope of the FBI’s surveillance, monitoring, and reporting on peaceful protestors organizing with the Occupy movement … These documents also show these federal agencies functioning as a de facto intelligence arm of Wall Street and Corporate America.”
The documents show stunning range: in Denver, Colorado, that branch of the FBI and a “Bank Fraud Working Group” met in November 2011 – during the Occupy protests – to surveil the group. The Federal Reserve of Richmond, Virginia had its own private security surveilling Occupy Tampa and Tampa Veterans for Peace and passing privately-collected information on activists back to the Richmond FBI, which, in turn, categorized OWS activities under its “domestic terrorism” unit. The Anchorage, Alaska “terrorism task force” was watching Occupy Anchorage. The Jackson, Michigan “joint terrorism task force” was issuing a “counterterrorism preparedness alert” about the ill-organized grandmas and college sophomores in Occupy there. Also in Jackson, Michigan, the FBI and the “Bank Security Group” – multiple private banks – met to discuss the reaction to “National Bad Bank Sit-in Day” (the response was violent, as you may recall). The Virginia FBI sent that state’s Occupy members’ details to the Virginia terrorism fusion center. The Memphis FBI tracked OWS under its “joint terrorism task force” aegis, too. And so on, for over 100 pages.
Eric Zuesse notes:
The FBI was organizing against the OWS movement even before it was known to the general public, and they kept on their campaign against it, until it was dead.
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The FBI’s police-state snooping and tracking of Occupy Wall Street … had begun even before most Americans knew that there was any such movement for the FBI to snoop against.
In other words, the reason why Barack Obama’s “Justice” Department refuses to prosecute even a single one of the mega-bank executives who profited so enormously from having defrauded both mortgagees and the investors in mortgage-backed securities, and who were bailed out by future U.S. taxpayers whose government purchased those remaining “toxic assets” at 100 cents on the dollar, is clear: we live in a police state, and these elite crooks control it. This is not real democracy.
Voters were given a choice in November between a President like that but whose liberal rhetoric is condemnatory of “Wall Street,” versus a professional stripper of corporations, whose rhetoric was overtly supportive of Wall Street. And voters chose the former. But this nonetheless is a police state, not an authentic democracy.
Mussolini would recognize it as fascism.
Fun bonus post:
Yves Smith notes that newly-declassified documents prove that the federal government treated peaceful protesters as terrorists:
The FBI deemed OWS [Occupy Wall Street] to be a terrorist organization and went into “guilty until proven innocent” mode. Many of the FBI descriptions of possible OWS actions or those of affiliated organizations like Adbusters consistently look to have taken the most inflammatory snippets and presented them out of context.
The FBI also seems to believe that there is no such thing as peaceful protest, that any non-violent activity has the potential to turn violent and therefore should be treated as violent.
In fact, according to Department of Defense training manuals, all protest is now considered “low-level terrorism”. And see this, this and this.
And an Army colonel has written a paper advocating military methods for “crushing” a Tea Party type insurgency.
Indeed, doing anything to challenge government or big bank policies can get you labeled a potential terrorist in America today.
Do you get it yet?
Big Brother is here, and he’s … very well armed.
You know, I didn't see the despot shed any tears for the 13 Americans attacked and over-run by an islamist, engaged in a act of war, at Ft. Hood on 05 November 2009.
Glad you posted this George, the system is TBTF collusion, meets gestapo-FBI, meets 1984 dept of truth.
BTW happy new year GW, sipping the first morning coffee of 2013.
And yet there were so many 'good american citizens ' that were totally against the movement and thought the occupiers were nothing but unwashed freeloading scum. ' We the people ' are in big trouble here and too stupid and divided to even know it.
Disgusting and deplorable behaviour by the parasite class and their pigmen hired hands. May they have long miserable and disease ridden lives before they die agonizing lingering deaths and then rot in hell.
Occupy was a false flag that did use the surplus of "unwashed freeloading scum" that we have in this country. Nothing mutually exclusive here. There are plenty of people educated in govt schools that are willing participants in the charade. Hell, there were multitudes of wealthy and upper middle class, sons and daughters of the "machine" in the protest!
Occupy was a performance mainly to diminish the Tea Party's influence, and to decrease the probability of the TP organizing again in the presidential election year.
Looks like it worked.
We'll only see Occupy again if there is another Constitutional or Liberty (Tea Party) movement.
