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Lawrence Wilkerson: "The American 'Empire' Is In Deep, Deep Trouble"
Former US army colonel and Chief of Staff for Colin Powell, Lawrence Wilkerson unleashed a most prescient speech on the demise of the United States Empire.
As Naked Capitalism's Yves Smith notes, Wilkerson describes the path of empires in decline and shows how the US is following the classic trajectory. He contends that the US needs to make a transition to being one of many powers and focus more on strategies of international cooperation.
The video is full of rich historical detail and terrific, if sobering, nuggets, such as:
"History tells us we’re probably finished.
The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is 1) strategically inept and 2) not the power it used to be. And that the trend is to increase that."
Wilkerson includes in his talk not just the way that the US projects power abroad, but internal symptoms of decline, such as concentration of wealth and power, corruption and the disproportionate role of financial interests.
Wilkerson also says the odds of rapid collapse of the US as an empire is much greater is generally recognized. He also includes the issues of climate change and resource constraints, and points out how perverse it is that the Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously. He says that the worst cases scenario projected by scientists is that the world will have enough arable land to support 400 million people.
Further key excerpts include:
“Empires at the end concentrate on military force as the be all and end all of power… at the end they use more mercenary based forces than citizen based forces”
“Empires at the end…go ethically and morally bankrupt… they end up with bankers and financiers running the empire, sound familiar?”
“So they [empires] will go out for example, when an attack occurs on them by barbarians that kills 3000 of their citizens, mostly because of their negligence, they will go out and kill 300,000 people and spend 3 trillion dollars in order to counter that threat to the status quo. They will then proceed throughout the world to exacerbate that threat by their own actions, sound familiar?…This is what they [empires] do particularly when they are getting ready to collapse”
“This is what empires in decline do, they can’t even in govern themselves”
Quoting a Chinese man who was a democrat, then a communist (under Mao) then, when he became disenchanted, a poet and writer…”You can sit around a table and talk about politics, about social issues, about anything and you can have a reasonable discussion with a reasonable person. But start talking about the mal-distribution of wealth and you better get your gun” ….”that’s where we are, in Europe and the United States”.
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Global warming was invented by Al Gore as an excuse to raise taxes.
Everything in the real (non financial) economy needs energy to move-- a scam like global warming is designed to be a surtax on the real economy.
That is why the political class likes global warming -- they like higher taxes.
Yeah, the deep state really fucked up not making him president. Taxpayers had a really close call there. Phew!
To be clear, this is the Pig-Fucker who witheld evidence in all kinds of "initiatives" and who was protected by the "so-called Republican" Colin Powell.
Colin Powell has been treated as a great man for doing what? Semi-admitting that he knew we had it all wrong and everybody in power was (is) a war criminal?
In my opinion he is worse than all of the rest, because he had the platform and could have single handidly prevented this whole mess and exposed so many falshoods. Instead he did exactly what he knew was wrong. If he were a patriot and such a great man, he wouldn't have done what he did.
WTF happen to him. Did he disappear into obscurity because of the extreme shame he felt for presenting that huge steaming pile of horse shit to the UN in front of the world .
I'm guessing not because people like that don't feel remorse or shame. They just get paid and live happily ever after!
Colin proved himself to be a useful tool when he was brought in as the black face to do his part in covering up The Mai Lai Massacre in VietNam. His career took off after that.
Shouldn't you be cowering under a blanket somewhere., letting someone else fix the problems?
Cowardly Cunt.
Colin Powel was pure politics - a worst kind of asshole.
Go back and read the history of Desert Shield and Desert Storm. He was pushing Gen Schwarzkopf to start the attack on Iraq before Schwarzkopf was ready. It was purely based on political atmosphere back in Washington DC. Schwarzkopf was almost relieved of command because he refused.
Colin Powel was willing to put the soldiers at much greater risk because of political expediency.
A true piece of shit.
You just can't handle the truth, can you. You're dead. But you don't even know it.
As long as the good people of Arizona think McCain is worth electing, friends will be lost fast. Wherever he popped in like in Ukraine and Syria conditions deteriorate and the emperor is exposed. Add to that that the US is only 4.4. % of global population and engage in an expensive contest with 2 % of global population like Russia, it appears all so irrational that you wonder whether applauding ther Emperor is still the proper thing to do.
