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The Delusional World Of Imperial Washington
Submitted by Michael Klare via TomDispatch.com,
Think of this as a little imperial folly update -- and here's the backstory.
In the years after invading Iraq and disbanding Saddam Hussein’s military, the U.S. sunk about $25 billion into “standing up” a new Iraqi army. By June 2014, however, that army, filled with at least 50,000 “ghost soldiers,” was only standing in the imaginations of its generals and perhaps Washington. When relatively small numbers of Islamic State (IS) militants swept into northern Iraq, it collapsed, abandoning four cities -- including Mosul, the country’s second largest -- and leaving behind enormous stores of U.S. weaponry, ranging from tanks and Humvees to artillery and rifles. In essence, the U.S. was now standing up its future enemy in a style to which it was unaccustomed and, unlike the imploded Iraqi military, the forces of the Islamic State proved quite capable of using that weaponry without a foreign trainer or adviser in sight.
In response, the Obama administration dispatched thousands of new advisers and trainers and began shipping in piles of new weaponry to re-equip the Iraqi army. It also filled Iraqi skies with U.S. planes armed with their own munitions to destroy, among other things, some of that captured U.S. weaponry. Then it set to work standing up a smaller version of the Iraqi army. Now, skip nearly a year ahead and on a somewhat lesser scale the whole process has just happened again. Less than two weeks ago, Islamic State militants took Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province. Iraqi army units, including the elite American-trained Golden Division, broke and fled, leaving behind -- you’ll undoubtedly be shocked to hear -- yet another huge cache of weaponry and equipment, including tanks, more than 100 Humvees and other vehicles, artillery, and so on.
The Obama administration reacted in a thoroughly novel way: it immediately began shipping in new stocks of weaponry, starting with 1,000 antitank weapons, so that the reconstituted Iraqi military could take out future “massive suicide vehicle bombs” (some of which, assumedly, will be those captured vehicles from Ramadi). Meanwhile, American planes began roaming the skies over that city, trying to destroy some of the equipment IS militants had captured.
Notice anything repetitive in all this -- other than another a bonanza for U.S. weapons makers? Logically, it would prove less expensive for the Obama administration to simply arm the Islamic State directly before sending in the air strikes. In any case, what a microcosm of U.S. imperial hubris and folly in the twenty-first century all this training and equipping of the Iraqi military has proved to be. Start with the post-invasion decision of the Bush administration to totally disband Saddam’s army and instantly eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps into the chaos of the “new” Iraq and you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement. Then, add in a little extra “training” at Camp Bucca, a U.S. military prison in Iraq, for key unemployed officers, and -- Voilà! -- you’ve helped set up the petri dish in which the leadership of the Islamic State movement will grow. Multiply such stunning tactical finesse many times over globally and, as TomDispatch regular Michael Klare makes clear today, you have what might be called the folly of the “sole superpower” writ large.
Delusionary Thinking in Washington
The Desperate Plight of a Declining Superpower
Take a look around the world and it’s hard not to conclude that the United States is a superpower in decline. Whether in Europe, Asia, or the Middle East, aspiring powers are flexing their muscles, ignoring Washington’s dictates, or actively combating them. Russia refuses to curtail its support for armed separatists in Ukraine; China refuses to abandon its base-building endeavors in the South China Sea; Saudi Arabia refuses to endorse the U.S.-brokered nuclear deal with Iran; the Islamic State movement (ISIS) refuses to capitulate in the face of U.S. airpower. What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of such defiance?
This is no small matter. For decades, being a superpower has been the defining characteristic of American identity. The embrace of global supremacy began after World War II when the United States assumed responsibility for resisting Soviet expansionism around the world; it persisted through the Cold War era and only grew after the implosion of the Soviet Union, when the U.S. assumed sole responsibility for combating a whole new array of international threats. As General Colin Powell famously exclaimed in the final days of the Soviet era, “We have to put a shingle outside our door saying, ‘Superpower Lives Here,’ no matter what the Soviets do, even if they evacuate from Eastern Europe.”
Imperial Overstretch Hits Washington
Strategically, in the Cold War years, Washington’s power brokers assumed that there would always be two superpowers perpetually battling for world dominance. In the wake of the utterly unexpected Soviet collapse, American strategists began to envision a world of just one, of a “sole superpower” (aka Rome on the Potomac). In line with this new outlook, the administration of George H.W. Bush soon adopted a long-range plan intended to preserve that status indefinitely. Known as the Defense Planning Guidance for Fiscal Years 1994-99, it declared: “Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.”
H.W.’s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be “to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity -- given few nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America’s peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years.”