After reading your post my thought was, This clown is full of shit as a christmas turkey. You must work for the government or the banks, if not you are missing your calling. What a fucking dirtbag.
Yes, and as it turned out this past year, the Banksters were once again demonstrated to be innocents.
Who else can I kiss ass to give me a $524.43/month/72 for a new Ford Truck?
:) Happy New Year!!!!!!!!!
think about it, you get to crack skulls andspin it as somehow positive, after all were dealing with "domestic terrorists" and "homegrown white al-qaeda's here folks"
the narrative straight out of langley
Happy New fear everyone
America: From Freedom to Fascism
by Aaron Russo
the first rabbit I followed down the hole
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6ayb02bwp0
what if the banks organized it like a digital weather underground (dangerous perhapses my brothers, dangerous perhapses as N. said)
it's perfect really, you gin up a bunch of useful idiots to protest yourself and thus the same disenfranchised people who would otherwise create organic, self-directed opposition, end up leveraged into yet one more control schema
the enemy has a terrible proficiency for using our best intentions against us
they even said they wanted to create a western spring
they clearly created the underlying phenomenology, from exporting our production/mfg base over a period of decades, to the housing/student loan bubble (dovetails with former element)
it's like with the political parties, they focus-grouped every possible Taste and put in a controlled oppositional adjunct so now organic germ could rise on its own to prominence - the same strategy is evident in the 2012 GOP lineup - it was calculated and focus-grouped to accommodate every possible taste with one ultimate purpose: to distract from Ron Paul while still losing to the main NWO puppet Obama
so, the disenfranchised who feel oppressed are made to rabble in the streets, where we can test out our new sound cannons AND we get to use the media to demonize DISSENT ITSELF - this speeds along the germany-in-1930 fascistic culture bias a-la shows like 24 etc.
same thing with the tea party, stronger case there for organic Origin but quickly hijacked and slaved to the GOP code base
what they do not want is the same group of people becoming Educated Historically and then Politically Organized - hence Our work and the need for it ZH is a main Destroyer in the Truth Armada.
the NWO is the old world order isnt it? global kleptocratic plutocracy and rule by elite thieves, Neo-Feudalism
The definition of fascism used by Mussolini is the “merger of state and corporate power“.
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When he said that Mussolini was talking to media and making a considered statement for international consumption, i.e. making propaganda and putting a warping gloss on fascism - basically he was deliberately minimizing and distorting what fascism is, for propaganda effect - and it's still working. Fascism is much more dangerous than merely the absurd minimalist definition Mussolini proposed.
Fascism is the willful decision to use force as a first-resort to achieve state policies via aggression.
Japanese "Militarism", which was part of the Axis-Powers alliance, was a perfect expression of Fascism, and the effects of it still roll on and echo today, threatening to again trigger another great international conflict.
The nexus of connectivity with corporatism and state is a mere functional means to expediently furnish the materials and organized muscle and weapons necessary to pursue a policy of international aggression and territorial conquest, occupation and brutal subjugation and extermination by death squads.
Corporatism is very much not at all the point nor aim of fascism. It is merely one major symptom of it, and this reality should never be forgotten or else we end up looking at that, instead of the aggression the corporate marriage is designated to empower, and the aggressive psychology of those entrained within that network, that it wishes to foster and spread as much and as quickly as possible.
For certain the definition of Fascism, in our age, if permitted to continue, will be World War III, not mere Corporate linkages to the domestic and international aggressor state.
Because such aggressor states will have to be destroyed - they will not stop what they do, voluntarily. We are seeing these states pop up everywhere today. It's clear we have learned nothing from WWII, and are repeating all the same mistakes all over again, and the duped gadget-passified, monitored and tracked fool-'citizen' (clusterbomb-fodder), who doesn't grasp what's happening. They don't realize that we're right now playing with fire to an extent that we had the brains and experience and collected memory to not to do during the Cold-War.
There won't be a new Cold-War, there will be another Hot-War instead. Indeed, Robert McNamara in the "Fog of War" said the Cold War was a lie all along, it was actually an unrecognized hot war, just localized and migratory.
Now is the time to stand up to the politicians, bankers and the gestapo-type state agencies like the FBI thought-crime enforcers, who always ride to violent excess and extremism on the coat-tails of considered international and domestic violence issuing from the top. It should be clear from the above that the United States govt is indeed following a path of violent actions to suppress all opposition, while still mouthing the lies of peace and freedom and liberty and democracy and the right to protest.