Let me help you out here ... as long as Diebold thinks McCain is worth electing ...
My, it is the people of Arizona. I even know a democrat that votes for him. His reason is that if he runs into him he can honestly tell him that he voted for him.....because McCain does public appearances in Arizona and he has already met him before.
Cowards can't help themselves, much less anyone else.
The United States will be no different than Rome or Britain. To think that we will be is simply delusional.
We will continue to debase our currency as they did and even go as far as a world war in the attempt to preserve the status quo.
USA is already so in many ways. Americanos pride their country's standard of living,but honestly, it is all hype. Truth-be-told, the country is dismal and ghettozied for the most part. We are glad we got out of their.
You can tell there has been a change. Europeans are no longer trying to immigrate to the US.
Even those in poor Eastern European countries now look almost exclusively to the EU and not US.
Maybe that is partly behind this migration wave into Europe. Screw it up to get some brain power to head for the US. If it was not for the Asian immigrants the average IQ
in the US would be dropping even faster. These are not exactly PhD candidates flooding across the Southern border.
and this all snuck up on the smartest people in the world?
conditioning for when china (et al) send millions over to cover bounced checks.
the global two step continues
pretty good until he started talking about climate change alarmism. sea levels may rise by like an inch over the next decade. look out.
To his credit, Wilkeraon has been saying this since at least 2002. He was disparaged back then; AND HIS BOSS (POWELL) WOULDN'T BACK HIM UP!!
I am not convinced this is the final collapse.
Following the social/scientific/economic trend I am convinced the next human paradigm will hold several key features:
We will have new energy sources. They are overdue, and sure enough there is plenty of evidence such sources are suppressed.
We will have a global government. Global communications point to that. But it cannot be fascists as is being set up now. Something like the World Federalist Movement could work though.
Scientific research must embrace human conciousness. Quantum physics points to that, even though science requires objectivity(consciousness is subjective).Oddly enough most "scientist" today are religiously materialist. Consequently science is roughly forty years overdue for a era change.
It looks to me like the elite are not just "American", but are using the fall of America to set us up for a global system. This is shaping up to be another collectivist system with no real advancement.
Collectivism always fails. Usually hurting the people as it does. I give it three to four years until the real new human paradigm is born.
Naturally I'll be wrong on a few points. It's just how I see it.
There are 3 species that live collectively and wage war... Ants, bees, and humans.
War not aggression.
All three, I believe, have queens as ruler.
Does this imply that there is hope for humanity in the soaring divorce rate?
Obviously you missed the many episodes of Meerkat Manor as well as most history lessons.
Humans are usually ruled by a man. While there are examples of countries ruled by a woman, these are exceptions and not the norm.
Closer to the heart
https://youtu.be/DDRPtg0kmJU
"And the men who hold high places must be the ones who start to mold a new reality closer to the heart." Paradoxically, on an album titled A Farewell To Kings.
Here's a beauty:
Fendt 939/Kverneland 10 furrow plough and Fendt 724/Lemkin 7 furrow plough
Two Fendt Tractors Ploughing together
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PB0VfVfdbvg
R40 2015 - victory lap : )
New sources of energy? How about an old one that has a max (theoretical) capacity of approx 6000 times the current total energy consumption of the world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ocean_thermal_energy_conversion
Old? Yes - a pilot project back in 1926 in Cube by the inventor of commercial neon proved it works. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Georges_Claude
If we can not do better than 1926 materials technology we are not trying.
Wind farms !!! Huh. Far better to get the energy directly from the temperature differential, and bring all the idle nurtients at the bottom of the ocean to the top warm layer to give the local sea life massive boost.
"Department of Defense is the agency that is taking climate change most seriously."
Of course they are, being the lead on chem trail deliveries.
Putting aside that Obama ordered the military to murder people with drones while taking climate change seriously (its Obama's fraud, the military just nodded in exchange for a bigger budget...)
There is also the matter that Obama couldn't keep his heel on the throat of BP after the gulf of Mexico fiasco... partly because the UK's NHS health system depends on oil royalties to pay the bills ... and also because BP supplies millions and millions of gallons of jet fuel to support Obama's military led "peace" initiatives all over the world.
