There was a time when it was reasonable to assume that our diplomats were pursuing our interests through the peaceful process of negotiation and compromise. That time is long gone. In the present era what is called “diplomacy” is giving the fucking shop away with sufficient disingenuousness and bullshit that it can avoid provoking a wholesale revolt.
Quotes I keyed on:
In a draft of a letter written in 1881, Marx looked to the Russian peasant commune as the germ of a post-capitalist economy: ‘if the revolution comes at the opportune moment, if it concentrates all its forces to allow the rural commune its full scope, the latter will soon develop as an element of regeneration in Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist system.’ Marx’s social-democratic Russian disciples believed socialism would only be possible after a longish period of capitalist development, but the master scornfully repudiated these ‘Russian “Marxists”’ as holding views ‘diametrically opposed’ to his own. As he saw it, a socialist revolution was needed before capitalism destroyed the village commune.
Point: Marx would have repudiated the Bolshevik coup in Russia, which completely destroyed traditional agrarian life.
How as he so misunderstood?
Marx’s views on this and many other matters have little in common with what later came to be understood as ‘Marxism’, but this is not because Marx’s work was traduced. Through his collaboration with Engels, Marx was implicated in the spread of a version of his ideas that differed significantly from his own understanding of them. Financially dependent on his collaborator, it was difficult for him to be open about the areas in which the two disagreed.
More, Marx. . .
was the first to chart the staggering transformation produced in less than a century by the emergence of a world market and the unleashing of the unparalleled productive powers of modern industry. He also delineated the endlessly inchoate, incessantly restless and unfinished character of modern capitalism as a phenomenon. He emphasized its inherent tendency to invent new needs and the means to satisfy them, its subversion of all inherited cultural practices and beliefs, its disregard of all boundaries, whether sacred or secular, its destabilization of every hallowed hierarchy, whether of ruler and ruled, man and woman or parent and child, its turning of everything into an object for sale.
Disregard of boundaries and destabilization of hierarchy. I can agree with this analysis. My own future utopias focus on small agrarian communities buttressed by modern technology, but choosing to live simply.
As human animals, we can only handle so many people, so much complexity, before we lose touch with our sense of self–rooted as it is in our own biology–the possibility of meaningful community, and larger non-political moral orders.
The larger the order as a single unit, the less it can meet the cultural needs of its members. A global economic network is clearly good at producing stuff, but all too many of us are dying on the inside, lost in a constant whirr, seduced by greed–and encouraged in it–and looking only to the next deal.
It is a source of constant astonishment to me how many things we are think are so, aren’t.
In addition to granting some 20% of America’s uranium capacity to the Russians, in tandem with receiving $2.35 million in donations to the Clinton Foundation, and $500,000 for a single speech by Bill, there is this:
“While serving as secretary of state, Clinton oversaw a program meant to “reset” relations with Moscow and improve ties. The program centered around the Russian city of Skolkovo near Moscow with the stated aim of “identifying areas of cooperation and pursuing joint projects and actions that strengthen strategic stability, international security, economic well-being, and the development of ties between the American and Russian people.”
The program transformed Skolkovo into a technology hub, a Silicon Valley of sorts. Sensitive American technology was transferred to the Russians, substantially enhancing their military and cyber capabilities. The US Army and the FBI concluded that Russia had exploited the program for military applications.
Of course, anyone with a scintilla of foresight could have anticipated such an unfortunate and dangerous outcome. In Putin’s Russia, everything has military or security dimensions. Indeed, in 2014, the FBI warned American technology companies doing business in Skolkovo that the Skolkovo project “may be a means for the Russian government to access our nation’s sensitive or classified research development facilities and dual-use technologies with military and commercial application.”
Russia’s access to sensitive American technologies represents but half the problem. There is a far more sinister side to this story. Schweizer notes that Russian and American companies and individuals involved in the Skolkovo fiasco “had major financial ties to the Clintons.” He further notes that during the Russian reset period, those entities provided the Clintons with “tens of millions of dollars” in the form of “contributions to the Clinton Foundation, paid for speeches by Bill Clinton, or investments in small start-up companies with deep Clinton ties.”
So when Hillary complains about the national security implications of Russia hacking her 30,000 missing emails, she is managing to lie several times. She is lying about what was in those emails, but she is also avoiding a discussion of what helped create that capacity in the first place. It was likely HER and HER policies, policies based on graft.
The more I contemplate a detente with Russia, the more I like it. Putin has ego, he has ambition: he and Trump should get along great. And it would be a relationship not based on more or less open corruption, but one based on shared interests.
Hillary is a fucking crook. She is a lying, sick (morally and physically) bitch who has no right to be within a hundred miles of the Presidency.
Over and above a universe of other things, the one, seemingly small thing about Hillary Clinton that bothers me above all others was that she LAUGHED about getting a man acquitted of the rape of a 12 year old girl she KNEW HE COMMITTED. The tape is in the public record. It is unambiguous. She is cold hearted, and her appeals to women are cynical and political. She accused the rape victim–who was put into a coma by the rape, and told she could no longer have children, of “seeking out older men, of being mentally unstable, that she had made rape claims before”, none of which were true. She attacked the victim, a 12 year old girl, brutally, in order to get a man she knew as guilty set free. And then forgot about her, and laughed about a system that allowed her to do it when it was brought up many years later. That is not a feminist. That is not even a human being. You can listen to the audio for yourself.