Forced labor-camps are here already, have been a long time, they are the massive network of private corporate prisons. They have been and will be used to house political prisoners (protesters) in a more media-'acceptable' and 'invisible' manner, while Washington works-up a way to fabricate the right confluence of conditions and excuses to use internment camps openly and generally on any descent in the populous. But for sure they have that penciled into their time-line.
Don't listen to some Fascist leader's definition of what fascism is, because it's 100% certain they will lie about it, and make propaganda to warp and distract from what it patently is. Shine a spotlight on what it really is.
Fascism is what it does.
Fascism (pron.: /?fæ??z?m/) is a form of radical authoritarian nationalism.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fascism
We live in jewish cacocracy created for the benefits of Israel, all colors of jewish parasites, and their shabboz goy psychopath legions. (Education, Media, Government, Military Industrial Complex, Financial System, Medicine are taken by them.)
http://thezog.wordpress.com/
We DO NOT live in any sort of [German or Italian] NATIONAL socialist society. Because if we were, there will be no 30+ milliion illegals, mytliplying like rabbits, in the Amerikwa, and we wouldn't have dual citizens in charge of TSA or CIA. Federal reserve would be really 'FEDERAL' and not Rothschild's.
cacocracy - Governmental rule by the worst, the most despicable people.Sometimes spelled "kakocracy", but meaning the same. Given the decline of statesmanship in the U.S. government, and the corruption among the ruling classes, one could well define our rule as formerly a republic, but now a cacocracy. http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=cacocracy
In Defense of Fascism
Element, excellent comment on Fascism, 99% agreement
A different question: why did fascism arise? why did enough people support it? why did Mussolini try to reconcile fascism and (his definition of) corporativism for propaganda reasons?
On an international plane, all countries where fascism did arise and take over government were - or felt themselves - under attack from the International Status Quo after WWI. They all felt "someone was getting at them, taking something away from them". A couple of examples:
Japan - which was forced through US gunships to join international trade - felt that it had a right to secure industrial resources for it's exclusive use "like the others"
Poland, Hungary, Croatia, Slovakia, Austria - which were cut to pieces and re-patched by the victors, felt that the world's status quo would give them the shaft again, soon
Spain - knew that it's sphere of influence was constantly under attack, latest when the US took away Cuba and the Philippines, is a perfect example for what happened in all fascist countries: people choose fascism (or better, in the most cases regretfully accepted it) to fight socialism (careful with that last word and it's meaning)
Finland - the same, with the Socialist HQ, Russia, as a stark reminder to that
Germany - the best known case, was all about "Lebensraum" - a racially/tribal assumption of the right of a people to the it's own living space and resources
Fascism as-it-rose was about resources and peoples, "tribal rights" (with the then common ubiquitous racism), the reaction of conservatives versus socialism, and the little fact that the British Empire had found a new ally, the USA, and so reinforced it's supremacy over the oceans, nearly all international trade and diplomacy, with all the consequences that the "Pax Britannica" entailed, as a liberal commercial empire. Among them a policy of global liberal markets for commodities based on prices, demand and supply instead of protectionistic trade or fixed shares of resources per nation
All in all, Mussolini's overrated quote is the pointer to a different aspect of this fascist vs liberal vs socialist conflict: how the basic units of the economy should be structured
the liberal empire (at that time with the UK in the lead and the US as shotgun buddy) championed the private, limited liability company structure, best in it's form of stock-traded, giving it increasingly more previously unheard privileges vs the older forms of units, i.e. the family/individual and the private, full-liability other forms. as some fascist quipped, something pirates would lobby for
the socialists championed their collectives (collective structures like sovkhoz, kolkhozes, etc). two still existing forms of those efforts are the israeli kibbutzim and the German right of company employees to the election of one third of the board of directors. and of course labour unions
the fascists - who put strategic national needs front and center - found both forms lacking, or, better, myopic. the first too private, petty, petulant for short-term goals, the second too un-conservative and misguided
and so proposed and applied their third method: the state as arbiter between the "parts", deciding after hearing both sides of what was seen as the great divide between the Three Inputs, Labour, Capital & Land, setting on the way some parameters and so on, as it sees fit
If necessary with some gentle reminder from the butt of a pistol to the head of someone insisting on not collaborating to the greater good of the nation
remnants of this "third method" (which has btw it's roots in european, chinese and japanese older views and practices) - the fascists did not invent anything) are the way national banks are usually set up with their dependent, in a pinch to be nationalized, fractional reserve banks, but also the Japanese method of channeling imports, and many other things "not done" in a "typical AngloAmerican way".
