Criminal enterprises handing out candy

I’ve been around this block a few too many times. The war is on now, thousands of innocent people are being driven from their homes, and how many wounded or killed won’t be known for some time. It is well-known in the area what is going on. The further away one gets from Syria, the more clouded the issue will become. But by the time one gets to the USA, the issue will not be clouded at all. It will be a gigantic lie. Years from now we’ll learn that our American boys flying our American toys are bombing Syrian villages and towns, and reinforcing ISIS positions in the process. The whole thing is one big goddamned lie.

The war is on now to topple the democratically elected government of Syria. It is not a perfect government, but is far more representative of its people than our own. Americans haven’t a clue what their own government is doing. The United States military now is performing its terrorist function, and while supporting terrorists, is bombing and murdering innocent civilians. Soon they will hand out pictures of soldiers giving candy to children. The US military has an abundant supply of machines and bombs, stupid and deeply indoctrinated fighting men and women, and candy.

Photos like this are not staged. No sireee ... not staged. No way.
Photos like this are not staged. No sireee … not staged. No way.
Those pictures of candy and kids – honest, that shit works. Americans eat that candy up.

Anyone who takes time to review evidence scattered about the Post-War era will find, as I have, certain oddities. The enemies of the United States generally have broad popular support. The allies of the United States, say for instance the leader of “free China,” Chiang Kai-shek, or Ferdinand Marcos of the Philippines, or Augusto Pinochet in Chile or our most recent friend and ally, Petro Poroshenkoturn of the Ukraine, turn out to be terrorists and often enough drug runners and thieves to boot. We generally can label them “fascists,” but that label, like “Nazis”, has lost substance, and only means “bad.”

More to the point, the people the United States supports are well-connected to large financial interests like oil companies or mining concerns, or even companies selling such trifling items as soda pop. In Syria, it is natural gas production and distribution at stake, with ExxonMobil and Aramco wanting to displace the current route of gas to Europe from Tehran to Damascus with an alternative route that benefits their own coffers.

It’s that simple sometimes.

I read a little story some time back in a book written in 1970 by Fletcher Prouty called The Secret Team. Prouty was attempting to illustrate how corrupt agents within government manipulate honest and corrupt officials alike to their own ends. The events that he described eventually mushroomed into what became known as the Bay of Pigs, an invasion meant to sucker JFK into bombing the island. The driving force behind the invasion was pissed off businessmen and mafioso who had lost casinos, sugar plantations and mines. They regarded Cuba as their island paradise.

Most of the American-connected criminal element had left Cuba and taken up residence in Miami after the revolution. In Prouty’s example a few of them were in touch with some workers at a sugar refinery in Cuba. They hatched a plan to set off bombs in that refinery and destroy it. The CIA thought it was a good idea and supported the idea, supplying the bombs.

In case you’re wondering, that is a criminal act. The U.S. was not at war with Cuba. It was simply terrorizing the place.

On the night that the terrorist act was to be committed, Cuban military officials intercepted the boat and the bombs and arrested the agents and those at the factory who supported them. Cuban security was very good because of the neighborhood block reporting system. The Cuban government not only knew about the scheme, but allowed it to develop so that they could arrest the perpetrators and get them out of their hair.

There’s a lesson here that I believed as a youth and Swede, who has not read this far, still believes, and it is this:

Cuba is not free. We are.

70 thoughts on “Criminal enterprises handing out candy”

  3. I used to love ol’ Sen. Cornhole Burns always talking about how we had to bomb the beejesus outta Iraq and Afghanistan so that we could build schools for the little girls! Cornhole was the master at that kinda redneck heartstring pulling nonsense. How’d THAT work out for them?

    Good site you might like. I did.

    http://www.openlysecular.org/

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      1. Sorry, but I’ve known ol’ Conrad for a long, looong time. I lived out in the Heights by him. I know him very well, and the name I used suits him very well. But yes, I will try to show him the proper respect.

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    1. Free health care. Free education. Free from want. Free from hunger. Free from unemployment. Free from insecurity! Sounds kinda like freedom to me. What about you, Swede? btw, How’s the ranch doin’?

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  6. OK, we’re talking bout wars so I’d like to talk about the war on poverty.

    “This year marks the 50th anniversary of President Lyndon Johnson’s launch of the War on Poverty. In January 1964, Johnson declared “unconditional war on poverty in America.” Since then, the taxpayers have spent $22 trillion on Johnson’s war. Adjusted for inflation, that’s three times the cost of all military wars since the American Revolution.

    Last year, government spent $943 billion providing cash, food, housing and medical care to poor and low-income Americans. (That figure doesn’t include Social Security or Medicare.) More than 100 million people, or one third of Americans, received some type of welfare aid, at an average cost of $9,000 per recipient. If converted into cash, this spending was five times what was needed to eliminate all poverty in the United States.”-Robert Rector WA Times.

    Read more: http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2014/sep/19/rector-the-war-on-poverty-50-years-of-failure/#ixzz3E6ktDprE
    Follow us: @washtimes on Twitter

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    1. Is any of that true? Is there more to understand than just numbers? Were those dollars better spent than on wars of aggression? Hey, wait a minute … why am I asking you, the guy that can’t read, write or think? I should take my questions to some other oracle.