Oh, and those drones murdering people without trial? They run on jet fuel also.
Fuckin, blah, blah, blah....I love how these old bastards come out with the fire and brimstone.... AFTER..... they've suckled from the pig for 30 years. Where the fuck were you all these years sleeping beauty? Let me guess, you were just "following orders". Just another born again military welfare queen who's speaking truth to power now that he's done playing Napoleon and his pension checks are rolling in. Say what you came to say and stop jerking us off with the history channel re-run shit.
It's even worse than that. This cock sucker is on the lecture circuit, trying to make money denying his role in the entire thing. Gloom/doom sells well to a certain demographic and jagoffs like this know how to exploit it.
Just call it another chapter in the process of creative destruction. Contrary to what many prefer to believe, the world does not revolve around the U.S.A.
Headed for collapse. But timing is impossible to predict. Rome was a declining empire for a long, long time.
True, but communications are so much faster these days therefore stuff is actionable in split seconds rather than a horse ride over to the other side of the counrty to deliver a command and wait for another horse ride back for the result.
When the collapse happens, the whole world will find itself knee deep in shit instantaeneously.
All this time the military has been feeding at the trough. Worse than welfare these cheap whores line up for benefits and deliver a spectacle of useless wasted humanity all pomp and hot air like they are glorious protectors when they are nothing but eaters off the carcass. Just the luckiest buzzards at the body of the dead nation. They would be better to take off the uniform and slink to the shadows where they belong. Gutter trash whores
"Contractors Raked in $385 Billion on Overseas Bases in 12 Years"
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/05/contractors-385-billion-mili...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/the-privatization-of-war-mercenaries-privat...
"According to a congressional report on the behaviour of Xe/Blackwater in Iraq, Xe/Blackwater guards were found to have been involved in nearly 200 escalation-of-force incidents..."
http://psm.du.edu/articles_reports_statistics/data_and_statistics.html
Let's see if I understood this gent right: We spend way too much on the military; more than the combined expenditures of all the other countries on the globe. But in 25 years Miami is gonna be covered by water, as are all our naval bases located close to the sea ... So we should begin spending tens of billions of dollars to relocate our naval bases?
Perhaps he clarifies things later on, but I just couldn't deal with his talk after this point. Audio quality was also poor.
Once again, a vey superficial and probably incorrect view of events.
First off, if the American empire falls, who stands waiting to take over from it? The EU? Japan? China? Russia? Africa? There is no obvious successor and all other candidates are in as bad or worse shape than America and are using the same methods of government, finance, and business.
Secondly, contrary to what Colin Powell's mindless yes-man wants you to believe, empires DO NOT decay in a straight line. They have been known to suffer periods of great stress, reorganize, and go on to further escapades. Constantine's reform of the Roman Empire added about 1100 years to its life, depending on how you look at it. The structural change represented by the advent of the Caesars put about 300-400 years on the clock. Egypt had so many periods of rise and fall that they are counted in dynasties, not in mere years. The same for China. Look at the history of Russia in the past 100 years. It's still there but has undergone three distinct periods of structural reform sandwiched in between many highly destructive wars. You think America is less capable of such things?
I'd certainly agree that the times cry out for drastic restructuring and reform, but this brings us up squarely against the question that vexed the original founders of the Great Republic-- is mankind capable of self-government?
Most of you would probably agree that you are individually capable of such things but everyone else is not. Succumbing to this viewpoint means that any envisaged reform leads right back to the same system that you complain is being foisted off upon you personally-- namely, a government of instruction where some elite group of people decides what you may or may not do personally. Whether it is being done to you or you end up doing it to someone else that you deem incapable of governing themselves, the end result is the same, a return to old school aristocracy no matter what flag it flies under.
Even if it does not prove possible to design an intelligent series of reforms and restore the notion of the individual as a distinct social entity not beholden to any collective grouping, I believe that we owe it to our ancestors as well as our posterity to make the effort or, at worst, die in its attempt. My forebears did not hand off their great creation into my care simply to let me walk away from it because it is flawed or the odds say that it is likely to collapse.