Anyway: I disagree with you on this "HOT WAR COMING" theme. As you were quoting "the Cold War was a lie all along, it was actually an unrecognized hot war, just localized and migratory", nothing has changed, there
MAD still applies, and wars are - as always - waged by elites for gains, not by masses with their thirst for distruction as-per-war-propaganda they are subject to
Well, I certainly understand why WWI made everyone uncomfortable and insecure, and provided great impetus to spread a huge amount of heavy advanced armaments around the world in short order. Europeans were homicidal maniacs. We really set a pretty low-bar example for what was coming to anyone that we took exception too. I always find it amazing how little Europeans trusted each other, but it's understandable really.
But if Europeans would do such barbaric things to each other, then what the hell would they do to a place like Japan? Look at the advent of aircraft carriers when naval power had been used like a gun to the head of countries and empires. Prior to that you only has 4 to 15 inch shells with a limited range ashore. But suddenly an enemy fleet could appear before dawn and zero warning, bombard the crap out of your fleet in port, and supplement it with scores of aircraft, that could bomb rear areas and machine gun transports etc., and provide rapid recon plus insert spies, and provide support to marines, and to artillery. It's hard to imagine how destabilizing all that would have been.
But with regard to hot-war and the MAD theory/principle, I'm afraid you're sadly very wrong about that presumption. Things have changed since 1986, the year the Soviet system basically gave up the fight and the collapse set in. There are more nuclear powers now and there are many threshold nuclear states, that are not as polarized as they once were, and could go nuclear almost overnight if they needed to.
But the reality is chemical and biological weapons were mature technologies within all major arsenals during WW2 but no one used them. Everyone understood that this must not happen. Even the Germans in Stalingrad, and then facing total defeat in Poland and in East Germany, still didn't go there.
But like you say, the elites wouldn't go there when bombers and aircraft carriers were involved, as it could be them that gets gassed. Same applies today with nukes. In 1962 the danger of sudden complete and massive obliteration was very real. USSR at that time had 3000 nukes, but was still well behind the US in numbers of weapons and missiles. And General LeMay, the head of Strategic Air Command, was openly arguing to attack Russia immediately with everything, because a nuclear war was surely coming, and it was better to go now, than to wait until they reached parity in numbers.
So it's an error to presume M.A.D. is always necessarily valid as in some circumstance it may not be, and could be disregarded.
The Russians didn't catch up until about 1978 though and then they over-built about another 13,000 more nukes than the US, by 1986, when they basically stopped and the Soviet union began to fall apart. But we no longer have these giant and completely unbalanced arsenals. The chances of a massive exchange is much lower, as missile mobility and range are better, so hitting the enemy with a counter-force strike won't work. Plus the use of advanced heavy SAMs on all sides means there's not so much confidence that a massive attack would be successful, thus the attractiveness of a pre-emptive strike has diminished. And leaders don't use a "red phone" any more to communicate, they know each other better, the trust is greater that the other isn't completely crazy.
SAC simply isn't going to recommend a nuclear strike on Russia, nor fear that the Russians might launch on the US. And the smaller nuclear powers all understand that to pre-emptively launch would of necessity lead to obliteration of any small nuclear power.
So we have a situation where a major nuclear power is now flying drones over nuclear-armed Pakistan, and killing its citizens, in an undeclared war. Pakistan has basically given up its territory and sovereignty, rather than to make the US stop by force.
The point is we've gradually realized you can have multiple hot-wars occur and not have a significant threat of nuclear exchange, and for certain we can have three or four simultaneous proxy-wars occurring - no problem at all.
So tens of millions can still die from such wars and I'll be quite surprised if they don't. Look up the stats on the Korean and Vietnam wars and Cambodia and Laos slaughter, plus Central America and Africa. The cold war was a hot war. And for certain the US is geared up to fight in all those regions again.
So my view is that hot-war will be abundant, and the only role for nukes to play, due to the US and NATO engaging proxies of China and Russia, is it will cause threshold states that can, to become fully nuclear-capable powers, simply to ensure that they can not be considered and treated as expendable strategic pawns nor as convenient battle-ground sites without recourse The rest will go with chemicals and biological organisms.
There is always going to be a General LeMay out there, who will figure it's "use-it-or-lose-it" time, and will want to attack an enemy pre-emptively with overwhelming destructive force.