For Bush, of course, “extending the peace” would turn out to mean invading Iraq and igniting a devastating regional conflagration that only continues to grow and spread to this day. Even after it began, he did not doubt -- nor (despite the reputed wisdom offered by hindsight) does he today -- that this was the price that had to be paid for the U.S. to retain its vaunted status as the world’s sole superpower.
The problem, as many mainstream observers now acknowledge, is that such a strategy aimed at perpetuating U.S. global supremacy at all costs was always destined to result in what Yale historian Paul Kennedy, in his classic book The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers, unforgettably termed “imperial overstretch.” As he presciently wrote in that 1987 study, it would arise from a situation in which “the sum total of the United States’ global interests and obligations is… far larger than the country’s power to defend all of them simultaneously.”
Indeed, Washington finds itself in exactly that dilemma today. What’s curious, however, is just how quickly such overstretch engulfed a country that, barely a decade ago, was being hailed as the planet’s first “hyperpower,” a status even more exalted than superpower. But that was before George W.’s miscalculation in Iraq and other missteps left the U.S. to face a war-ravaged Middle East with an exhausted military and a depleted treasury. At the same time, major and regional powers like China, India, Russia, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey have been building up their economic and military capabilities and, recognizing the weakness that accompanies imperial overstretch, are beginning to challenge U.S. dominance in many areas of the globe. The Obama administration has been trying, in one fashion or another, to respond in all of those areas -- among them Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and the South China Sea -- but without, it turns out, the capacity to prevail in any of them.
Nonetheless, despite a range of setbacks, no one in Washington’s power elite -- Senators Rand Paul and Bernie Sanders being the exceptions that prove the rule -- seems to have the slightest urge to abandon the role of sole superpower or even to back off it in any significant way. President Obama, who is clearly all too aware of the country’s strategic limitations, has been typical in his unwillingness to retreat from such a supremacist vision. “The United States is and remains the one indispensable nation,” he told graduating cadets at West Point in May 2014. “That has been true for the century past and it will be true for the century to come.”
How, then, to reconcile the reality of superpower overreach and decline with an unbending commitment to global supremacy?
The first of two approaches to this conundrum in Washington might be thought of as a high-wire circus act. It involves the constant juggling of America’s capabilities and commitments, with its limited resources (largely of a military nature) being rushed relatively fruitlessly from one place to another in response to unfolding crises, even as attempts are made to avoid yet more and deeper entanglements. This, in practice, has been the strategy pursued by the current administration. Call it the Obama Doctrine.
After concluding, for instance, that China had taken advantage of U.S. entanglement in Iraq and Afghanistan to advance its own strategic interests in Southeast Asia, Obama and his top advisers decided to downgrade the U.S. presence in the Middle East and free up resources for a more robust one in the western Pacific. Announcing this shift in 2011 -- it would first be called a “pivot to Asia” and then a “rebalancing” there -- the president made no secret of the juggling act involved.
“After a decade in which we fought two wars that cost us dearly, in blood and treasure, the United States is turning our attention to the vast potential of the Asia Pacific region,” he told members of the Australian Parliament that November. “As we end today’s wars, I have directed my national security team to make our presence and mission in the Asia Pacific a top priority. As a result, reductions in U.S. defense spending will not -- I repeat, will not -- come at the expense of the Asia Pacific.”
Then, of course, the new Islamic State launched its offensive in Iraq in June 2014 and the American-trained army there collapsed with the loss of four northern cities. Videoed beheadings of American hostages followed, along with a looming threat to the U.S.-backed regime in Baghdad. Once again, President Obama found himself pivoting -- this time sending thousands of U.S. military advisers back to that country, putting American air power into its skies, and laying the groundwork for another major conflict there.
Meanwhile, Republican critics of the president, who claim he’s doing too little in a losing effort in Iraq (and Syria), have also taken him to task for not doing enough to implement the pivot to Asia. In reality, as his juggling act that satisfies no one continues in Iraq and the Pacific, he’s had a hard time finding the wherewithal to effectively confront Vladimir Putin in Ukraine, Bashar al-Assad in Syria, the Houthi rebels in Yemen, the various militias fighting for power in fragmenting Libya, and so on.
The Party of Utter Denialism
Clearly, in the face of multiplying threats, juggling has not proven to be a viable strategy. Sooner or later, the “balls” will simply go flying and the whole system will threaten to fall apart. But however risky juggling may prove, it is not nearly as dangerous as the other strategic response to superpower decline in Washington: utter denial.
For those who adhere to this outlook, it’s not America’s global stature that’s eroding, but its will -- that is, its willingness to talk and act tough. If Washington were simply to speak more loudly, so this argument goes, and brandish bigger sticks, all these challenges would simply melt away. Of course, such an approach can only work if you’re prepared to back up your threats with actual force, or “hard power,” as some like to call it.