There are many people who are not just expecting things to collapse but are actively counting on it to happen in order to further their own plans of attaining, or perhaps re-imposing, their primacy over their fellow man. Those who give up now before the battle is even joined are surrendering their posterity to eons of global slavery at the hands of a band of scientific monsters.
Foiling those dreams would be sweet indeed, and a project worthy of all true Americans, among whom I do not count Colin Powell or his obsequious servant.
"The time has come when we must either fight or submit. There is only one choice and we have already made it."
I agree with many of the things you say here and I would include contemplation of the notion that there may be population limits beyond which democracy ceases to function effectively. I think the scale of reforms in the empires you mentioned would not be very achieveable under the current "democratic" system and yet it is reforms of that scale that are required. The self interest of the majority of people in business and government (corruption would be another word) has such momentum that it makes the decline of the American empire inevitable due in large part to your last sentence. I do not know who these "true Americans" are that you speak of and I doubt that you could define them although I dont doubt you would imbue them with the finest virtues of your revered constitutional framers. The problem is they dont really exists in any great numbers but that they do exist and in every country. The problem is that there are just not enough of them to make the amount of difference the world needs. Unfortuately the mass of humanity are selfish assholes and there are more and more of them every day.
Why do you assume someone must take over ? Say the USA fights one last multi-front war and loses a few hundred thousand men. Why should any nation take over ? It could simply be a multi-polar world with the USA breaking up internally and different states bickering over who gets te MInutemen or the subs......you know like the USSR collapsed.
There does not need to be a top dog.
Exactly. Why do we need empires? We don't. They are built for plunder.
Wow, you guys are really naive. We don't NEED empires, we get them because of human nature. Sociopaths rise to power because they are the ones who lust over it.
The history of the world has been, and always will be, someone creates value. Then barbarians come and try to conquer it. You have to constantly whack the barbarians or you get torn apart. This is why there are always gangsters, war lords and dictators. Just sociopaths who rose as far as they could go.
The US will fall like all have previously, because corruption eats away at the insides like a cancer. The barbarians will eventually win and the process repeats. In this case, the US is so brain dead they are inviting the barbarian in to live amongst their best producers. Insane.
Wilkerson is right about the US. BUt Russia is mcuh further down the same path..
We at least have a chance to pull out of it and recover. But Russia is hosed for sure.
I have to remind myself that there is no reason to consider this satire.
US + Allies conquered countries (since 2000): Afghanistan Iraq, Libya, Ukraine, attempted Iran, attempting Syria. Many more by economic trickery
Russia's: No one. Assad invited Russia and Russia is helping Ukraine.
This is the first annoying detractor/ astroturf I've seen for a long time on ZH. Thought the establishment didn't bother because it considered ZH too far gone.
Leave this place, leave this place - Troll Alert (check the profile)
The thing that I took away from this is when he talked about how clueless the politicians were against the National Defense Contractors.
Once when I was going through a few of the technical ZH posts trying to understand something I ended up thinking 'Holy s*** this is complex', and I was gaining at best a very bare rudimentary knowledge of some of the financial instruments involved, and I perhaps could be described as unusually intelligent in an information processing kind of way.
For someone to really understand a lot of these things beyond the bare bones, they would need years of study. To run a country they would need many more.
In England, our Chancellor of the Exchequer (George Osborne) has never studied economics in his whole life, he has a PhD in history.
And it came together, when Max Keiser said that George (who sits in the house of Lords apparently off his face on cocaine a lot of the time) is a complete moron and is only parroting what he is being told by bankers.
It's a shame, because our previous Labour Leader (Gordon Brown), who was hated viciously by a very intense media hate campaign. He really was on it economically. He might have been in Rothschild pocket but he worked very hard at economics and knew his stuff. Essentially he was the right person for the job in 2008 within the limits of a corrupt system that wasn't going to jail the bankers.
Gordon Brown, who was previously chancellor of the exchequer before playing PM, was the guy who helped "Sir" Fred Goodwin run RBS (and Natwest) into bankruptcy.
If that is your idea of economic expertise, who needs failures?
Goodwin, who was shagging his administrative assistant (not his wife) was busy belittling the staff in Edinborough for having the wrong shade of red in the HQ carpets -- while overpaying for ABN Amro and not having any idea what assets RBS was buying in the USA (like the ill fated Abacus deal).