So we can not presume MAD will always work.
Element, you give me the impression that you are arguing both sides of the argument ;-)
There is no "gain" in fighting too hot wars, and serious drawbacks, including the big chance of losing power in the own turf
Take Pakistan. The biggest part of the elites of Pakistan wants those targets to be hit by drones
Take Syria. China and Russia are still supporting the Assad regime, and yet nobody is escalating seriously. It is still a "basic" civil war
Obliterating even a small nuclear power is simply too dirty. Chemicals too, and biologicals are even worse. Particularly if there are endless other methods, and they abound
Your own examples are simply still the best: the WWII combatants all agreed that chemicals were best not used - they learned to hate them during WWI. They were all willing to use the nuclear option, until they learned to hate it, too, and so the appreciation for the dangers of biologicals grew even stronger
Humanity improves, constantly. Particularly in it's methods. Careful, I'm not saying we won't ever see genocides again, for example. We are just getting better at containing them
Don't make the mistake of thinking I'm arguing both sides, it's a complex topic is all. Some factors contribute to lower risk, some contribute to increased risk. I could write a book on this but I'm just going to say that I completely disagree with your foundationless suppositions regarding it.
The assertion that wide-spread Hot-War is now out of the question, due to Mutually Assured Destruction nuclear response policy (MAD), of all things, is an incredibly naive, foolish and thoroughly unrealistic proposition. But it's also a very dangerous delusion, a complacent fallacy which has become far too prevalent. It's one of many reasons why I originally said this;
All that is happening since is people like you are equating formal grand-error making with human 'progress' and 'improvement'. Anti-ballistic-missile shields were banned by mutual agreement decades ago as it was readily recognized by both sides that missile shields would lead to misconceptions about the relative risks and safety that did not exist, that this would be very destabilizing in practice, and that policy-makers and foolish people would quickly misinterpret the situation and come to the false conclusion that the danger of an effective nuclear strike had decreased. Also it could lead to one side in a crisis assessing that it could get away with a sneak full-scale attack and be able to ride-out and minimize any counter-strike. Thus making an exchange more likely. One of the best ways to degrade and defeat a missile-shield is to use tactical and strategic EMP. So missile shield's dramatically raise the stakes and tensions, and potential for mistakes, and the scale of potential destruction from even a very limited nuclear exchange.
And so it is today.
You can actually see all sorts of 20-something ignorant fools talking about how they believe the US military can defend itself from Russian nuclear missiles - and they really believe it. RT ran a story a few days ago about its latest SSBN and the comments that followed were insanely stupid and completely deluded. So the notion of missile defense has now turned from a desperate last ditch emergency attempt to prevent a limited nuclear strike, with very limited prospects for success, into this propaganda monster-lie, about the merits and relative dangers, which can never be reduced by a missile-shield approach to ICBMs and their RVs.
This is something that Richard Garwin in particular made clear in explicit technical detail all through the 1990s. But his work which demonstrated on multiple-counts that a missile-shield was fundamentally an ineffective approach and a fallacy, and could be easily and cheaply circumvented - was ignored. It was downplayed and minimized, by politicians, pentagon and the weapon manufacturers and their shills, who were all on a vested-interest gravy-train - so not the slightest bit interested in the truth of the missile-shield paradigm. Instead, it became a Bush propaganda prop, and election issue, which completely warped reality about what it could actually effectively deliver in practice, which was almost nothing against a coordinated concerted real-world nuclear-attack on the US or Europe
The Garwin Archive:
http://www.fas.org/rlg/
The US NATO missile-shield approach is also pure fantasy. It will fail very early and fail completely in under two minutes in any actual nuclear attack. The simple truth is there is a missile shield paradigm and there are operational systems, but in practical terms there is not and will not be any effective missile shield approach possible against a nuclear attacker. The flaw in the missile defense paradigm has been known for decades to any who cared to examine the practical limitations and vulnerabilities of such systems.
But as a result of missile shield, and other strategic propaganda fables put about by arms makers, we now have a generation of fools who don't realize the fatal-flaw in thinking the dangers of complete wipe-out from a nuclear exchange has decreased.
Hot War is absolutely assured to take place and MAD is not assured to work, and can not be presumed that it's going to work. I have mild confidence in MAD but I know for sure it will eventually fail, and that it can fail any time without any warning. It's a psychological desperation to presume MAD must and will work as there's simply no reason to presume that, when a probability and potential to fail exists (see Murphy's Law). Your over-confidence and belief in MAD is disturbing, it's a mere idea, a construct and a suggestion for one potential rational choice, like any other, and it is prone to reinterpretation and also to being disregarded, for the sake of aggression, or an over-reaction.
