Militarism at the Heart of US Gun Violence

[22lcidw]

Nice graph. It is clear that military spending is a small and decreasing portion of the US budget and society.

NOt even 14%. Pathetic.

Nice graph. It is clear that military spending is a small and decreasing portion of the US budget and society.

NOt even 14%. Pathetic.

Twice what it should be, especially with all the well-documented waste and fraud.

The Pentagon is Infested with Fraud, Waste, Abuse and Corruption - Busy

Fraud and waste are not reasons to cut military spending. Fraud and waste are always part of government programs.


If you want to cut military spending, you need to make the case that we are not in danger.


That you did not try that, is pretty telling.


YOu really want to cut military spending, even though you know we are in danger?

Fraud and waste are not reasons to cut military spending. Fraud and waste are always part of government programs.


If you want to cut military spending, you need to make the case that we are not in danger.


That you did not try that, is pretty telling.


YOu really want to cut military spending, even though you know we are in danger?

We're in far more danger from a deodorized, truncated conversation about the reality of the US presence on this planet.

Are you aware an increasing percentage of the world regards the USA as the foremost threat to global survival?

As MLK said those bombs dropped in foreign lands detonate in their homeland as well.

When sixty cents of every tax dollar go to propping up the US Empire, issues like universal healthcare, catastrophic climate change, and a living wage are suffocated by hysterical drama queens who a terrified by anyone without a white skin.

Poll: Top Threats Facing the World in 2019, US Moving Up The List - Citizen Truth

1. Love to have that conversation. I note you didn't address my question to you, as to what ideas on your side of the aisle might be a manifestation of that magical thinking you are worried about. Do you consider yourself and your allies immune to the ills of the society and culture you are a part of? That is not a serious position, and greatly undermines your claim to want a real conversation.

2. The world is pretty fucked up. The West as a whole is deeply decedent. The Muslim World is in serious denial about it's problems. China is a time bomb. India, stagnating. Blaming US is such an easy out, it is not even funny.

3. MLK, said a lot of shit. His words do not have much weight with me, beyond their own internal logic, or lack there of. YOu want to make a point, MAKE IT.

4. Your 60 cents number is a lie. Your race baiting is a lie, designed to hide your real agenda.

5. What is your vision of the future, that you think is served by nerfing the US military?

The world is pretty fucked up. The West as a whole is deeply decedent. The Muslim World is in serious denial about it's problems. China is a time bomb. India, stagnating. Blaming US is such an easy out, it is not even funny.

The US military's invasions and occupations of the Muslim world has created the greatest refugee flow since the end of WWII; I seriously doubt many Muslims are in denial about the effects of "shock and awe" on local mortality/migration rates.

The Chinese system while far from perfect has an impressive track record for sustaining long term growth and development. While the US manufacturing base was hollowed out under the "free market" scam perpetrated by Reagan and Thatcher, China was systematically building its own manufacturing base and investing heavily in infrastructure and emerging technologies with credit generated by its own state-owned banks.

If you're expecting China to collapse of its own weight as the Soviets did, you will likely see the end of the US dollar as a global reserve currency long before China agrees to revert to its current colonial status.

The Best Books on The Opium War | Five Books Expert Recommendations

In the middle east do we stay as policeman or do we leave? Tough decision. Expensive one also. Would nations turn on each other there? Would chaos ensue? I know there are mane and women who want freedom and want what we have here. But there is an element that is more then a few who are violent. And violent with each other also. The real world has three powers vying for control and the globalist salivating at the mouth. Russia, China and the United States. If one falters the other two will jump on them like jackals on their prey. That is the real way of the word. We are destroying ourselves here. And when poor enough, the Western Hemisphere will have the mother of wars that is long overdue.

 

[georgephillip]

The conscription of "poor males" (OP's term) includes pre-duped or information- and hormone-compromised males, a machine for the processing of DNA by other means than just-another-business-day capitalism which apparatus of capture includes the deceptions of the appeal to morality and (an impossible) justice. We suggest the age for comparing U.S. mass shooters pivots on Russians as well, because the media is now asking the question as to which Army is stronger, and because 26 years of age will link an important Russian figure with this investigation.