Among the most vocal of those touting this line is Senator John McCain, the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a persistent critic of President Obama. “For five years, Americans have been told that ‘the tide of war is receding,’ that we can pull back from the world at little cost to our interests and values,” he typically wrote in March 2014 in a New York Times op-ed. “This has fed a perception that the United States is weak, and to people like Mr. Putin, weakness is provocative.” The only way to prevent aggressive behavior by Russia and other adversaries, he stated, is “to restore the credibility of the United States as a world leader.” This means, among other things, arming the Ukrainians and anti-Assad Syrians, bolstering the NATO presence in Eastern Europe, combating “the larger strategic challenge that Iran poses,” and playing a “more robust” role (think: more “boots” on more ground) in the war against ISIS.
Above all, of course, it means a willingness to employ military force. “When aggressive rulers or violent fanatics threaten our ideals, our interests, our allies, and us,” he declared last November, “what ultimately makes the difference… is the capability, credibility, and global reach of American hard power.”
A similar approach -- in some cases even more bellicose -- is being articulated by the bevy of Republican candidates now in the race for president, Rand Paul again excepted. At a recent “Freedom Summit” in the early primary state of South Carolina, the various contenders sought to out-hard-power each other. Florida Senator Marco Rubio was loudly cheered for promising to make the U.S. “the strongest military power in the world.” Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker received a standing ovation for pledging to further escalate the war on international terrorists: “I want a leader who is willing to take the fight to them before they take the fight to us.”
In this overheated environment, the 2016 presidential campaign is certain to be dominated by calls for increased military spending, a tougher stance toward Moscow and Beijing, and an expanded military presence in the Middle East. Whatever her personal views, Hillary Clinton, the presumed Democratic candidate, will be forced to demonstrate her backbone by embracing similar positions. In other words, whoever enters the Oval Office in January 2017 will be expected to wield a far bigger stick on a significantly less stable planet. As a result, despite the last decade and a half of interventionary disasters, we’re likely to see an even more interventionist foreign policy with an even greater impulse to use military force.
However initially gratifying such a stance is likely to prove for John McCain and the growing body of war hawks in Congress, it will undoubtedly prove disastrous in practice. Anyone who believes that the clock can now be turned back to 2002, when U.S. strength was at its zenith and the Iraq invasion had not yet depleted American wealth and vigor, is undoubtedly suffering from delusional thinking. China is far more powerful than it was 13 years ago, Russia has largely recovered from its post-Cold War slump, Iran has replaced the U.S. as the dominant foreign actor in Iraq, and other powers have acquired significantly greater freedom of action in an unsettled world. Under these circumstances, aggressive muscle-flexing in Washington is likely to result only in calamity or humiliation.
Time to Stop Pretending
Back, then, to our original question: What is a declining superpower supposed to do in the face of this predicament?
Anywhere but in Washington, the obvious answer would for it to stop pretending to be what it’s not. The first step in any 12-step imperial-overstretch recovery program would involve accepting the fact that American power is limited and global rule an impossible fantasy. Accepted as well would have to be this obvious reality: like it or not, the U.S. shares the planet with a coterie of other major powers -- none as strong as we are, but none so weak as to be intimidated by the threat of U.S. military intervention. Having absorbed a more realistic assessment of American power, Washington would then have to focus on how exactly to cohabit with such powers -- Russia, China, and Iran among them -- and manage its differences with them without igniting yet more disastrous regional firestorms.
If strategic juggling and massive denial were not so embedded in the political life of this country’s “war capital,” this would not be an impossibly difficult strategy to pursue, as others have suggested. In 2010, for example, Christopher Layne of the George H.W. Bush School at Texas A&M argued in the American Conservative that the U.S. could no longer sustain its global superpower status and, “rather than having this adjustment forced upon it suddenly by a major crisis… should get ahead of the curve by shifting its position in a gradual, orderly fashion.” Layne and others have spelled out what this might entail: fewer military entanglements abroad, a diminishing urge to garrison the planet, reduced military spending, greater reliance on allies, more funds to use at home in rebuilding the crumbling infrastructure of a divided society, and a diminished military footprint in the Middle East.
But for any of this to happen, American policymakers would first have to abandon the pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower -- and that may be too bitter a pill for the present American psyche (and for the political aspirations of certain Republican candidates) to swallow. From such denialism, it’s already clear, will only come further ill-conceived military adventures abroad and, sooner or later, under far grimmer circumstances, an American reckoning with reality.
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I suppose we can dismantle the empire peacefully, or risk someone else doing so violently.