A few years ago I had a conversation with a guy who I respect a lot where the subject of 'proportional-responses' came up, and I mentioned the standard doctrinaire notion of proportional response to a limited nuclear attack, to stymie escalation, blah-blah, and he said in paraphrase, "I'd wipe them out immediately".
With regard to M.A.D. itself, there's a real-world example we should take notice of. The "Fog of War" documentary of Robert McNamara's biography and views/explanations had a very revealing section in it where McNamara had a face-to-face meeting with Castro, decades after the Cuban Missile-Crisis, and he asked Castro if he really would have ordered or allowed a Russian nuclear attack on the USA? He told McNamara that if the USA had made its air attack on Cuba at that time, not only could he have recommended to the Russians to launch the nukes, but that he definitely would have OK-ed and actually demanded their use of nuclear weapons on the east and south of the US continent. To which McNamara freaked-out and asked if he was completely serious? Did he realize the US would have completely obliterated every inch of Cuba? Would you really have done that Mr President? And Castro said (paraphrased), "Mr McNamara, if you were in our position you would have ordered and done exactly the same thing". McNamara flipped and said, "oh no! We couldn't have done that! Pull the temple down on our heads? Mr President, I'd hope we'd never have done something like that!". Castro just said, "Mr McNamara in our circumstances you would have made the same choices".
i.e. if Castro was going to be deposed and murdered then everyone else was going to die as well. Basically he was saying that the whole of western civilization could go to hell if the US was going to attack Cuba just to remove the communist Castro regime. Castro, one of the 'elite', had been targeted for assassination literally dozens of times by the US Govt prior to the conversation, but McNamara said he never knew about these attempted assassinations.
That's real-politic - so much for the M.A.D. doctrine!
It's a very dangerous false conception and a merit-less belief-system in many, and should be put aside. McNamara concluded from this (and other things) one of his "11-Lessons" for avoiding a nuclear war and conflict in the nuclear age.
Namely; "Rationality will not save us".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War
It was also his strong view that the only reason why modern human civilization continues to persist is 100% due to luck alone. That is, it had zero to do with MAD, or rationality, or good-judgement and good planning. I completely agree. There is no reason whatsoever why multiple large proxy-wars can not and will not happen (especially with respect to Europe). And I reject any deluding suggestions that they won't be any, or that far larger slaughters will not occur in future.
As for the notion that humanity constantly improves, wow! You need to get out more. As I remember you're a Fin, and most probably working in banking or banking-related public Govt-sector I suspect. I don't mean to be demeaning, I know you're an intelligent and knowledgeable person but I have numerous times looked at your propositions and considered you're incredibly naive.
Humanity remains and always will remain humanity. Thought remains thought. Emotion remains emotion. Delusion remains delusion. Abstraction remains abstraction. Culture remains culture. Politics remain politics. You can move the deckchairs around and listen to the band play but you're definitely going for a dip at the end of it mate.
One of the other "11-Lessons" of McNamaras' Fog of War: "You can't change human nature"
to put it in children's words: the "sheep" will never understand the "wolf" because the sheep has no experience with killing, and no experience with power
for the sheep, the wolf is nightmarishly mad
the "wolf", because of it's power to kill, will always see himself as a noble character and look beyond the carcasses of the dead sheep at it's feet
both are in reality humans, but their situation is utterly different and shapes their deeds and thoughts differently
and yet the wolf feels empowered, and so confident (and incredibly sexy, btw) and so the sheep is the incurable pessimist but the wolf is the incurable optimist
Yup! That's the stuff right there. ;-) :-D I could list of a whole bunch of monumental-stupid from this century alone.
I remember reading of the Turkey Jupiter missile withdrawal connection from Tom Gervasi's 1986 book. But may have read it elsewhere during the early '80s as well.
You're really pushing it with this 'considerate' Russian part to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Russians Went to Cuba for one reason alone, to get nuclear strike parity. It was a minor bonus to also get the Jupiters removed, but as also was pointed out by Tom Gervasi that it made zero practical difference, because the USN had built Polaris SSBNs before then.