What is the significance of 26 years of age?

 

[jknowgood]

From February 2018:

Militarism at the heart of a violent culture

"AS THE president continued smearing millions of immigrants as violent gang members to justify racist deportations and a border wall, it happened again. A young white man entered a school, not far from where I graduated, and unloaded a legally purchased weapon of war, killing 17 innocent people in three minutes...."

"WE NOW need to expand the demand beyond gun control, and connect the issue of mass murder at home to state-sanctioned mass murder abroad.

"At age 19, shooter Nikolas Cruz has not lived a year of his life when the U.S. was not actively bombing or occupying other countries, and exporting war through lucrative weapons contracts.

"A teen who can't yet legally buy beer or rent a car was able to purchase a weapon made for tactical combat--but then again, the same legislators who allow the AR-15 to be sold more easily than a Bud Light have supported every U.S. war and every bloated military budget presented to them.

"The U.S.-manufactured ammunition that kills abroad kills just the same in Parkland, Florida.

"The crisis we have before us is not about rap music or video games, as has been charged in previous mass shootings.

"It is a capitalist crisis."

A crisis groomed since 1945 during which the Exceptional US has exterminated millions of innocent human beings from Korea to Kandahar.

Only someone as dense as Trump would be surprised when these chickens come home to roost.

 

[Toddsterpatriot]

1. Love to have that conversation. I note you didn't address my question to you, as to what ideas on your side of the aisle might be a manifestation of that magical thinking you are worried about. Do you consider yourself and your allies immune to the ills of the society and culture you are a part of? That is not a serious position, and greatly undermines your claim to want a real conversation.

2. The world is pretty fucked up. The West as a whole is deeply decedent. The Muslim World is in serious denial about it's problems. China is a time bomb. India, stagnating. Blaming US is such an easy out, it is not even funny.

3. MLK, said a lot of shit. His words do not have much weight with me, beyond their own internal logic, or lack there of. YOu want to make a point, MAKE IT.

4. Your 60 cents number is a lie. Your race baiting is a lie, designed to hide your real agenda.

5. What is your vision of the future, that you think is served by nerfing the US military?

The world is pretty fucked up. The West as a whole is deeply decedent. The Muslim World is in serious denial about it's problems. China is a time bomb. India, stagnating. Blaming US is such an easy out, it is not even funny.

The US military's invasions and occupations of the Muslim world has created the greatest refugee flow since the end of WWII; I seriously doubt many Muslims are in denial about the effects of "shock and awe" on local mortality/migration rates.

The Chinese system while far from perfect has an impressive track record for sustaining long term growth and development. While the US manufacturing base was hollowed out under the "free market" scam perpetrated by Reagan and Thatcher, China was systematically building its own manufacturing base and investing heavily in infrastructure and emerging technologies with credit generated by its own state-owned banks.

If you're expecting China to collapse of its own weight as the Soviets did, you will likely see the end of the US dollar as a global reserve currency long before China agrees to revert to its current colonial status.

The Best Books on The Opium War | Five Books Expert Recommendations

I love the way you refuse to put any responsibility for the way things are, on anyone except the US.

Is that racism because you consider nonwhite people too stupid to be held responsible for their actions or is it just your hate for America?


Regardless my point stands. You want to reduce military spending you need to make the point that we are not in danger.


You still are not even trying to make that case.


What is end game that you want to see the US military nerfed?

I love the way you refuse to put any responsibility for the way things are, on anyone except the US.

What other country besides the US has controlled the global economy since the end of WWII? Which nation created the IMF and World Bank to function as its proxy? Which state insists other countries invest their balance-of-payments inflows and central bank savings in US dollars, especially US Treasuries? How else does the Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World afford its 800 military bases around the world?

Why does the US have 800 military bases in 80 Countries around the world? - Fighter Jets World

1. The US does not control the world economy. We are in a very bad situation in the world economy. Our trade balance is not sustainable.

2. I dont' know that the IMF, or the World Bank functions as our proxy.

3. I don't think that we do insist that other nations invest in dollars. IN fact, imo, the fact that the Dollar is the world currency is a massive burden on US.