After the earthquakes, flooding and plagues humble America next year, our superpower status will be lost permanently. But that's OK because the next sovereignty the survivors build after eliminating the foreign troops will be much better.
Oh, and this year will be financially tough as the US$ loses world reserve currency status after September.
If the US economy collapses the psychopaths and their pretenses of glory will continue on, much as the leaders did in the wracked shell that the Soviet Union became.
Like psychopathic chickenhawks running around with their heads cut off.
It's not just the GOP neocons that think the US is the global arbiter of what is right and wrong... Just look at the last 6 years... The neolibs are far more idealistic than the neocons ever were...
I don't think the sky is falling just yet. All these problems can be fixed. It won't be easy, but this isn't nuclear war. We've broken up banks before in our countries history. We will eventually do it again.
Max Landsberger: Since the 1984 oil discovery in New Guinea, we have sold the Bu!kais hill tribesmen 20 of our S-24 fighters. At $21 million per unit, that's $252 million. This has started a local arms race between the Bu!kais, and their local neighbors the Kla!klalas. Now the Kla!klalas also happen to be sitting an a large amount of oil. And now the Kla!klalas want to buy 20 of our new Slash X-Ray Ultra Pursuit fighters for a total of $480 million.
Pete Helmes: What are the chances of war between them?
Bob Nixon: Very good sir. Our spare parts replacement contracts could be very lucrative.
Pete Helmes: Who trains their flight personnel?
Max Landsberger: Well, as near as we can assess it... well, they don't actually fly the planes. They sort of roll them down hills, crashing them into each other.
Scott Dantley: Personally, I think that it's a shameful waste of incredible kill power.
Pete Helmes: Make the deal.
Bob Nixon, Scott Dantley: Absolutely.
Head Office - 1985
I don't think the other races are amused with the "White man's ways", nope, not at all, and so....
THE END IS NEAR....
Every once and a while the truth slips out about the White House
One of the GREATEST non-watched movies of all time.
I know every line...
Except, FSA oligarchs are stealing everything BEFORE the collapse.
The Criminal Psychopaths in Washington & Why America’s Police Are More Dangerous Than Criminals
After reading through the article and PDF files of the Soros Ukrainian emails, my money is on violence. I'm not sure why the shooting hasn't started yet. Well with big boy guns anyway.
Funny how everyone studies capital investment, no one studies scrappage.
Scrap it.
USA OUT OF EURASIA
The markets will deconstruct it, eventually.
BHO said, “...it will be true for the century to come.” He's completely clueless, of course. Since he was installed in the White House, US debt has doubled. If this were to continue for the next century, it'd reach $2.3 Quadrillion, 128 X's higher than today. How long can debt increase at 12% per year while growth is flat lining and demographics are aging? A helluva lot less than a century, that's for sure.
It was proven in 2008 and confirmed in 2012. There aren't enough grown-ups left to resolve this rationally. Let the fucker collapse (not that you could stop it).
The delusions run deep and wide in DC-and are not just based in their own overestimation of their reach militarily.
In fact their empire ambition and military arrogance proceeds from far deeper and more tragic character flaws-principally that with which the Ancient Greeks were pre-occupied -"hubris"
The consequence of the current "minds" in federal government believing themselves more "enlightened" than the Founding Fathers, has been to run the ship of state hard upon the rocks domestically and abroad.
We have a transgenerational mess born in their arrogance, presumptiousness and ignorance, on our hands
The ignorant, stupid eminently blackmailable politico puppets in DC live in the zio media msm echo chamber. Their ivory tower reality is a sham.
They probably have no real idea that they have completely destroyed the USA as we once knew it for the exclusive benefit of the ZWO oligarchs who now effectively rule over a serfdom.
The Delusion never recedes ; see UK.
The super rich can't and won't live without the Empire, financially. We are truly fucked.
I would love to be a military contractor $$$$$$$$$$$$
My son is hiring, can you work hard labor 20 hours a day, seven days a week, for six months at a time, while random gunshots come your way?
Why is the job only part-time?
I don't think so. He's been there thirteen years. I'm at the point where I'm going to have to break one of his legs when he comes home next week to get him to stop going back.
I would love to hear the options available for when that happens...
''As the Bretton Woods Project points out, emerging nations with large real economies and small financial sectors were the countries which best weathered the economic crisis, which was caused by advanced economies with large financial sectors(9). Like the modern opium war it waged in the 1980s and 1990s – when it forced Asian countries to liberalise their currencies, permitting western financial speculators to attack them(10) – the IMF’s prescriptions are incomprehensible until they are understood as instruments of financial power.