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So as you can see, the Jupiters were no longer necessary, it only defanged Turkey itself, as by Nov 1962 the USN could already surround the Soviets with several operational subs, and pound the living snot out of them, almost without warning. For sure Kennedy and US Joint Chiefs didn't give a toss about the Jupiters. It was definitely the Soviets who lost strategic leverage in that one.
But I did notice your wording has now moved away from asserting MAD is so reliable a mental contraption.
But the point is, hot-wars will happen as there's not a real deterrent. People aren't so scared of nukes any more. We have guys with the same Vietnam-era weapons shooting at Western forces. The US still keeps doing what a Great-Satan generally does, and we're all more-or-less accustomed to armed-violence, combat, and to assorted body-parts scattered around the place. The horror of it has evaporated.
I've mostly hoped that familiarity with combat would maybe breed contempt for it within people, and maybe it has/does. But when they get them so young-'n-dumb and brain-fuck them, give them uppers some bennies and a contrived desperate belief/faith/hope they'll go fire AKs at whatever all day, and plant IEDs with abandon.
In the West it's just as perverse, except we play to win, and train people to not get killed or injured so readily, and engineer-in protected survivability, and low-attrition. But that increased protection and the stand-off ranges of weapons, plus awareness, just turns people psychologically (and quite deliberately I think) into something like malevolent assholes running amok in a digital abattoir - perfect!!
So I see no chance of hot war easing back, or that elites are even slightly interested in reining that in. Why should they? They're pushing for global dominance. Look at the NATO expansionism, plus US expansion almost everywhere. Look at India and especially Chinese expansion in new capabilities, platforms and mobility. Plus the Russians are building a whole new blue-water navy by 2020, and a new generation air force. And now Japan will also go hard for sharp capability increases and a move towards more independent self-defense. China really shot their foot off there. I can hardly believe how badly they handled it except I've seen them do the epic-dumb self-harming routine before. And of course the Arabs have bought a stack of new Western toys.
All those militaries are going to keep resorting to proxies and alliances to apply geopolitical pressure to each other, using hot war and abundant 'terrorism' (which is such a bullshit word at this point), because direct confrontations will be too dangerous and contagious.
Hardline ideologies and their BS may have faded, but the nationalist, racist, religious and sociopathic nihilists more than took up the slack I'm afraid. Plenty of death-squad fodder in that lot.
You have a lot of faith I'll give you that. I like you ghordie, but come on, there are a helluva lot of people who would hit the red button in a second.
It is a complex topic, and it has very, very little to do with "good planning". To paraphrase Nassim Taleb from his new book on Antifragility, MAD applies because of it's instability and the fact that you can't take it for granted
yes, the dictator-as-last-one-of-an-elite with nuclear arms five minutes before he is taken out by assassins has always been the most dangerous spot in the MAD psychology
and yet, he is in power until he isn't - and this puts him in a psychological situation where he still has plenty to lose - and so in a bind, or, as the ancient said, under the Sword of Damocles, unwilling to exchange seat (and it's power) but confident that things will improve, because serious power gives you serious confidence
naive? I'm not arguing that humanity is improving where we would wish it did, it improves where we usually don't expect it, even where we don't believe it
on a personal level: no, I'm not a Finn, I'm not in banking (been there very shortly), I'm not in gov (been there shortly) and probably the best way to vaguely describe me is what they calls a "serial entrepreneur" with a very intimate knowledge of failure (been utterly broke twice). some experience in politics and a short dip in foolishly dangerous intelligence courier runs in the cold war
to put it differently: I'm not drawn to ZH like a moth to a flame because I don't expect cases of monumental idiocy in the world. but I know from experience and from my study of history that the next monumental idiocy is never an exact repeat of the previous monumental idiocy. humanity learns, and so the next great idiocy will take us by surprise
get back to the spot you were revisiting: the famous "group-think moment" in the US cabinet regarding the Cuban Missile Crisis
there are a lot of books on that matter, but one thing you have to remember: the weakest hand folded. It wasn't Castro, and it wasn't the US. It was Russia. Why? Because there was no gain in continuing. The "hot spot" in that conflict wasn't in Cuba anyway, it was about missiles in Turkey. Cuba was retailiation for Turkey. And the Russian got part of what they wanted, even though that was kept secret for a long, long time. Even the Socialist Cause got a big bump by that, by showing the Russian as the "considerate" part in the conflict
McNamara wasn't in the psychological position of having the button in front of him. Actually even Castro wasn't, but felt nearer to that, and used it to get some moral revenge out of him by showing his nose into it. pettiness and petty revenge, two human characteristics
my point, shortened: the button (power) changes your psychology because you are human
thought experiment: aliens land and make you believe that if you push a green button they will kill you, while if you push the red button you will kill all of of humanity, except you. and if you don't push either they will kill both. in that moment, you will push the green button
not because you are a hero. because you are human. it's in your genes
but it's a psychologically situational moment, similar to the one some people experience when they find out that it's insanely difficult for most people to kill another human being (which leads the mafias of this world to screen teenagers as killers), and yet we have murders every day (although most of them are situational, practically idiotic accidents)
power changes your mindset, actually even at hormonal level, and this is part of human nature - we aren't what we would wish to be, we are what we are
Since WWII the elites have been working on a form of MAD that now engulfs them as well.