Gordon Brown was the stooge who signed off on Goodwin's giant ego building acquisition spree.
It wasnt Brown's fault that a financial Tsunami swept across the world from the USA. Debt was manageable, and he wasn't interested in warmongering. Maybe that's why the oligarch owned media hounded him.
RBS (a Scottish / British bank) decided to pay obscene amounts to buy ABN Amro (a Dutch bank). They got financing assistance from Fortis (Netherlands) and Santander (Spain).
Where do you get off deciding that problem started in the US?
And then you claim "debt was managable" -- so it goes without saying you are clueless.
The Goths of Emperor Valens
I think the illusion of empire is fast eroding. Looking back, The U.S. "Empire" ended decades ago. It's long been the tip of the spear for the globalist and that empire is just beginning. It's clear to me that America has been folded into the new global power structure.
'Ol Lawrence ought to know.
His boss used his enormous credibility and prestiege to lie us into a fradulent war with Iraq.
Some of what Wilkerson said made sense but the part about only having enough arable land to support 400 million is pure bull shit. We have less land under cultivation than we had in 1950 and produce twice as much food.
Ok, i stopped listening at the "sea level rise" section.
I adgreed with everything else the guys had to say but....
he is supposed to be educated and understands that our corporately owned media is lying about the Empire's actions all over but he buys into the sea level rise scam?
Are you kidding me?
I throw a challange out to anybody reading this.....
Ask ANY port authority anywhere in teh world if seal level is rising. In fact, just ask then for their tide gauge data and plot it yourself.
It Ain't rising.....sorry. So anyone that includes that kind of nonsense in their speech....I just shut off.
Squid
Sure, I'll get right on that. Then I'll go after the deep ocean data, then the cryosphere will be next on the list. Then I'll have some first-hand non-centralized PROOF the World Meteorological Organization are just scammers.
I'm gonna need a few $$$, brother can you spare a dime?
Face it, civilization makes each generation stupider and lazier than the last, and the rot is both cultural and genetic. Life is so easy that our children never grow up -- ask a college professor how Millennials react to any grade less than B. Civilization enables too many idiots to survive, reproduce, and take over and wreck civilization. The only good news is that the coming barbarism will have the opposite effect.
International cooperation is a fool's errand, because the barbaric nations only hope to plunder our wealth, and the civilized nations are nearer to collapse than we are.
Where I live, winter cold is far deadlier than summer heat, so while I welcome global warming, I just invested $4800 in a wood stove in case it doesn't happen. And why should I care that some dude I never met is a million times wealthier than me and has closets bigger than my crapshack.
Much of what you say is true, but I do not believe it needs to be true. I think the elitists who run the government, banks and media have made an conscious and concerted effort to make the population dumb, docile and dependent... and people have agreed, not because they are lazy, but because they simply do not know any better.
For $4800 that must be a nice stove.
Yes, I wish more people thought like you and tried to remove envy and fear from their lives. They would be much more free and happy.
"concerted effort to make the population dumb, docile and dependent"
The only way the elite could make the population smart, aggressive, and independent would be to cut off all government benefits and let natural selection thin the herd. Which would promptly result in that elite being thrown out and replaced by the sort of elite we have now.
I don't think the American people ever wanted their government to become an empire. The government just decided on its own or at the behest of financial masters.
This is just another example of how the US government is not the people and does not represent the people. The US government acts like a foreign entity and tries to drag the people along with it into hell, instead of representing the people.
Disagree. Americans of all stripes loved their empire, all the feelings of dominance, exceptionalism, patriotism, protector and projector of Liberty - all those powerful delusions. Those who didn't were spineless, dangerous pacifists.
Ahhh, so wanting and working for peace and cooperation amongst people makes one spineless? Putting oneself in the midst of people who we could if we want make enemies and treat them as friends makes one spineless?
It is much less spineless, in your opinion then to target random groups of people in a far away country with cruise missiles or drones and blow them up over and over again until they hate us and get so called "radicalized". That is your opinion of bravery?
I sure hope you do not work for our government because if people such as you are deciding how we treat people around the world, dressing up in costumes and playing dominance games ... then we are truly f*cked.
... and you said that believing in delusions makes us strong and not believing in delusions makes us dangerous. How queer!