4. Our military is paid for by the most successful economy in the world, built on internal freedom and economic nationalism, in the past.

5. And even if you were right on ALL of that, it still is not an excuse to give all nonwhite people a pass on responsibility for their actions.

1. The US does not control the world economy. We are in a very bad situation in the world economy. Our trade balance is not sustainable.

2. I dont' know that the IMF, or the World Bank functions as our proxy.

3. I don't think that we do insist that other nations invest in dollars. IN fact, imo, the fact that the Dollar is the world currency is a massive burden on US.

Since 1971 the US Treasury-bond has replaced gold as the global standard for central bank reserves.

That means a glut of US dollars collecting in central banks around the world finances both the US trade deficit and the US budget deficit.

The 800 US military bases around the planet are there to ensure the tribute continues to flow into American pockets.

https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf (P.3)

"This Treasury-bond standard of international finance has enabled the United States to obtain the largest free lunch ever achieved in history.

"America has turned the international financial system upside down.

"Whereas formerly it rested on gold, central bank reserves are now held in the form of U.S. Government IOUs that can be run up without limit.

"In effect, America has been buying up Europe, Asia and other regions with paper credit – U.S. Treasury IOUs that it has informed the world it has little intention of ever paying off.

" And there is little Europe or Asia can do about it, except to abandon the dollar and create their own financial system.

"Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism: The Origins and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance explains how the dollar’s being forced off gold in 1971 led to a new international financial system in which the world’s central banks are obliged to finance the U.S. balance of payments deficit by using their surplus dollars in the only way that central banks are allowed to use them: to buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

"In the process, they finance the U.S. Government’s domestic budget deficit as well."

the world’s central banks are obliged to finance the U.S. balance of payments deficit by using their surplus dollars in the only way that central banks are allowed to use them: to buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

"In the process, they finance the U.S. Government’s domestic budget deficit as well."

You don't want to hold "surplus dollars", don't run a trade surplus with the US.

 

[georgephillip]

OP asked about capitalism and morality, so we may as well start to fill the file:

'You argue that a major shift in political economic practices, such as neoliberalism, could not come about -- at least in democracies like the U.S. and United Kingdom -- without some degree of consent, not just from traditional elites but also the middle classes. How was this consent engendered in the 1970s?

DH: There was a concerted program that worked at a number of levels. To me, the beginning point was a memo that Lewis Powell, who had became a Supreme Court justice shortly afterwards, sent to the American Chamber of Commerce in 1971. What he said, in effect, was that the anti-business climate of this country has gone too far, we need a collective effort to try to turn it around. After that we see the formation of a whole set of think tanks, the massing of money by various organizations to try to influence public policy and to do it through the media, dio it through think tanks.

We also see the formation in 1972 of something called the Business Roundtable, which was a very influential organization. They were very concerned to try to roll back that legislation which had emerged during the 1960s and early 1970s that set up things like the Environmental Protection Agency, OSHA, consumer protection, and all of those sorts of things. And of course they gained considerable influence in the press through the Wall Street Journal and business pages and business schools and the like, and through their think tanks they started to influence public opinion. But then they also needed to get hold of the political process. This was a very interesting process where the Political Action Committee that got set up in the 1970s were very active and there was a tremendous formation of them and they started to get together collectively to fund the Republican Party.

So what we see is the corporate takeover of the Republican Party along neoliberal lines, conservative lines, rather than the liberal Republicans like the Rockefellers, who were the old-style Republicans. There was a takeover by Reagan and people like that in the 1970s of the Republican Party. But then the Republican Party needed a mass base and one of the things that then happened was that they turned to the Christian Right. Remember it was Jerry Falwell in 1978 who formed the Moral Majority. There was a coalition that then emerged, a popular base amongst the evangelical Christians on the one hand and then tremendous corporate funding of the political process on the other hand, which made the Republican Party solidly behind the neoliberal agenda.'
(Lilley S, Capital and Its Discontents: Conversations with Radical Thinkers in a Time of Tumult, 2011, pp. 46-7)

We see how religious belief accelerated this fascist process due to its inherent culpability, a culpability that leads to crimes.