Decolonisation did not take place until the former colonial powers and the empires of capital on whose behalf they operated had established other means of retaining control. Some, like the IMF and World Bank, have remained almost unchanged. Others, like the programme of extraordinary rendition, evolved in response to new challenges to global hegemony.''
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/04/30/empire-of-capital/
the tribe ran the british empire and also runs the american empire....via DEBT-MONEY the petro dollar and the reserve currency............
''The bid for power, oil and spheres of influence that Bush and Blair launched in Mesopotamia, using the traditional camouflage of the civilising mission; the colonial war still being fought in Afghanistan, 199 years after the Great Game began; the global policing functions the great powers have arrogated to themselves; the one-sided justice dispensed by international law: all these suggest that imperialism never ended, but merely mutated into new forms. The virtual empire knows no boundaries. Until we begin to recognise and confront it, all of us, black and white, will remain its subjects.''
http://www.monbiot.com/2012/04/30/empire-of-capital/
Afghanistan was/is about narcotics. Then, there were the Chinese opium wars. That's where the big bucks are.
After the last crusader Field Marshal Edmund,'The Beast' Allenby drove the Turks from Jerusalem in 1917 the entire Ottoman Empire which had been in existence since the 14th century collapsed. Britain, France and their proxies carved up the vast region into so-called protectorates but rebellion was instantaneous. The Turks fought the invaders from 1919-23 and liberated that part of the old Sultanate.An alliance with fanatical Sunni Wahhabists and the House of Saud in the deserts had already taken place and was to become extremely useful to the foreign empires. The Trojan Horse of the State of Israel would also help to ensure that no Muslim hegemony would ever again rise in the Middle East.
I have a solution. Expose the documentation that Saudi Arabia took down the WTC and then move in and make Saudi Arabia the 51st state. Done deal. Accomplishes everything all at once sort of.
And then frack that bitch until it crumbles under the quakes.
That's what she said..
Washington DC = the following
https://www.ultimateflags.com/images/P/buy_districtofcolumbia_flag-01-01...
The 3 stars = the three nodes of POWER (all controlled by jews)
LONDON (finance)
VATICAN CITY (religious)
WASH DC (military)
This goes back to ancient Egypt (whereby the 'DICK' symbol obelisks from Egypt are in Vatican Square, London, & a replica was constructed in WDC as the Washington Monument)...
There are a lot of complicated ideas that go into this... BUT THE BASIC IDEA IS...
REJECT ALL OF THESE... (or be content as a sheep)...
1st Council of Nicaea 325 a.d. This set in motion the construction of an Empire unlike anything that had gone before.
Following the thread here from Achilles Heel and yourself.
I was just going to ask who gets to vote on if Washington Gives up it's military Superpower Status over the world or gives up policing the world, or gives up protecting the trade routes and Oil shipments?
Not US voters.
Maybe Vatican & London. But maybe Saudi Arabia gets to vote with Israel, NATO, Germany, France & Switzerland home of the BIS and other big bankers. Belgium, Netherlands, Luxembourg?
But maybe the big voters are in the MIC & Wall Street & K Street.
The Old Money shall never surrender.
I guess if we have Treaties to support Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Israel, NATO, Germany, France, EU, Poland, Czech Republic, United Kingdom...
We really can't stop the Wars.
We can't stop the Superpower Military Status.
The Official or unofficial US Government will continue on the Trajectory of War and Global Chaos.
There is No Vote on it.
How far back does that go though? The flag's three stars & two bars are straight off of Washington's coat of arms. (It's even on the Purple Heart medal.)
Having lived inside the Beltway for 15 years I can tell you it is the biggest dome of delusion in the nation, besides perhaps, Wall Street.
Those people will not get it, nor understand, nor try to - until the barbarians are at the gates or the nuclear bomb flash blinds them.
To hell with flash blinding them...I prefer to see ashes.
Instead of reaming the Iraqi army maybe we should air drop everything but anti-air weaponry in the middle of the desert and see who shows up and turn them into pink mist with air sorties. Honey pot any one?
Because if Murikistan wanted to do that, they would have.
Just drop grenades that go off as soon as the pin is pulled.
And no mention of Israel. Why worry ourselves about "cause and effect"? The result of the End Game all that maters to a dreadful few.
"pretense that the United States remains the sole global superpower"
It takes military might to be THE super power. The US still (just barely) has military might. The other factor required is a favorable perception. What the world currently perceves, is a USA run by prissy idiots. Can't be a super power with the likes of Obama at the helm. How about crusty old Ronald Lee Ermey (Full Metal Jacket)? He can speak in public without a teleprompter and with the right advisors (every prez has them) he could kick ass. Not talking about war. Just standing up for America - no more bowing! I know, no chance. Just dreaming. http://www.rleeermey.com/about.php
Imperialism? Why not? Better than being an 'also ran'.