He has some good points but also shit points. None of these high influential people ever talk about the real issue, that this was intentionally brought upon the American people by infiltration and deception. I mean, if you're gonna talk about the WTC then tell it as it is; Mossad op. Untill I actually hear any of these people mention true causes for all this they are as believable as the Santa.
Pretty shocking to see members of the old guard come out and trash the current leadership like this.
I enjoyed his admissions thoroughly.
Hopefully it encourages some "republicans" ("liberals" too) to reconsider their political allegiances- and their world beliefs.
... as the old information paradigm gets taken down yet another notch.
A good man who worked for a scroundrel. But wrong on 9/11, wrong on CAGW and wrong on Empire.
Empires at the End of History are different, this time.
re The rest of of the world is awakening to the fact that the United States is strategically inept....
NO! The rest of the world is is awakening to the fact that the USSA is run by a Cabal Of War-Mongering NeoCONS on behalf of the Global Zionist Crime Syndicate.
Mr Wilkerson never seems to nail the real issue - then again, I would expect nothing less from someone who learned his "trade" at the feet of Arch Obfuscator Colin Powell. Wilkerson is a phoney.
Actually, even if one accepts your premise, the U.S. quite obviously has been strategically inept – at least over the past 25 or so years.
So while LW may have omitted certain salient points, he is not wrong on that one.
Trail over the last 45 years is littered with highly skilled and loyal Americans who attempted to stop this band of thieves who ride religion no differently that Jim Jones in Jonestown, SA or The Heaven Scents who had no choice but to check out because, it's the plan. Armed and extremely dangerous with an All Points Bulletin should be put out for who will be responsible for sending humanity into the depths of despair not seen in modern times worldwide, no escape. Whole place in lockdown, judicial system corrupt all the way to the top... with check points and disagreeable/unlikable being a crime, and provoking to commit a crime is a jack pot winner.
This has been gradual. Discreetly in men's private clubs, the secret societies ... gossip circles, aggrandizing, ruminating, hateful, envy-fueled, self-mutilating flagellating about ~nothing else~ and of it all with a handshake and warm hello. Criminally insane.
( just for starters )
Wilson and leaving German military/industrial and elites undefeated, hence WW2
FDR and Yalta. ( more countries enslaved AFTER WW2 then before)
Chinese allies that lost 15 million fighting Japan are kicked to the curb( like the Poles, N Vietamese Catholics, Hmong, Kurds..) China goes Commie. 3 years later, Korea. No win.
Vietnam. No win.
....
Less than 4 years after
So it was okay to work for war criminals like Powell and Bush for years?
Now you get to do speeches and book tours?
Is this guy any different than Gen. Clark who bombed with way into a lucrative "consultant" job?
USA has been in deep shitake for years, not just recently. What is different this time is that China has also began its descent into oblivion, and these two major economies both falling is going to cause havoc in this world.
No ancient civilisations are around today, they all go wrong somewhere along the line.
The UK was the last global super-power and the US is the current one.
Nothing is forever.
There is a study that shows all civilisations tend to follow a very similar cycle ending in “the Age of Decadence” where money and individual gain becomes the sole driver (sound familiar).
http://www.rexresearch.com/glubb/glubb-empire.pdf
The human race, like all animals, wants the best for their children and this very basic desire probably results in the decay of all civilisations.
Once an entrenched elite is established it is the beginning of the end.
Their desire to do the best for their children kills social mobility through inheritance, private schools and universities, etc .....
Then the aim becomes to maintain fortunes rather than generate them and the creative forces behind that civilisation begin to die.
Welcome to the “Age of Decadence”.
More on the same theme:
1) The countries with the lowest social mobility in the developed world?
The US and UK.
The last two super-powers.
http://www.oecd.org/centrodemexico/medios/44582910.pdf
2) Probably why our elites are into finance and investing rather than starting companies.
Maintaining fortunes rather than creating them.
3) "I only want what's best for my children" Kim Jong-Il.
It does have its problems.
The fourth turning...
Glubb estimates that most empires do not last longer than roughly 250 years, with many of them lasting much shorter periods of time (The US is 225 yrs old +):
http://www.alfin2100.blogspot.ca/2013/01/the-life-span-of-empires-250-ye...
