Who Are We at War With? That’s Classified
propublica.org
propublica.org
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hygiene_hypothesis
[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crime_in_the_United_States#Crim...
This is to say that it's a relatively recent problem; one that has not applied selective pressure over the millions of years of evolution you're talking about, but rather the past ~200 years or so. My non-biologist understanding is that you can expect evolution to a relatively good job of adapting to slowly changing conditions over a long period by selecting for the vanishingly small number of mutations that happen to be beneficial.
My citizen understanding of government is that we should expect more of it than that, or it will continue to suck.
U.P.P.I.T.I.E.S.
The current "wars" ended a decade ago. What you have now is extremely dangerous police work, not war. You have thousands of tanks, armoured vehicles, and aircraft against disorganized groups of criminals on bicycles wielding decade-old guns and DIY bombs.
The economic viability of the United States and the economic viability of China are so closely intertwined today that any idea of open hostility between the two is quite absurd.
Regardless of rhetoric, the US will only continue harassing sclerotic third-world countries with negligible relevance to the American economy.
http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparation...
I believe there have been plans developed by the Pentagon for a war with Canada, too.
I didn't bother reading all of it (it's not something that interests me), but that beginning seems to kind of undermine your point.
> To judge by several published reports which will be discussed in greater detail below, including those by government “insiders,” there is no indication—not a passing hint— that the White House has ever considered earnestly preparing the nation for a war with China. Nor is there any evidence that the White House has compared such a strategy to alternatives, and—having concluded that the hegemonic intervention implied by ASB is the course the United States should follow—then instructed the Pentagon to prepare for such a military showdown
People who are not truly paying attention are under the impression this is all a mistaken over-reaction and we have had "some bad apples" that have more-or-less accidentally brought us into this situation.
Anyone who, in the past 40 years, has pointed out the concerted and deliberate efforts of the MIC to ring us here have been dismissed as "wild conspiracy theorists" -- now though, its just to difficult to keep people from the truth.
This is why the distractions have been larger and larger -- but they are coming to a head. The problem is that the MIC is so extraordinarily well funded and well positioned - that now they are looking for the excuse to use their totalitarian machine against all Humanity. They want the next war.
It plays into their next agenda: depopulation.
I don't think anyone is wanting the next war, IMO more likely what has happened is around about the wrap up of Gulf War 2, people in relevant industries started to realise that there won't be that many more fortuitously sized 'sandboxable' (if I may coin a term) hot wars that profit can consistently be extracted from. So what do you do instead? Get on the surveillance gravy train. It certainly seems like a pretty good gig doesn't it? Huge amounts of government spending up for grabs, very little informed oversight or ability for anyone to argue that too much is being spent. It's a government contractor's (or a government offical taking the revolving door's) dream.
I wouldn't credit them with enough foresight to be thinking about depopulation. It's all just about next quarter's profits.
The US is directing significant resources towards war with China and China is responding in kind. It kind of makes sense given the amount of money the US owes China and given the "threat" of China's economic ascendence.
http://yalejournal.org/2013/06/12/who-authorized-preparation...
My earlier post was really concerned more with those actors within relevant industries whose motive is to maximise profit, not with those actors whose motive is to win a dick measuring competition between their country/empire and someone else’s. If the latter guys win out then yeah, all bets are off I'd say.
Perhaps I'm overestimating their adherence to logic and reason, but I don't think those actors motivated primarily by greed want such a big, uncontrollable war, the outcome of which is not foregone. They want little controllable ones like Gulf War 1 and 2 (or failing this, the surveillance state).
In the grand schemes of things it is pocket change.
Also government debt is rarely paid off - it is usually grown out of and revolved. What US lack is economic growth thanks the "serious" people that push for austerity.
Also rule of thumb - anyone that uses a country budget is like the family budget analogy is - liar, dumb or ignorant. That is very quick filter by which you could judge politicians.
If Taiwan integrates with China as a special economic zone then that would be a key Western ally lost, however Taiwanese reintegration has been a hot-button issue for a few decades (in both Chinese and Taiwanese politics) that has quietly remained dormant.
As a physicist by training I think of these things as the stable attractors we see in complex systems, where out of chaos certain configurations act to pull everything towards them.
A totalitarian world of surveillance and conflict which feed off each other leading to us liquidating more and more of our economy to feed the beast, creating insecurity at home and a knee jerk support of those carrying this stuff out, in the name of attacking some faceless enemy is an attractor with many individuals acting in self interest generating motion in that direction.
Complacency prevents people breaking the cycle. A belief that it's a pendulum swinging back and forth rather than a drift towards a stable attractor from which it's hard to move back again.
More realistically: the next business opportunity, the next contract, the next sale, all of these things are very much on the agenda. Lots of short-term decisions leading to long term catastrophe.
Then again, in the long term, we are all dead.
Innit?