'certain Republican' candidates...as if !Hillary is a dove...she seems to have the blood lust even some of the Rs don't have.
9/11 was an inside job.
Conspiracy theorist! Now your name is smeared and your credibility is lost. You are hereforth shunned from intelligent, patriotic society
Delusionary thinking in Washington, my ass. The delusionary thinkers are the goofy phookers who decieve themselves into thinking the delusionary thinkers are in Washington.
We the people, IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, fail realize that the corporation operates under the issuance of decrees in all its conceivable legal forms and that the Constitution... it is merely a referential document, since it was abolished by the Act of 1871.
http://www.serendipity.li/jsmill/us_corporation.htm
Moreover, the United States in legal terms... is at all times, in a State of War, thus the Sovereign can legally implement all necessary measures to quell any potential social unrest scenario (Insurrection: 50 USC §§ 201-226). http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title50/html/USCODE-2011-title5...
Yeah... 50 USC §§ 201-226 is a LOT to swallow. Maybe you ought to curl up while you're on vacation for about a week and let THAT shit sink in. You'll realize how DELUDED those guys in Washington are? Yeah. Right! They have codified into law every which way you can turn and you aren't going to get away from their asses any which way you turn.
Yeah... right. They are deluded? You keep telling yourself that while you are just simply... fucked.
The lawful stockholders of this corporation called THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA (Buckingham Palace and St. Peter's Basilica) won't hesitate to get rid of the nonprofitable stocks (specifically dissenters) since US citizens are just financial instruments.
Admiralty Law prevails over Common Law, and stays in accordance with the stipulations clearly defined in Vatican's Canon Law: the historical document called the Constitution clearly observes this legal doctrine, as seen in Article I, Section 2, third paragraph (first sentence) - the Three Fifths Compromise:"Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-Fifths_Compromise
I Guess if we became the corporation known as the United States of America with Private Stockholders... that would explain why we are moving toward TPP and bigger Trade Treaties in order to form a corporation known as The World Government with more private stockholders.
The only question is how much stock China and the BRIICS Bankers will be able to get.
- Other than the Morality and Ethics of turning a Government into a corporation with Debt-holders and Stockholders.
_ and that People become Profit Centers, Accounts, which pay taxes, take on Credit & Debt, and Pay corporations interest & fees
The more you understand the less likely you are to resist because you know those fuckers will kill you.
"The Delusional World Of Imperial Washington"
Delusional or following orders?!
Liberty is a demand. Tyranny is submission.
Very truthful article. Thanks.
America’s superpower strength, in spite of lies to the contrary, is being weakened by its diversity. For it’s the increasing competition of cultures – encouraged by the collectivists and the 1965 and 1990 immigration acts that restricted immigration to primarily Third Word non-whites to make our immigration law even more destructive in the name of diversity – that has poisoned America’s founding culture, which was based primarily on white European Christian families and free enterprise.
America is now bicultural: one culture is the European culture; the other culture is the opponent of the European culture. Whatever is opposed to American culture, be it blacks, Jews, Mexicans, Asians, or anti-Christian humanists, the collectivists seize upon it like a weapon. Only a fool would overlook the new emphasis on multiculturalism: it is color - color in the streets in Baltimore and in the pages of America’s newspapers.
The reality of the product of what our elite Jewish rulers in America have produced can now be viewed: the black community’s aggressiveness is a cause relished by a liberal media determined to remake America into a weak cog in the world of nations. The immorality, the socialism, the vast welfare system, the severe divisions, the profane, the vulgar, the criminal, the lack of justice and the holding down of the common man – all are the product of what America has become. Satan, sex, suicide, and violence.
The point is, divisiveness is weakness and America is suffering: even her foreign policy is controlled by another nation, Israel; her money by Zionists.
The media tells us it is over for the white European culture in America. But it’s a one-sided view. They don’t ask the White European Culture its view. The culture has yet to make its response.
Is the American white culture going to be wiped out? It’s very telling that the news media sticks strictly to “color” because that’s not where the fight is going to be. It isn’t race anymore; it’s culture. The culture war is more than race. To take on the culture is to take on a huge bear – it’s the culture that built the country. And it's the culture that will take it back.
And the American culture never intended to be the engine for a new world order.
I don't know the providence of it, the origin of Rulers, King Makers, Priests. But I suspect that 5,000 years ago they had already invented social education, medicine, contracts, laws, liability, the value of slaves and cattle last to another.
These were carved into stone in Sumeria. Maybe also in the Indus Valley or in Asia as well.