We have come to worship what we created. Government. The master serves the servant. We were warned about idolatry.
Aid to Colin Powell?
Strike one.
When hasn't the US been inept?
Strike two.
"Climate Change" Enough.
Strike three.
Empire?? There is not ONE THING in my home made in the USA. Most of my appliances are German and power tools. lawn mower and chain saw. German Most of my electronics. (HDTV. 3 monitors smartphones ) made in S. Korea
Thanks for your contributions in making that "trajectory" successful Colonel!
Why didn't you go to jail as an accessory again to the war crimes you helped endorse???!...
As far as I can tell, what makes it more dangerous this time around is there is no one in pocket to shift the mantle of reserve currency. The financiers were involved in the transitions of old, and back then I think any opposition was easily overcome. If defeat becomes imminent, they may find it easier to wipe the board clean rather than share or try to claw back the power.
The financiers were involved in the transitions of old, and back then I think any opposition was easily overcome. If defeat becomes imminent, they may find it easier to wipe the board clean rather than share or try to claw back the power.
And that is what it has been about from the "get go" since the dawn of American imperialism went parabolic after WWII
What mine is mine! And what's your's is mine! And you'll have to destroy me first and everyone else that is my "hostage" U.K., London, Riyadh, EU... before you'll see any of it!
Military the only ones who care about climate change! lol
They're the ones doing it, not CO2. They're the ones who have most to gain from 'controlling' it.
We may not have caused it, but we (the military) are trying our best to accelerate it.
repost as agw was addressed: remember some are paid to ignore the truth and some are paid to spread the lie...same as it ever was...
ot : global warming and well payola, part of the PR efforts and the well paid "scientists" who propagandize AGW: "Shukla’s Gold
Roger Pielke Jr recently made the remarkable discovery that, in addition to his university salary from George Mason University (reported by Pielke as $250,000), Jagadish Shukla, the leader of the #RICO20, together with his wife, had received a further $500,000 more in 2014 alone from federal climate grants funnelled through a Shukla-controlled “non-profit” (Institute for Global Environment and Security, Inc.), yielding total income in 2014 of approximately $750,000.
Actually, the numbers are even worse than Pielke thought.
Over a million dollars in total in 2014 alone.
In addition, Shukla’s long-time associate, James Kinter, participated in the same double dip, though on a less grandiose scale. Kinter, also a Professor at George Mason, doubled his 2014 university salary of $180,038 with $171,320 from IGES, for a total 2014 income of $351,358.
In today’s post, I’ll make an attempt to follow the money. This analysis is not an audit as I obviously do not have access to original documents – only public information and, for the purposes of this note, only online research. In addition, the history is quite complicated,as the institutions reach back over 30 years and have changed relationships over time. I’ve examined NSF, NOAA and NASA online grant information, which covers only part of the period (NOAA to 2001; NASA to 2006) and placed a summary spreadsheet online here.
Because “warmists” regularly re-assure skeptics that income from research is strictly regulated under federal policies (e,g. Andrew Dessler here), the parties who ought to have the most interest in the structure are warmists, rather than skeptics, though the opposite seems to be the case thus far.
Shukla Compensation
Despite the various changes in grant structure, one constant (or rather steadily increasing amount) has been the several sources of compensation to Shukla and his wife.
In 2001, the earliest year thus far publicly available, in 2001, in addition to his university salary (not yet available, but presumably about $125,000), Shukla and his wife received a further $214,496 in compensation from IGES (Shukla -$128,796; Anne Shukla – $85,700). Their combined compensation from IGES doubled over the next two years to approximately $400,000 (additional to Shukla’s university salary of say $130,000), for combined compensation of about $530,000 by 2004.
Shukla’s university salary increased dramatically over the decade reaching $250,866 by 2013 and $314,000 by 2014. (In this latter year, Shukla was paid much more than Ed Wegman, a George Mason professor of similar seniority). Meanwhile, despite the apparent transition of IGES to George Mason, the income of the Shuklas from IGES continued to increase, reaching $547,000 by 2013. Combined with Shukla’s university salary, the total compensation of Shukla and his wife exceeded $800,000 in both 2013 and 2014. In addition, as noted above, Shukla’s daughter continued to be employed by IGES in 2014; IGES also distributed $100,000 from its climate grant revenue to support an educational charity in India which Shukla had founded.