DH: There was a concerted program that worked at a number of levels. To me, the beginning point was a memo that Lewis Powell, who had became a Supreme Court justice shortly afterwards, sent to the American Chamber of Commerce in 1971. What he said, in effect, was that the anti-business climate of this country has gone too far, we need a collective effort to try to turn it around. After that we see the formation of a whole set of think tanks, the massing of money by various organizations to try to influence public policy and to do it through the media, dio it through think tanks

Ralph Nader also regards the Powell Memo as a harbinger of neoliberalism:

The Powell Memo: A Call-to-Arms for Corporations | BillMoyers.com

"In this excerpt from Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class, authors Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson explain the significance of the Powell Memorandum, a call-to-arms for American corporations written by Virginia lawyer (and future U.S. Supreme Court justice) Lewis Powell to a neighbor working with the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

"In the fall of 1972, the venerable National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) made a surprising announcement: It planned to move its main offices from New York to Washington, D.C. As its chief, Burt Raynes, observed:

"'We have been in New York since before the turn of the century, because we regarded this city as the center of business and industry. But the thing that affects business most today is government. The interrelationship of business with business is no longer so important as the interrelationship of business with government. In the last several years, that has become very apparent to us.[1]'"

"To be more precise, what had become very apparent to the business community was that it was getting its clock cleaned.

"Used to having broad sway, employers faced a series of surprising defeats in the 1960s and early 1970s.

"As we have seen, these defeats continued unabated when Richard Nixon won the White House.

"Despite electoral setbacks, the liberalism of the Great Society had surprising political momentum. 'From 1969 to 1972,' as the political scientist David Vogel summarizes in one of the best books on the political role of business, 'virtually the entire American business community experienced a series of political setbacks without parallel in the postwar period.'

"In particular, Washington undertook a vast expansion of its regulatory power, introducing tough and extensive restrictions and requirements on business in areas from the environment to occupational safety to consumer protection."

 

[badger2]

#142: Although these recent shooters are in their early twenties, at age 26, Tamerlan Tsarnev's militarism was to target Times Square.

https://en.wikipedia.com/wiki/Tamerlan_Tsarnev

 

[badger2]

Tamerlan Tsarnaev - Wikipedia

 

[badger2]

https://www.businessinsider.com/why-most-terrorists-and-mass-shooters-are-millenial-men-2017-11

 

[badger2]

The article above can be retrieved. The age is 25 for risky behaviour and brain maturity.

 

[Andylusion]

From February 2018:

Militarism at the heart of a violent culture

"AS THE president continued smearing millions of immigrants as violent gang members to justify racist deportations and a border wall, it happened again. A young white man entered a school, not far from where I graduated, and unloaded a legally purchased weapon of war, killing 17 innocent people in three minutes...."

"WE NOW need to expand the demand beyond gun control, and connect the issue of mass murder at home to state-sanctioned mass murder abroad.

"At age 19, shooter Nikolas Cruz has not lived a year of his life when the U.S. was not actively bombing or occupying other countries, and exporting war through lucrative weapons contracts.

"A teen who can't yet legally buy beer or rent a car was able to purchase a weapon made for tactical combat--but then again, the same legislators who allow the AR-15 to be sold more easily than a Bud Light have supported every U.S. war and every bloated military budget presented to them.

"The U.S.-manufactured ammunition that kills abroad kills just the same in Parkland, Florida.

"The crisis we have before us is not about rap music or video games, as has been charged in previous mass shootings.

"It is a capitalist crisis."

A crisis groomed since 1945 during which the Exceptional US has exterminated millions of innocent human beings from Korea to Kandahar.

Only someone as dense as Trump would be surprised when these chickens come home to roost.

Trump has said nothing bad about legal immigrants. The only ones ramping up the hate, is you on the left, with all your ridiculous crap you say constantly.