Today the Technology is passed down to the Lawyers, the BAR Association, Politicians, Jesuits and Catholic Leadership, Lobbyist, Actors, and wealthy families.
We KNOW the Lawyers & Bankers are to Blame.
We KNOW the Lawyers & Bankers Confuse the Laws, Confuse the Regulation of Banks, Confuse the People, Create inequity, Create Advantages for the Wealthy or Powerful, Corrupt our Courts, and Corrupt otherwise good men.
I just had a thought that THIS is what happened at the Tower of Babble. The tower was a tower of Lawyers and Bankers. The result was all the people were confused about what was True, what WORDS Meant, how to Count, what was Value, and what was honesty, honest work, and honest Leaders.
Seems to be either newbies or trolls out this morning, how could JR's excellent analysis get downies???
Yo, America, "where id was ego shall be"......Sigmund Freud
The United States of America is regressive like a child that is full of id impulses, hystrionics, temper tantrums, and a general feeling of discontent. America has leaders that bully everyone in the World with this 'superiority complex' that manifests in wholesale destruction of whole countries so that the Military Industrial Complex members can aggressively intimidate and coerce their victims into submission and subservience to an Oligopoly that is attempting to kill us all if we don't play their game and fund the BORG. America is an antisocial victimizer of anyone that steps in the way of their aggressive, and overtly violent tendencies. Moreover, if I was America's grade school teacher I would append a note to her file that stated that she is a spoiled rotten brat that is incapable of working with others and that she should be home schooled until she is ready to get along with people. Now everyone in the World knows that America is going through some serious psychopathological issues, but we in the World have had enough with her hystrionics and can no longer accept her abusive narcissistic megalomania or sociopathy.
Signed....America's 4th grade teacher, MOU
MY pal posted this, and yes he earned it.
"I learned this by crime, you learned this online."
What middle class guy has sex with your precious chaste policewomen? Me thats who.
The american public arent all your little trickable, stickable pets you feel like kicking around when you have a bad day, fellas. You can make the moon a ammunition manufacturing base and it will still not matter. The fail safe device is well in place. So much brass and projectiles laying around in all it forms, at least the middle class post war period made an insane amount of materials.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0y34tzCvnjQ
I hate how every guy in ninja gear and a tactical bandana wears glasses, I see them constantly, I hate those damn glasses, fuck glasses when i shoot. Ill go blind but im hitting that shit. good night rainbow faces stop dressing up in gear shooting hmr
"H.W.’s son, then the governor of Texas, articulated a similar vision of a globally encompassing Pax Americana when campaigning for president in 1999. If elected, he told military cadets at the Citadel in Charleston, his top goal would be “to take advantage of a tremendous opportunity -- given few nations in history -- to extend the current peace into the far realm of the future. A chance to project America’s peaceful influence not just across the world, but across the years.”
- Tremendous opportunity to waste US Resources, Waste Human Peace, Waste Human Opportunity, Cause Rape, Murder, Disease, and to Waste Human Lives.
1999 We had Total Public Debt = $5.6 Trillion
2008 We had Total Public Debt = $9.4 Trillion
2015 We have Total Public Debt = $18.1 Trillion
- But We Refuse to look at any new Economic, Banking, Investment, Trade Models
- We Refuse to look at any new Purpose for Working aged People or Students
- We systematically put young men and women in Prisons, and take old simple laws and regulations, apply Lawyers and take them all apart, make the Laws and the government Idiocracies, Destroy Free Press & Privacy, Teach people to love debt, Interest Rates, Rent Seeking Banks, Deceptive Government, believe the untrue is true, support the wealthy instead of everyday people
The crooks are running the show. If you think it will end til the last nickel is in thief hands you might want to rethink. Get the fuck out of here before they fun the dollar over a cliff and end up owning the ground you stand on.
This picture ZH is trying to paint of an imperial US wouldn't look quite so ridiculous if it wasn’t perpetually cheerleading a nation that annexed part of its neighbour last year. Even more ludacris are Putins crocodile tears that the destabilised nation now can’t repay its debts.
Russia will always be a second rate world power that can't conceal its jealousy.
Ironic post, since Zero Hedge represents the delusional world of Russian imperialism. Try
opposing ALL IMPERIALISMS, ZH. This wouldn't be such pure hypocrisy, then.
The USA should have sunk and burned long ago through the massive debt it takes to maintain its gargantuan industrial military complex, military forces and hardware all over the world.
The only difference between the US and other empires that failed is that its currency is the golbal reserve currency, else it would have devalued to reality.
Any failure of confidence in the USD would mark the end of empire as no way could they continue to afford or print to sustain it.