Today I read Hillary is on Coumadin, a blood thinner given to people typically with acute problems, but which in her case is given continually. I know this is true, because the Goebbelsian truth-enactors at Clintion News Network say so: http://www.cnn.com/2015/07/31/politics/hillary-clinton-health-tax-release/index.html
Here is the likely most honest treatment of this: http://www.infowars.com/media-lie-about-hillarys-severe-health-condition/
I look it up in WebMD, and they say this about possible side effects:
Nausea, loss of appetite, or stomach/abdominal pain may occur. If any of these effects persist or worsen, tell your doctor or pharmacist promptly.
Remember that your doctor has prescribed this medication because he or she has judged that the benefit to you is greater than the risk of side effects. Many people using this medication do not have serious side effects.
This medication can cause serious bleeding if it affects your blood clotting proteins too much (shown by unusually high INR lab results). Even if your doctor stops your medication, this risk of bleeding can continue for up to a week. Tell your doctor right away if you have any signs of serious bleeding, including: unusual pain/swelling/discomfort, unusual/easy bruising, prolonged bleeding from cuts or gums, persistent/frequent nosebleeds, unusually heavy/prolonged menstrual flow, pink/dark urine, coughing up blood, vomit that is bloody or looks like coffee grounds, severe headache, dizziness/fainting, unusual or persistent tiredness/weakness, bloody/black/tarry stools, chest pain, shortness of breath, difficulty swallowing.
Tell your doctor right away if any of these unlikely but serious side effects occur: persistent nausea/vomiting, severe stomach/abdominal pain, yellowing eyes/skin.
This drug rarely has caused very serious (possibly fatal) problems if its effects lead to small blood clots (usually at the beginning of treatment). This can lead to severe skin/tissue damage that may require surgery or amputation if left untreated. Patients with certain blood conditions (protein C or S deficiency) may be at greater risk. Get medical help right away if any of these rare but serious side effects occur: painful/red/purplish patches on the skin (such as on the toe, breast, abdomen), signs ofkidney problems (such as change in the amount of urine), vision changes, confusion, slurred speech, weakness on one side of the body.
But I was sitting there wincing, looking at my water dispenser, and thinking of the 3 X-men, where Jean Grey becomes Phoenix. I was thinking of the bubbles in the water dispenser in the house scene. What is not said is that she is clinically dissociated. She is suffering from Multiple Personality Disorder, and that, itself, is pretty much always the result of severe abuse. She was likely molested as a small child.
And as a metaphor, you can see the small become the large; you can see powerlessness turn into absolutely uncontrolled fury and lust.
Comics are very interesting to me. In important respects, they are our contemporary substitute for myth, and Comic Conventions of various sorts a sort of ritual. People need order, and when it is not there, they create it.
Demographically, part of the reason this works is that they are not having many children, but does not our own entire society depend in some ways on the well being of the children being born today?
There is this tendency to treat children as lumps for their first couple years, since they don’t “say” anything. But in important respects, these are the most important years. Every template for life is being laid, or not laid.
There is no way to know what stories should be front page news, but which disappeared, through voluntary or other suppression.
We have been treating Saudi Arabia as our ally for a long time, and during that time they have been exporting Jihadist ideology continuously.
We may need to ratify the de facto situation in the Ukraine–or for that matter, allow the troops of the two nations to continue to fight–but it is my sense that Russia and the United States share two common enemies: the globalists–who we might roughly conflate with the international bankers who run and benefit from the Central Banks of the world, which all come together in the Bank of International Settlements; and the power elites who rotate among corporate boards, political postings, and academic positions–and the Islamists, who are best represented, in my view, by the Saudis and Iranians.
My sense is that Russia has no compelling reason not to distance itself from Iran, and facilitating that alone would be a major reason to cozy up to Russia. There are economic incentives, but across the board a deal maker like Trump could put something together which would satisfy everyone.
The frenzy we are seeing, the piranhas thrashing in the water, is plainly related, in my view, to a fear on the part of a power elite that for the first time in a generation they won’t get one of their people in office. They hate Putin because he isn’t one of them. He doesn’t want to be in that club. He doesn’t need to be in that club.
Trump, likewise, calls his own shots. He is and always has been a maverick. When he was more or less a Democrat, they loved that about him. Now that he is the candidate of all things they are told are evil, he is erratic and untrustworthy. Possibly true, but we KNOW what Hillary will do, and all of it is bad. She is absolutely trustworthy in that respect.
Billions have been invested creating a nearly hermetically sealed media, and the final touches could likely get done in Hillary’s first four years. Just call Drudge “hate”, and the usual drones will accept it with their usual glass eyed complacency, and you can ban it. Alex Jones would be even easier.
If you think about it, it is really astonishing that things have evolved so much that Jones has become virtually mainstream. He is one of the only people who has chosen to retain his right to say whatever he wants to say, even if some of it is crazy. The thing is: a lot of what he says is not crazy at all.
I can’t imagine even Ted Cruz talking about possible poll rigging. But Trump did. It’s a valid concern, but it would not have been considered polite enough by anyone else, certainly not Bush, who in any event is a member of the Uniparty.
History has seasons. I know that good comes and goes. Evil comes and goes. This evil could last a very long time, but not forever. That is why I wrote my piece on “Perfection” some years ago.
I do fear political prison, torture, but not so much death. I have faced death so many times, that I think I will be ready for it when it comes.
It’s hard to see reasons for hope. This is one election cycle, but over the long haul, our youth are decadent, dependent, needy, stupid, and completely lacking in what was once called “moral fiber”. They are raised with pornography and violent video games, by parents either emotionally detached or overly involved, and marinated in a continual stream of leftist propaganda. What reverses this? I can’t say I know.