-- Orwell, 1984
http://middleeast.about.com/od/usmideastpolicy/a/bush-war-on...
The War on Terror is a perpetual war by design.
A state of war is a temporary thing in a democracy. It has to be. Otherwise the natural tendency of the executive to overreach will be completely unchecked.
I suggest that the job we're doing now is much more like "global policeman", including using lethal SWAT forces, than being in a war. I think such a role is necessary, and I also think that there's no way in hell all the nations of the world are going to overtly agree to this. (Although I suspect a majority are very happy having the yanks clean up the nuts using Predators as long as the PR isn't too bad. Even better, they can support various strikes and options with their intelligence services while publicly railing against the Evil Empire. A lot of foreign political leaders have been playing this game long before 9-11.)
That's a fine and dandy pickle for the world, and I have sympathy for the problem of crazy people wanting to come and hurt civilians in order to affect political change. The problem is, democracies can't be in a state of war for decades. Even assuming that all of the threats are clear and present.
We need a way out of this, and pronto. This is a structural problem for the U.S. that is much worse than slavery ever was. Here's hoping the light will come on for the voting public and they'll start pressuring their elected representatives to do their damned jobs and stop spending so much time politically posturing and positioning their party for the next election.
Absolutely. And to find a way out of this, you first need to completely take the money out of politics - radically, entirely.
I see the corruption of Washington (and then: democracy) via money as the core problem, in the US.
You can get votes by promising free chickens in every pot. You can get votes by bringing a big defense contract into an area. Politicians get elected by votes, and the political system runs on votes.
Yes, money is used to fight the battle. But focusing on the money is idiotic. Money is a completely secondary factor. It's main modern use (I speak of direct contributions, not the sweetheart deals to relatives that really is at the heart of corruption) is to attack the opponent's base and prevent them from turning out to vote.
Also, political power is much more important than money. Being able to launch a Predator strike trumps any amount of campaign contributions.
This focus on money has to stop. It's like saying businesses are all about making money. It's not that it's a false statement -- it's that it misses the point entirely of what's going on. Business provide value by giving folks stuff they want. Money is a secondary way to keep score. Political power is accumulated by votes. If you can gain a thousand votes by simply making a speech, much better than throwing money at folks. It's an easy win. Focusing on money ignores the entirety of what's really going on.
You want a really corrupt system, start overengineering the money side.
http://www.ted.com/talks/lawrence_lessig_we_the_people_and_t...
But, as an example, I'd just like to mention the obscene amounts of money being wasted during presidential elections. Why should candidates be allowed to be able to get more votes because they spend more money because they literally got paid/owned by some private interests/ultra-rich people? It's just plain stupidity. How can we allow that?
We're technically not exactly there yet, b/c not every household has an Internet connection yet, but why shouldn't the goal be this:
Set up just 1 website where all political parties can express their positions. And let that be the only allowed form of communication with the voter.
It's a sane pull versus an insane push approach.
And it would take a lot of money out of politics, which can then be spent for intelligent things like research, for example.
This is a simplistic example, but that's basically what the famous Citizens United case was about - did a wealthy third party have the right to publish something designed to influence an election (in that case, by saying negative things about Hilary Clinton)? The first amendment says pretty clearly that Congress cannot make any law that limits the freedom of the press, and so people who want to use their money to publish election messages have to be allowed to do it.
As a European I agree that it's far from ideal, but that's something you have to accept if you want the freedoms of the first amendment as it is written.
Why shouldn't money have meaning in the political realm? If you take away the ability of wealth to actually influence the world, then all you can do when you're rich is buy increasingly banal toys.
America is, in theory, a representative democracy and not some kind of plutocracy or aristocracy. That is your answer.
America was once a republic, precisely to avoid the madness we are talking about in this thread. One by one the protections against mob rule have been dismantled.
> America was once a republic
The two are not incompatible. And it pretty unquestionably still is a republic and, in form at least, is also a representative democracy.
I know of no reasonable definition of "republic" under which either of these statements is defensible. "Republic" doesn't mean a system of government that produces exclusively outcomes that meet with Daniel_Newby's approval.
You seem, again, to be conflating what you like with what a Republic is.
It doesn't mean that one person cannot be more influential than the other due to charisma, logical reasoning, or by using money to simply have their message heard by more people.
For instance, no matter how rich you are and how many TV spots you buy out, you're unlikely to convince the population to do something that they inherently dislike. In a true plutocracy, the rich don't need to convince anyone of their feelings, their power is written into the system.
OK, so candidates can only use one site. Then "Friends of Candidate" will set up a site, or some random blogger with a million followers will set up a website. There is no stopping the message, or the money. The voting system needs to change, among other things. the government should also do less, so there is less power to be had at the top.
I am certainly not against any part of the constitution!
> OK, so candidates can only use one site. Then "Friends of Candidate" will set up a site, or some random blogger with a million followers will set up a website.