 

[georgephillip]

Keep A Little Bit Of Territory Available At All Times, Or You'll Go Nuts (A Thousand Plateaus)

Whomever wrote the manifesto, it laments of infiltration of "my beloved Texas." This territoriality will link to militarism, Mexico and the IMF via the Roman model and economic hitmen:

'The Roman Empire is probably the first really to be grounded in the acquisition of private property. The reason I called the Roman Empire and empire of property is because, first of all, it was responding to the interests of private propertied classes in ways quite different, for example, from empires like the Chinese, where private property was well developed but where the imperial state was a primary mode of appropriation for officeholders and the main source of great wealth. In the Roman Empire we're talking about property in land as the principle source of power and the empire was constructed on that foundation. The republic that created this empire was basically an oligarchy of propertied classes and it was their interests that were being expressed in imperial expansion. And in fact, although they created an imperial state, the imperial state never became the primary source of wealth for the ruling classes. Property was always the objective, the sole reliable source of wealth, while the imperial state served as an instrument of appropriation indirectly by protecting and expanding private property. The Roman Empire was basically one big land-grabbing operation.

All the ruling classes enriched themselves big time. They also, to some extent, used imperial land to pacify their own peasant armies, whom they had basically been expropriating at home. But they also effectively created local propertied classes in their colonial territories, even in places where aristocracies of property hadn't existed before. So the empire was in a sense more a coalition of local landed aristocracies than an imperial state.
....
What was the chain of events that helped facilitate the process of developing countries becoming beholden to institutions like the IMF and the World Bank which dictated neoliberal policies -- starting with the OPEC oil crisis of the early 1970s and the petrodollars that were produced by those countries in the Middle East that had oil?

DH: ....With the OPEC oil price hike in 1973, a vast amount of money was being accumulated by the Saudis and other Gulf states. And then the big question was: well, what's going to happen to that money? Now, we do know that the U.S. government was very anxious that that money be brought back to New York, to be circulated back int the global economy via the New York investment banks, and persuaded the Saudis to do that. Why the Saudis were persuaded to do it remains a bit of a mystery. We kn ow from British intelligence sources that the U.S. was actually prepared to invade Saudi Arabia in 1973, but whether the Saudis were told: recycle the money through New York or you get invaded....who knows?
....
And so they started to make money available to to many countries like Argentina, Mexico -- Latin America was very popular -- but also places like Poland even. They lent a lot of money to those countries.

That worked out quite well for a while, but then in 1982 there was this general fiscal crisis, particularly after Volcker had raised the interest rate. What this meant was that the Mexicans who had borrowed money at 5 percent were now having to pay it back at 16 percent or 17 percent, and they found that they couldn't do it. Mexico was about to go bankrupt in 1982. That was the point at which neoliberalism kicked in. The U.S. via the International Monetary Fund and the U.S. Treasury said: we'll bail you out, but we'll bail you out on condition that you start to privatize and op up the country to foreign investment and start to adopt a neoliberal stance. Initially the Mexicans really didn't do that very much, but by the time you get to 1988 they start to do it big time.

But here's the interesting thing: it's unreasonable to think that actually the U.S. imposed neoliberalization on Mexico. What happened was that the U.S. was putting neoliberalizing pressures on Mexico and an elite inside of Mexico seized the opportunity to say: yes, that's what we want. So it was a coalition between the elite in Mexico and the U.S. Treasury/IMF that put together the kind of neoliberalization package that came to Mexico in the late 1980s. And actually, if you look at the pattern, it's very rare for there to be a straight imposition of neoliberalizing policies through the IMF or the U.S. It's nearly always an alliance between an internal elite, as it had been in Chile, and U.S. forces that put this thing together. And it's the internal elite who are as much to blame for neoliberalization as the international institutions.'
(Lilley, op cit pp. 30 & 50)

DH: ....With the OPEC oil price hike in 1973, a vast amount of money was being accumulated by the Saudis and other Gulf states. And then the big question was: well, what's going to happen to that money? Now, we do know that the U.S. government was very anxious that that money be brought back to New York, to be circulated back int the global economy via the New York investment banks, and persuaded the Saudis to do that. Why the Saudis were persuaded to do it remains a bit of a mystery. We kn ow from British intelligence sources that the U.S. was actually prepared to invade Saudi Arabia in 1973, but whether the Saudis were told: recycle the money through New York or you get invaded....who knows?

Do you think current official US indifference to global climate change is due to petrodollar politics?