A BRICS currency backed by a very large amount of gold with their accumualted military ability would put the frighteners on the USD, though also hurt themselves. But if they want to do Saudi Arabia and burn theselves to burn off the opposition...
http://geopoliticainternazionale.blogfree.net/?t=5136270
News Charlie Hebdo
The key to understanding how this came to be is the Kennedy thing. Private independent researchers have it pretty well figured out, but still the coverup remains. Kennedy was not taken out for a single reason by a single interest group, but a coalition of interests that represented what Eisenhower warned about only a few years before. A few changes here and there is simply not going to matter.
As a wise poster on ZH put it: "The coup was complete in 1963".
Mr. Truman drops atomic bombs on women and children and it my father who is posthumously adjudged a war criminal.
At Yalta with a sweep of a pen, a senile president condemns a third of the world to communism.
Europe with the zeal of a missionary gone mad, hands over the wealth and resources of Africa to savages who have barely learned to beat a drum.
Then you give them tanks and arms to replace their bows and arrows.
And when your freezers arrive, they use them to store their enemies for dinner.
I have the grace not to mention Vietnam.
All over your brave new democratic world, inflation spirals as literacy drops.
And in America? They vote for law and order whilst shooting down Presidents, schoolchildren, and rock stars in the streets.
The Holcroft Covenant (1985)
In 1933 powerful business interests planned to assasinate Roosevelt and install a fascist government in the US. They were thwarted when Gen. Smedley Butler spilled the beans. It was covered up for reasons we can only speculate about.
Just imagine if they had been successful. Do you think they would have let the public know the truth? Do you think they would have kept honest elections and maintained "freedom and democracy" in America?
Fast forward to 1963, when the president was taken out by parties unknown. (A Congressional investigation in the late '70's concluded that Oswald could not have acted alone.) Do you think they would keep America status quo ante and allow it to follow it's natural course of evolution? Then what would be the purpose of doing it in the first place?
In answer to the calls of "coverup," LBJ gave an interview on television and said (I'm paraphrasing) "You don't want to know who killed Kennedy. If it was the Soviets, as we believe, that would mean nuclear war." Looking back 50 years later, no serious person would even suggest the Soviets had anything at all to do with it. If they were, it would involve a massive conspiracy. So who did?
LBJ was in on the assassination along with elements of the CIA and MOSSAD. Naturally, in LBJ's view no one would want to know who was responsible.
In 1968 Robert Kennedy was assasinated in LA. He had just won the California Primary and was about to give his victory speech. That clinched his nomination and he was a shoo-in for the presidency. As Atty. Gen. he had relentlessly prosecuted organized crime, no doubt a factor in his brother's demise since they supported Kennedy in 1960. Guess what RFK planned to do right away? Yep, reopen the investigation into his brother's assasination. Couldn't have that. So we got that POS Nixon, (who coincidentally happened to be in Dallas when Kennedy was outed) who made the first trade deal with China, among other things. Looking back 50 years later, it's clear where that led.
"Who's the bull goose looney around here?"
America
As You state, "eject hundreds of thousands of unemployed Sunni military men and a full officer corps ... you have an instant formula for creating a Sunni resistance movement."
That was the whole point of disbanding the Bathist Iraq military - to turn them into a new enemy of insurgents.
Our hidden foreign controllers have fooled us all into believing that disbanding the Iraqi army was a mistake - when it was all planned that way. As FDR said, “In politics
there are no accidents”. In fact there is a pending lawsuit in NYC from a vet suing Wall St banks for funding the Iraqi insurgents through Iran. This is similar to
granddaddy Prescott Bush being convicted of funding Hitler with his Wall St bank during WW2.
Our controllers need to conjure up new enemies constantly in order to keep the war machine going that feeds the debt and it’s constant interest payments through the IRS into the Vatican and London banks of our foreign controllers.
You cite daddy Bush stating, "“Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival" when in reality a replacement for the old USSR rival was being prepared
with the grooming of Osama and the War on Terror replacing the Cold War and needing a “new pearl harbor” in the writings of the Neocons just before 9-11.
The military overreach is emerging because the entire American economy, secretly run by our foreign controllers, is based on criminal enterprises like counterfeiting the
dollar global reserve currency, running a Saudi Petro-dollar protection racket with DOD assets, running an Afghanistan heroin racket using NATO assets.
Running child and organ trafficking operations among many other criminal operations.
As karma would have it, the rest of the world is onto these scams by our hidden controllers and are currently replacing our dollar global reserve currency status and
are avoiding the Petro-dollar skim that forms the basis of our power and also funds our dominant global military machine.
Of course the comatose American sheeple are unaware and disinterested in any of this and will get just what they deserve soon.
Eric Jon Phelps - Knights of Malta
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_F31TmQ9GwU