Of course that is and should be possible, because it is free speech!
The thing is: it should be made illegal to advertise such a blog with money. Of course there will still the possibility of abuse, but that is the case with any other law.
Doing what I propose would make a huge difference in the money-based corruption of the entire system.
Once you get voted in, all of a sudden you've got control over a – for all intents and purposes – unlimited money tap.
This encourages the sort of people who think "skimming a little bit off the top" of the government provided money flow (aka "stealing from the taxpayer") is OK, to enter the political arena for self-serving reasons.
I don't know how much this is a real problem – there's a good argument that "enlightened self interest" is perhaps the best motivator for politicians, but I know where I live (Sydney, Australia) our local state government is currently involved in many many scandals where politicians have been caught using their positions to create great wealth for themselves and their family/friends under extremely suspicious circumstances (mysterious real estate deals in areas which subsequently get significant changes in legal status, planning permission given to industries with no public consultation followed by executive level jobs or board positions when responsible politicians leave office).
In an "ideal world", people seeking political power for personal self-interest would be excluded in favour of people with purely altruistic intentions. Unfortunately that's about as practical as appointing me as Emperor of the Universe.
There was HBO special on vote machine maker (the corp name get changed often).
Since votes are rigged, it's not democracy. The congress popularity is < 10%, now you know how they get reelected.
-> Creates new enemies
-> More war needed to kill them (feed military budget)
-> Creates new enemies
-> More war needed to kill them (feed military budget)
-> You get the idea...
0. Where is the money going?
1. Are foreign and domestic policies using tactics that a civil society should use?
"This is a very significant power group. And it is a power group that is not just at the top of the White House. It is not just a few generals. Rather it is all the people connected to and profiting from that system. And that's about a third of the US population. So all the way from Chelsea Clinton down to the someone in the gutters of San Antonio whose brother is deployed in Iraq."
http://wikileaks.org/Transcript-Meeting-Assange-Schmidt.html...
It's not a secret at all. They've demonstrated it in the past. Based on observation, "associated forces" can be defined as "anybody who has some connection to". There is no definitive answer because it changes constantly and there is no need to provide justification anyway. War is being fought by the government, for the government. Your civilian inquiries are not welcome.
In Russia we used to call them "the enemies of the people" and, of course, they were among us and everyone could be marked as such just by a gossip or finger-pointing by a neighbor.)
The common theme in dystopia is that free thinkers are ignored by the rest of society, which is either apathetic or too brainwashed. We are certainly at that point, but neither Brave New World nor 1984 accurately describe what America is becoming.
Today we're helping a certain group of people, tomorrow we're bombing the shit out of them. Why?
> it would be difficult for the Congress to get involved in trying to track the designation of which are the affiliate forces
Translation: when their usefulness ends then we stop supporting them, at which point they turn against us. This happens so frequently that monthly briefings would be a pointless formality.
In their effort to control everybody, more spitefully slip through their fingers.
Do they really?
It might have something to do with 'Continuity of governance' plans; those plans may have detailed lists of 'internal enemies'; those are supposed to be round up in times of emergencies (like supposed leaders of 'occupy' or something)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Continuity_of_Operations_Plan http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rex_84
Helpmann: Ah, yes. We're fielding all their strokes, running all of them out. We're consistently knocking them for six. I'd say they're nearly out of the game.
Interviewer: But, Mr. Helpmann, the bombing campaign is now in its 13 th year.
Helpmann: Beginners' luck.
The real question is, do other comprehensive lists of Al Qaeda affiliates exist? If so, then releasing this list would probably not substantially increase the information currently out there.
Yeah, but as the good professor stated in the article, we are already dropping bombs on their heads, so they are pretty much aware that we know who they are (paraphrasing).
Like there are a bunch of guys itching to participate in jihad and strap themselves up as suicide bombers, but just can't figure out where to sign up?
I think that's unlikely. And, I would agree with the professor's other point that the bigger risk is these secret wars and the fact that Americans don't know what's being done in our names. That's extraordinarily detrimental to a democracy, to say the least.
Perhaps I live in this fantasy land where little things like the law and constitution are ignored by those in power.
Basically, the Congress had ceded it's ability to approve/disapprove warlike action to the executive. They retain the power of the purse, but it is difficult to be in a position politically where you are "cutting off support" for "the troops".
That's also a key reason why we had the "support the troops" propaganda. Even if you were against the war, how can you be against your neighbor's sons and daughters?
This isn't exactly true. Congressmen have an explicit Constitutional protection for anything they say in the House. This was most famauslly used by Senator Mike Gravel to leak the Pentagon Papers, and set the precedent of Gravel v. United States that doing so is legal.
In reality, attempting to do so would cost significant political capitol, and will likely make it difficult for the Congressmen to get onto such committees in the future.