Global Warming and U.S. National Security Diplomacy | Michael Hudson

"Control of oil has long been a key aim of U.S. foreign policy.

"The Paris climate agreements and any other Green programs to reduce the pace of global warming are viewed as threatening the aim of dominating world energy markets by keeping economies dependent on oil under U.S. control.

"Also blocking U.S. willingness to help stem global warming is the oil industry’s economic and hence political power.

"Its product is not only energy but also global warming, along with plastic pollution.

"This fatal combination of the national security state’s mentality and oil industry lobbying threatens to destroy the planet’s climate.

"The prospect of raising temperatures and sea levels along the coasts while inland regions suffer drought is viewed simply as collateral damage to the geopolitics of oil.

"The State Department is reported to have driven out individuals warning about global warming’s negative impact."

 

[georgephillip]

Twice what it should be, especially with all the well-documented waste and fraud.

The Pentagon is Infested with Fraud, Waste, Abuse and Corruption - Busy

Fraud and waste are not reasons to cut military spending. Fraud and waste are always part of government programs.


If you want to cut military spending, you need to make the case that we are not in danger.


That you did not try that, is pretty telling.


YOu really want to cut military spending, even though you know we are in danger?

Fraud and waste are not reasons to cut military spending. Fraud and waste are always part of government programs.


If you want to cut military spending, you need to make the case that we are not in danger.


That you did not try that, is pretty telling.


YOu really want to cut military spending, even though you know we are in danger?

We're in far more danger from a deodorized, truncated conversation about the reality of the US presence on this planet.

Are you aware an increasing percentage of the world regards the USA as the foremost threat to global survival?

As MLK said those bombs dropped in foreign lands detonate in their homeland as well.

When sixty cents of every tax dollar go to propping up the US Empire, issues like universal healthcare, catastrophic climate change, and a living wage are suffocated by hysterical drama queens who a terrified by anyone without a white skin.

Poll: Top Threats Facing the World in 2019, US Moving Up The List - Citizen Truth

1. Love to have that conversation. I note you didn't address my question to you, as to what ideas on your side of the aisle might be a manifestation of that magical thinking you are worried about. Do you consider yourself and your allies immune to the ills of the society and culture you are a part of? That is not a serious position, and greatly undermines your claim to want a real conversation.

2. The world is pretty fucked up. The West as a whole is deeply decedent. The Muslim World is in serious denial about it's problems. China is a time bomb. India, stagnating. Blaming US is such an easy out, it is not even funny.

3. MLK, said a lot of shit. His words do not have much weight with me, beyond their own internal logic, or lack there of. YOu want to make a point, MAKE IT.

4. Your 60 cents number is a lie. Your race baiting is a lie, designed to hide your real agenda.

5. What is your vision of the future, that you think is served by nerfing the US military?

The world is pretty fucked up. The West as a whole is deeply decedent. The Muslim World is in serious denial about it's problems. China is a time bomb. India, stagnating. Blaming US is such an easy out, it is not even funny.

The US military's invasions and occupations of the Muslim world has created the greatest refugee flow since the end of WWII; I seriously doubt many Muslims are in denial about the effects of "shock and awe" on local mortality/migration rates.

The Chinese system while far from perfect has an impressive track record for sustaining long term growth and development. While the US manufacturing base was hollowed out under the "free market" scam perpetrated by Reagan and Thatcher, China was systematically building its own manufacturing base and investing heavily in infrastructure and emerging technologies with credit generated by its own state-owned banks.

If you're expecting China to collapse of its own weight as the Soviets did, you will likely see the end of the US dollar as a global reserve currency long before China agrees to revert to its current colonial status.

The Best Books on The Opium War | Five Books Expert Recommendations

In the middle east do we stay as policeman or do we leave? Tough decision. Expensive one also. Would nations turn on each other there? Would chaos ensue? I know there are mane and women who want freedom and want what we have here. But there is an element that is more then a few who are violent. And violent with each other also. The real world has three powers vying for control and the globalist salivating at the mouth. Russia, China and the United States. If one falters the other two will jump on them like jackals on their prey. That is the real way of the word. We are destroying ourselves here. And when poor enough, the Western Hemisphere will have the mother of wars that is long overdue.