Discussion
There is a surprising link between the George Mason department and one of my earliest adversaries at NSF, David Verardo, Mann’s handler at NSF, who told him in 2003 that he didn’t have to provide data to me – that Mann was entitled to his view of climate and I was"
if you do not know who Dr Shukla is....well he's the scientist who wrote no demanded that AGW deniers should serve JAIL time. and laws must be passed to enforce loyalty to AGW.
Empires tend to be up to date in latest infrastructure etc.
America is far behind the modern world in implementing tech to the masses. Their infrastructure is crumbling.
''Coming back from Northern Europe to the USA is like leaving the Jetson and returning to the Flintstones'' -NYT reporter quipped in 2011
General Powell was a great politician. Not much of a leader.
Just another useful idiot of the neocons.
Just another useful idiot of the neocons.
Lawrence Wilkerson strikes me as genuine, but as a career statist he is obviously still biased to a statist system and this creates contradictions in his own presentation. Great fucking presentation by the way. Mr. Wilkerson, I'm just asking you to listen to your own presentation and rethink your answer about sending our best and brightest, including your own son, into the fucking soulless machinations of a last-gasp empire.
Note he gets emotional when thinking about his own work in the military trying to "preserve the delicate balance of middle east power", while at the same time acknowledging nothing stays the same and in fact things worse. every. single. time. empires create catastrophic messes. every. single. tme.
He's suffering from the delusion that if we only had the right people in power, the USA could somehow preserve a static level of statism that would be benficial both at home and abroad. This is his message implied right in there with a complete acknowledgement of the failures of empire. every. single. time.
Mr. Wilkerson needs to let go of some final illusions and when his son is right in the midst of it flying drones, I understand the inability to publicly denounce soldiering. But it made me shiver to hear him support it so enthusiastically. All in good time. It takes what it takes...
"Climate change", so it's not global warming anymore.
He just losses all credibility once he starts beating Gore's drum.
Go back to Yahoo... and your little dog too.
6.6M comments on ZH and this is what you have? Pathetic.
Enough arable land for 400 million?
I keep hearing echoes from the lunatic conspiracy fringe coming from the power elite, i.e. the Georgia Guidestones.
That's worrysome.
One would believe that they were not so dim as to misunderstand how pricing drives innovation and technological change, such as Malthus did.
But all the evidence of main stream elite thought indicates otherwise.
SHORTLY
No. We do not live on a finite world...because of the Law of Conservation of Energy.
We really don't.
What we have at any given moment is a finite amount of energy in any particular form.
There's a difference. Because the process of living CONTINUALLY requires the reorganization of the forms you have (raw materials) into the ones you need (finished products).
That's what this Malthusian madness misses.
The law of conservation of energy means that nature is a recycler.
Price is the means by which humans signal to one another which reorganization process technology is in most demand at any moment.
And technology is the means by which the transition is performed.
It appears that the elites hubristically believe themselves to have mastered physical realities in which they are in fact neophytes.
Don't agree with what you have written but not from a Malthusian perspective though. The changes and transitions you suggest via technological innovation and price signals would not be as seamless as you infer. Also there is the hurdle of the political economy in terms of how we organise. Can’t see self-reform being used to accommodate new the realities so as to enable civilisation to progress.
In Europe, we're pretty well organized to burn shit down when they go one step to far so I'm pretty confident that a militairy force won't take control over here.
I'm more convinced that bankers will take over our financial freedom because we all still believe in economic justice where everybody has to pay back what he owes.
And the average joe still doesn't understand that he didn't create all that debt.
So in all, our future and freedom depends on the young generation and how they'll deal with it which for the moment is a scary thought as they lack initiative.
But the road is long and time is a constant.
The term 'failing' is being used when in reality the US empire has already failed. The start of the failure can be traced back to a number of events - disconnecting the Dollar from gold, signing global trade agreements, the start of the off shoring of productive capacity, inability to reign in the banks, idiotic wars, etc. All of these things and others have combined to put the US on a non recoverable downward spiral. Strategists during the Reagan era concluded this and sought to reverse these policies.