http://enenews.com/almost-entire-ground-level-northern-hemisphere-covered-radioactive-fission-product-after-311-study-impact-fukushima-radioxenon-releases-worldwide-xe-133-background-be-investigated-graphic
Their money will not protect them or their progeny.
We now have at least 4 reactors inc. Chernobyl disintegrating, spewing and out of control with more to come...matter of time since they largely refuse to shut any of them down and want to build more.
Agree; there is no "definition" for complex phenomena, only a set of characteristics. Collectivism would include both top-down collectivism (national socialism) and bottom-up collectivism (Bolshevik socialism). Strongly recommend folks peruse Shafarevich's "The Socialist Phenomenon":
http://www.savageleft.com/poli/tsp.html
They all wore fucking arm bands, just a rank patch that can be applied or changed quickly.
Have you considered that these aren't mistakes, but instead a natural progression
Make them poor enough and they will riot.
Fight the tyranny and till the fields.
If you don't understand the mentality of a sadist yet, then you might want to look into it, your pain feeds their want to cause you more pain. They will not stop.
Element, good post, but you are both right and wrong in your definition of fascism.
Actually, your post would be spot-on if you substituted "Statism" for the word "fascism" above, most pointedly and pertinently in your definition of "... the willful decision to use force as a first-resort to achieve state policies via aggression" (with perhaps the additional substitution of the word "coercion" for "aggression"). Although it is probably redundant in that case to use the phrase "as a first resort", as statism is simply institutionalized coercion, period.
Yes, Element, it's institutionalized coercion (violence) one way or the other, and as long as we're debating whether it's left statism, right statism or something in between (socialism, fascism, or "fascialism"), we're missing the point, which is that we are "coming to the end of the nation-state as we have known it for the past 500 years," the author of this fine piece arguing that, transitionally, "the citizen who owns defensive weapons, and is trained in their use, constitutes the great barrier against centralized power from above and decentralized criminal violence from below." For it is he, "the man in the middle, the armed voter," who is "the backbone of Western liberty," the question being whether he -- meaning we -- have the backbone to fight for its return:
http://www.garynorth.com/public/10459.cfm
It's not about protest, in other words; it's about protection -- self-protection, that is -- as states the world over, including and especially the American state, collapse under their own weight and the increasing weightlessness of their paper IOUs. Yes, as many have said, war -- much wider and more destructive war -- will be a part of it, very likely instigated by (yet another) false flag event, the only question being how insane -- how thoroughly sociopathic -- TPTB actually are. And if you can't "go there," then you don't "get it," meaning you don't understand that the logic of the state is the logic of death and that there is literally nothing that the buttoned-down fiends who run the world's states won't do to preserve their "status" within and among them.Happy New Year.
And as always, the state can kiss my ass.
Maybe akak, it gets a bit nit-picky. I tend to just view and also refer back to the purported philosophy of the Italian fascisti movement, and later political party, who's philosophy was that violence must be the first-resort to achieve the aims of the fascisti.
Statism may become fascist, but it's on a spectrum of possibilities that can swing several ways, from largely benign for extended periods, in which coercion and voluntary 'compliance' dominates, to then swing to periods of rank statist fascism pursuing direct aggressive methods. It's clear the US and many other western states concurrently have been steadily swinging from largely benign coercive, to fascist indirect aggression, then to direct aggression since the 9-11 event.
Now the indirect and the direct aggression are both occurring concurrently, domestically, and also internationally. This accords with a fascisti philosophy, as applied to a statism.
You call it fascism, I call it fascion.
Bowie: http://youtu.be/GA27aQZCQMk
Tomato, potato, let's call the whole thing off!
"we are the goon squad and we're comin to town..."