In the middle east do we stay as policeman or do we leave? Tough decision. Expensive one also. Would nations turn on each other there? Would chaos ensue? I know there are mane and women who want freedom and want what we have here. But there is an element that is more then a few who are violent. And violent with each other also.

Imho, the problems we face in the Middle East stem from our support for Israel. If the US were to hold Israel to the same human rights standards it expects from other states, the violence level across that area would decrease markedly.

Why Israel gets much more US aid than poor countries

 

[badger2]

Thanks for the Nader-Powell memo link. Post #151: there is much to ponder though it looks like the same protection-racket modus operandi with the environment, and the expelled from the State Department you point to go hand in hand with the nazism-fascism that has already been linked to it in this thread. Hudson's is a long article that has not yet been read.

 

[georgephillip]

From February 2018:

Militarism at the heart of a violent culture

"AS THE president continued smearing millions of immigrants as violent gang members to justify racist deportations and a border wall, it happened again. A young white man entered a school, not far from where I graduated, and unloaded a legally purchased weapon of war, killing 17 innocent people in three minutes...."

"WE NOW need to expand the demand beyond gun control, and connect the issue of mass murder at home to state-sanctioned mass murder abroad.

"At age 19, shooter Nikolas Cruz has not lived a year of his life when the U.S. was not actively bombing or occupying other countries, and exporting war through lucrative weapons contracts.

"A teen who can't yet legally buy beer or rent a car was able to purchase a weapon made for tactical combat--but then again, the same legislators who allow the AR-15 to be sold more easily than a Bud Light have supported every U.S. war and every bloated military budget presented to them.

"The U.S.-manufactured ammunition that kills abroad kills just the same in Parkland, Florida.

"The crisis we have before us is not about rap music or video games, as has been charged in previous mass shootings.

"It is a capitalist crisis."

A crisis groomed since 1945 during which the Exceptional US has exterminated millions of innocent human beings from Korea to Kandahar.

Only someone as dense as Trump would be surprised when these chickens come home to roost.

View attachment 273628

 

[georgephillip]

From February 2018:

Militarism at the heart of a violent culture

"AS THE president continued smearing millions of immigrants as violent gang members to justify racist deportations and a border wall, it happened again. A young white man entered a school, not far from where I graduated, and unloaded a legally purchased weapon of war, killing 17 innocent people in three minutes...."

"WE NOW need to expand the demand beyond gun control, and connect the issue of mass murder at home to state-sanctioned mass murder abroad.

"At age 19, shooter Nikolas Cruz has not lived a year of his life when the U.S. was not actively bombing or occupying other countries, and exporting war through lucrative weapons contracts.

"A teen who can't yet legally buy beer or rent a car was able to purchase a weapon made for tactical combat--but then again, the same legislators who allow the AR-15 to be sold more easily than a Bud Light have supported every U.S. war and every bloated military budget presented to them.

"The U.S.-manufactured ammunition that kills abroad kills just the same in Parkland, Florida.

"The crisis we have before us is not about rap music or video games, as has been charged in previous mass shootings.

"It is a capitalist crisis."

A crisis groomed since 1945 during which the Exceptional US has exterminated millions of innocent human beings from Korea to Kandahar.

Only someone as dense as Trump would be surprised when these chickens come home to roost.

Trump has said nothing bad about legal immigrants. The only ones ramping up the hate, is you on the left, with all your ridiculous crap you say constantly.

Trump has said nothing bad about legal immigrants. The only ones ramping up the hate, is you on the left, with all your ridiculous crap you say constantly

Why do you think Trump has hired illegal immigrants to work his properties over the past five decades, because it's easier to steal their wages?

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

These shooters seem to be mentally and socially unstable.
How do we cure that?

 

[badger2]

#150: How old are you?

 

[georgephillip]

The US military's invasions and occupations of the Muslim world has created the greatest refugee flow since the end of WWII; I seriously doubt many Muslims are in denial about the effects of "shock and awe" on local mortality/migration rates.

