Day: October 6, 2016

The MYOB Foreign Policy

Most of my regular readers know that I think that our constant interventionism is making this country less safe than it we had just nibbled around the perimeter in international situations.

I think common sense does not play well in foreign policy….and it should be the number tactic …the old “look before you leap” sort of thing….

William J. Astore: We spend roughly $700 billion a year on national “defense” and wars, ensuring that we have “global reach, global power.” To what end?

My parents taught me a lot of common sense sayings.  You’ve probably heard this one: mind your own business, or MYOB.  Most people have enough problems of their own; it’s not a good idea to compound one’s problems by messing around with other people’s lives.

What’s common sense for individuals is also common sense for nations.  Think of the USA.  We’ve got plenty of problems: crumbling infrastructure, inefficient and inadequate health care, too many people in too many prisons, social divides based on race and sex and class, drug and alcohol abuse, not enough decent-paying jobs, huge budgetary deficits, the list goes on.  Yet instead of looking inwards to address our problems, too often we look outwards and interfere in the lives of others.  How can we solve other people’s problems when we can’t solve our own?

Source: The MYOB Foreign Policy – LA Progressive

I think that a MYOB foreign policy would do well for the US……

Why would this be better?

The United States needs to adopt a long-term foreign policy approach to transnational threats by creating an international compact program to support the growth of legitimate, effective governments.

When the 45th president of the United States takes office in 2017, he or she will inherit a century-old mantle of global leadership. The new president will immediately confront questions about America’s influence in the world and its ability to protect American interests and maintain global peace and stability.

Today, some of the greatest threats to U.S. national security originate from the very forces of growing interconnectedness that the post-World War II order has enabled. For years, global businesses and expanding communications have been connecting the peoples and nations of the world together at faster and faster rates, and these changes have produced tremendous opportunities and prosperity in the United States and around the world. But at the same time, the rise of global interconnectedness means that it has become easier for transnational security threats—from terrorism to organized crime—to spread. These threats, which increasingly overlap to comprise an illicit world that parallels the state system, put at risk the international system that has upheld peace and prosperity. In addition, other transnational threats—from climate change to health pandemics—increasingly threaten the United States and countries around the world and require coordinated, effective efforts to tackle them.

Source: State Legitimacy, Fragile States, and U.S. National Security | Center for American Progress

I think that the world is going to Hell……and just maybe common sense would keep from dragging the US into the pit also.

Installing A President By Force

The day of reckoning quickly approaches….the choice will be made…..or will it?

Many of the Trump supported websites seem to believe that Clinton will be install as president….they love to call it a “coronation”.

The problem is that I find myself agreeing with them….maybe not the coronation thing but that she will be installed over the people’s wishes……

The Democratic National Committee tilted the primary season to favor Hillary Clinton. This might be seen benignly as an aberration, a negligible prank in the messy world of politics. It was not an aberration.

Unless the nation lapses into lunacy on November 8, Hillary Clinton will be our next president.

The prospect raises an alarming question we’ve never before confronted.

How can a thriving democracy conceivably elect a president who is dishonest and untrustworthy in the minds of 59% of the people? A woman shown to be a felon but not prosecuted for want of precedent? A woman who lies and contradicts herself, documented in video clips? A bold hypocrite who solicits and accepts hundreds of millions in campaign contributions from Wall Street banks, the armaments industry, and Big Pharma, and claims to abhor Citizens United which enables her to do so?

Source: American Plutocracy – LA Progressive

This election has accomplished one thing for me…….To weep for the future of this country and its people.

 

The Slimy World Of PsyOps

Psy Ops or what is fondly called “brain games”……

The US is desperately searching for something that can counter ISIS/AQ techniques for recruitment of the disenfranchised…..

There is a branch in the military as well as the intel community that is tasked with dirty tricks…..one such trick recently came to light……a program of fake ISIS/AQ videos…….

It has already been well-documented that the Pentagon spent a substantial amount of money on propaganda during the occupation of Iraq, running pro-occupation commercials and also covertly getting pro-occupation news stories into the media around the region. It turns out that was just the tip of the iceberg.

It has now been revealed that there was a third program ongoing, in which a London-based PR agency was paid $540 million to make fake al-Qaeda propaganda videos for Pentagon use. The videos were intended to use existing al-Qaeda footage, and to be in RealMedia format, and burned onto CDs.

Then, during the many US military raids going on during the occupation, a few of the fake propaganda CDs were scattered around here or there in the wreckage of smashed-up houses and compounds. Officially, the goal was for al-Qaeda sympathizers to get ahold of them.

Unspoken within the reports as they’ve emerged so far, having “al-Qaeda propaganda” laying around in the wreckage of US raid targets was likely also an end unto itself, as anyone who came to investigate after the fact would see them and assume the raid was on an actual al-Qaeda target, never suspecting the US troops were planting the discs.

(antiwar.com)

Good idea?  How many of these “tapes” were found by those that had no idea about the program?  How many were turned over to the intel agencies as “actual” terrorists tapes?  How many raids were planned around faulty info?

Finally, just what did we get for the $540 million spent on this hair brain scheme?