A score of recent defense department and other official documents warn that climate change, energy shocks and economic crisis could trigger waves of civil unrest. The understanding seems to explain the proliferation of security and surveillance programs over the last decade....
Nafeez Ahmed, the Guardian contributor who deserves great credit for compiling excerpts from these documents for the public, concluded his article on the subject by saying: “The Pentagon knows that environmental, economic and other crises could provoke widespread public anger toward government and corporations in coming years. The revelations on the NSA’s global surveillance programmes are just the latest indication that as business as usual creates instability at home and abroad, and as disillusionment with the status quo escalates, Western publics are being increasingly viewed as potential enemies that must be policed by the state.”Truthdig
The Pentagon’s Preparations for War Against Us
Adapted from KCRW by Alexander Reed Kelly
More here:
The Guardian
Pentagon bracing for public dissent over climate and energy shocks
Dr Nafeez Ahmed is executive director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development
This is greatly strengthening the Libertarianism, making increasingly likely that Libertarians will successfully take over the GOP and eventually dominate US government.
I don't see that implying anything but a change in personalities in the power structure, however, since the likelihood is high that Libertarians who eventually succeed will be control freaks addicted to power themselves. Money and power are addictive. It's easy to convince oneself that one is John or Jane Galt when one believes in "meritocracy" and one is on top.
13 comments:
It's easy to convince oneself that one is John or Jane Galt when one believes in "meritocracy" and one is on top. Tom Hickey
But Tom, those folks are "creditworthy" or belong to the government-backed counterfeiting cartel themselves.
And thus Progressives have shot themselves in the foot; proving once again that God is not mocked?
Btw, the Bible permits usury from foreigners. One need look no further than our government-backed usury cartel to see the roots of American "alienation?"
The next generation is going to be called on to save democracy from decadent plutonomic carcasses that are running their societies now.
This may be just paranoia speaking, but my browser refused to load the Truthdig.com page.
McAfee SiteAdvisor pops up the warning below:
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Warning: Dangerous Site
Whoa!
Are you sure you want to go there?
http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/the_pentagons_preparations_for_war_against_us_20130615/ may be risky to visit.
Why were you redirected to this page?
When we visited this site, we found it exhibited one or more risky behaviors.
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Has anyone had any problem with that page or is it just McAfee (which is also a part of Prism, btw) who is fucking with me?
No problem here. Probably McAfee.
Thanks, Tom.
I suspected it would be that.
"This is greatly strengthening the Libertarianism, making increasingly likely that Libertarians will successfully take over the GOP and eventually dominate US government."
I tend to agree, because as I think you know, I have ties to the Liberty movement within the GOP,
"I don't see that implying anything but a change in personalities in the power structure, however, since the likelihood is high that Libertarians who eventually succeed will be control freaks addicted to power themselves."
Tom - Can you elaborate on why you characterize Libertarians as "control freaks". Can you give some examples?
I have yet to find a libertarian who will concede that government money (for the payment of taxes and fees) MUST ONLY be inexpensive fiat to allow a true free market in PRIVATE money creation.
Until libertarians acknowledge this and take it to heart, they are just fascist poseurs.
"I have yet to find a libertarian who will concede that government money (for the payment of taxes and fees) MUST ONLY be inexpensive fiat to allow a true free market in PRIVATE money creation."
F - I'm a Libertarian / Supply Sider who is also strongly influenced by MMT and I don't see a conflict. However, I don't think that any of these schools of political and economic thought have a monopoly on goodness, truth and virtue. I am looking for common ground to create space for coalition building. I consider myself pretty well versed in MMT, but it is news to me that government money (for the payment of taxes and fees) MUST ONLY be inexpensive fiat to allow a true free market in PRIVATE money creation." I thought that MMT is predicated on the government being the monopoly supplier of currency.... fiat currency that is.
"Until libertarians acknowledge this and take it to heart, they are just fascist poseurs."
F - Gee wiz, why don't you tell us how you really feel?
I thought that MMT is predicated on the government being the monopoly supplier of currency.... fiat currency that is. The Rombach Report
L. Randall Wray has said that taxation alone is sufficient to drive the value of fiat so that de jure or de facto legal tender laws for private debts are unnecessary.
Btw, I don't consider myself an MMT advocate but an advocate for ethical purchasing power ("money") creation. MMT is certainly part of a just solution (but strip the JG since victims should not be made to work for their restitution) but private monies for private debts only should be allowed to compete with fiat as equally as possible for that purpose.
Inexpensive fiat is the ONLY ethical choice for government debts because otherwise what should ONLY be a purely private money form (e.g. gold, someone's toenail clippings, etc.) is allowed to free ride on the taxation authority and power of government.
Gee wiz, why don't you tell us how you really feel? The Rombach Report
Those who would replace government counterfeiting of private money with private counterfeiting of government money and yet claim to be libertarians are hypocritical phonies.
"Can you elaborate on why you characterize Libertarians as "control freaks". Can you give some examples?"
Ed, I am a libertarian of the left and agree that liberty is a basic value socially and politically, and I also agree that so are egality (equal rights) and community (social cohesion).
What I see among LIbertarians is an over-concern with liberty and under-concern with other social and political values and even practical considerations. In some case, I think that people just have not thought this through carefully, and in others I see the equation of liberty with an absolute property right as the sole right as the desire of egos to control their environment and livers irrespective of others as individuals and wrt to the good of society as a whole. Of course, they dismiss that one the grounds that if only we follow their prescription everything will be hunky-dory due to the invisible hand of markets allocating everything optimally — "the virtue of selfishness."
I think that the argument is all assumption and little merit, merely a rationale to justify the ego's control over its environment and future. To me this is a puerile approach to life that is characteristic of childhood and adolescence, the period of the dialectic between individuation and socialization and the conflicts this entails. Most people integrate these more or less successfully as they mature and progressively to realize the interconnectedness of being and interdependence of life. This is the basis of spiritual development and the appreciation of universality. Some people get hung up in extreme individualism and never make the transition into maturity. Generally these people are either fearful and desire to control their environment and life as much as possible or else they are sociopathic and have little feeling or appreciation for others beyond what use they can to one's own purposes.
All that you say may be true, Tom, but many are rightly offended by "welfare for the rich", the government-backed credit cartel AND by the welfare/nanny state that is supposed to be a substitute for justice but, of course, falls far short of it.
The assumption that all that needs to happen is to reduce the role of govt and unleash the invisible hand in a market state is an assumption that goes way beyond the evidence. Evidence points in the other direction due to inherent market imperfection for a variety of reasons, e.g., economies of scale, information asymmetry, transaction cost, and externality, as well as rent extraction and cheating.
The assumption that all that needs to happen is to reduce the role of govt and unleash the invisible hand in a market state is an assumption that goes way beyond the evidence. Tom Hickey
Of course it does. What part of a government-backed credit cartel sounds like a free market to you?
as well as rent extraction Tom Hickey
With sovereign borrowing (except from the central bank unless it sells sovereign debt to the private sector) we literally rent the government's money supply from the private sector! The MMT folks better address this point strongly because IT IS UNJUST and because the interest payments will eventually become unsustainable too.
and cheating. Tom Hickey
All one has to be is sufficiently "creditworthy" and the current system allows one to legally cheat.
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