The Chinese system while far from perfect has an impressive track record for sustaining long term growth and development. While the US manufacturing base was hollowed out under the "free market" scam perpetrated by Reagan and Thatcher, China was systematically building its own manufacturing base and investing heavily in infrastructure and emerging technologies with credit generated by its own state-owned banks.

If you're expecting China to collapse of its own weight as the Soviets did, you will likely see the end of the US dollar as a global reserve currency long before China agrees to revert to its current colonial status.

The Best Books on The Opium War | Five Books Expert Recommendations

I love the way you refuse to put any responsibility for the way things are, on anyone except the US.

Is that racism because you consider nonwhite people too stupid to be held responsible for their actions or is it just your hate for America?


Regardless my point stands. You want to reduce military spending you need to make the point that we are not in danger.


You still are not even trying to make that case.


What is end game that you want to see the US military nerfed?

I love the way you refuse to put any responsibility for the way things are, on anyone except the US.

What other country besides the US has controlled the global economy since the end of WWII? Which nation created the IMF and World Bank to function as its proxy? Which state insists other countries invest their balance-of-payments inflows and central bank savings in US dollars, especially US Treasuries? How else does the Greatest Purveyor of Violence in the World afford its 800 military bases around the world?

Why does the US have 800 military bases in 80 Countries around the world? - Fighter Jets World

1. The US does not control the world economy. We are in a very bad situation in the world economy. Our trade balance is not sustainable.

2. I dont' know that the IMF, or the World Bank functions as our proxy.

3. I don't think that we do insist that other nations invest in dollars. IN fact, imo, the fact that the Dollar is the world currency is a massive burden on US.

4. Our military is paid for by the most successful economy in the world, built on internal freedom and economic nationalism, in the past.

5. And even if you were right on ALL of that, it still is not an excuse to give all nonwhite people a pass on responsibility for their actions.

1. The US does not control the world economy. We are in a very bad situation in the world economy. Our trade balance is not sustainable.

2. I dont' know that the IMF, or the World Bank functions as our proxy.

3. I don't think that we do insist that other nations invest in dollars. IN fact, imo, the fact that the Dollar is the world currency is a massive burden on US.

Since 1971 the US Treasury-bond has replaced gold as the global standard for central bank reserves.

That means a glut of US dollars collecting in central banks around the world finances both the US trade deficit and the US budget deficit.

The 800 US military bases around the planet are there to ensure the tribute continues to flow into American pockets.

https://michael-hudson.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/superimperialism.pdf (P.3)

"This Treasury-bond standard of international finance has enabled the United States to obtain the largest free lunch ever achieved in history.

"America has turned the international financial system upside down.

"Whereas formerly it rested on gold, central bank reserves are now held in the form of U.S. Government IOUs that can be run up without limit.

"In effect, America has been buying up Europe, Asia and other regions with paper credit – U.S. Treasury IOUs that it has informed the world it has little intention of ever paying off.

" And there is little Europe or Asia can do about it, except to abandon the dollar and create their own financial system.

"Michael Hudson’s Super Imperialism: The Origins and Fundamentals of U.S. World Dominance explains how the dollar’s being forced off gold in 1971 led to a new international financial system in which the world’s central banks are obliged to finance the U.S. balance of payments deficit by using their surplus dollars in the only way that central banks are allowed to use them: to buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

"In the process, they finance the U.S. Government’s domestic budget deficit as well."

the world’s central banks are obliged to finance the U.S. balance of payments deficit by using their surplus dollars in the only way that central banks are allowed to use them: to buy U.S. Treasury bonds.

"In the process, they finance the U.S. Government’s domestic budget deficit as well."

You don't want to hold "surplus dollars", don't run a trade surplus with the US.

You don't want to hold "surplus dollars", don't run a trade surplus with the US.

How would you suggest we stimulate US exports?

There’d be a lot of tech industry money at stake in a Trump trade war with China

 

[georgephillip]

These shooters seem to be mentally and socially unstable.
How do we cure that?

Take away their video games?

 

[TroglocratsRdumb]

These shooters seem to be mentally and socially unstable.
How do we cure that?

Take away their video games?

Nerd Reduction pills