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        2. Dammit Swede, your entire “reality” is made up of false impressions, and this includes your own self image. Your manner of inquiry appears to be to find someone who says something you agree with, and cut and paste. You stop at that point, never gettign beyond a very shallow caricature of reality.

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          1. Sorry Mark you can’t deny the genetic consequences of 1400 years of cousin breeding. All the Muslim nations are over 50% inbred. Your chance of having babies with less than a 70 point IQ increases by 400% if you marry your uncles daughter.

            Facts are facts. Combine that with teachings of hate and you have a perfect storm.

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              1. I said Muslims not Arabs. I wish non-practicing Muslim Arabs all the best and shelter from napalm.

                That said Middle East war seems inventible so if there has to be victims let them be the haters.

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                1. Your blanket assessments of foreign peoples, billions of them are quite astounding. But if it’s haters you want dealt with harshly, I suggest you start with Langley. Those are, from evidence I ahve seen over the last 26 years, some corrupt and hateful mutherfuckers.

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                    1. You have no evidence. None. You never read anything anyone writes anyway. But the numbers don’t lie – “Muslim” acts of terrorism, even including 9/11 which was actually Langley, have taken maybe 4,000 deaths in the Post War era. Four fucking thousand, Swede. Four fucking thousand, counting fucking 9/11 which was really done by Americans, which you don’t fucking know about because you’ve never fucking looked at the fucking evidence.

                      Just in Iraq, American terror killed at least 30,000 in the first Gulf War, 500,000 kids in the 1990’s, and 1.2 million in the Second Gulf War. That’s just fucking Iraq. Just fucking Iraq.

                      This is the problem with you. You don’t fucking know anything. You just fucking think you do.

                      Does Langley target kids? The fucking numbers fucking speak for themselves. Half a fucking million kids starved to death in the 1990’s alone just in fucking Iraq.

                      Dammit you’re a pain, knowing nothing. Sorry about the swear word – dammit should be “darn it.”

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  8. “However, the policy of taking out international loans and not raising taxes increased the debt and drove the country to near bankruptcy by the mid-1780s. This forced the king to support radical fiscal reforms not favorable with the nobles or the people.”

    When the pressure mounted, Louis XVI reverted to his earlier teaching of being austere and uncommunicative, posing no solution to the problem, and not responding to others who offered help. “For a time, it seemed that Louis XVI could mollify the masses saying he would acquiesce to their demands. However, he accepted bad advice from the nobility’s hard line conservatives and his wife, Marie Antoinette.” http://www.biography.com/people/louis-xvi-9386943#synopsis

    Swede, any of this sound familiar?

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    2. Sure.

      “The day will come when a multitude of people will choose the legislature. Is it possible to doubt what sort of a legislature will be chosen? On the one side is a statesman preaching patience, respect for rights, strict observance of public faith. On the other is a demagogue ranting about the tyranny of capitalism and usury and asking why anyone should be permitted to drink champagne and to ride in a carriage while thousands of honest people are in want of necessaries. Which of the candidates is likely to be preferred by a workman? When Society has entered on this downward progress, either civilization or liberty must perish. Either some Caesar or Napoleon will seize the reins of government with a strong hand, or your Republic will be as fearfully plundered and laid waste in the twentieth century as the Roman Empire in the fifth, with this difference, that the Huns and Vandals who ravaged Rome came from without, and that your Huns and Vandals will have been engendered within your country, by your own institutions.” — Thomas Babington Macaulay.

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      1. You are so wrapped up in this fear that other people are getting something for nothing that it has distorted your outlook. There are indeed people who are destroyed by getting too much for too little, or something for nothing. But the greater of humanity is better than that. We do have a problem with trust babies and unearned fortunes and lack of good jobs forcing kids into the military and overproduction forcing us to spend our excess wealth making war on others. It’s a little more complicated than you think. In fact, we have many, many problems, and they seem intractable.

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          1. Right now estates under $5 million or so are untaxed. That seems a healthy exemption.

            The reasons for taxation of estates in excess of that amount have to do with limiting aristocracy and the tendency of concentrated wealth to take over government and destroy democratic rule. It’s not about revenue, although the revenue is not insignificant. It’s not about punishing anyone, although individuals who amass great fortunes do feel put upon. It’s about preserving representative government. It should come as no surprise that since the first round of Reagan Tax cuts, inequality has soared and corruption is off the chart.

            It’s odd that you feel as one with the aristocracy when you’re not much more than a small rancher. That’s been the genius of the parties since the Nixon/Ford era, to convince poor and regular people that their interests are protected by wealthy people. It’s not true, as we see all about us, but seems an impossible attitude to dislodge.

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            1. That’s so reasonable, until you do the math.

              As previously stated 22 TRILLION on the war on poverty and almost one trillion annually.

              Seems like concentrated wealth is on the other side of the equation.

              And I’m over the limit.

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            2. I have no idea where you get your numbers but I’d be very surprised if you knew anything behind them other than you read them at some right wing source.

              You’re very hard to deal with becasue you have no depth, only know a few things that you read and accept as gospel. I could work harder at it, but experience has taught me that you are and always be very shallow. Nothing personal, just too much effort for too little return with you.

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  9. Claims by “classical liberals” like Macaulay that free markets regulate themselves, in the absence of government intervention ended with the Great Depression for a reason: It’s pure bullshit unless you ignore completely human nature and the inevitable march of technology. The “invisible hand” moves markets toward the rich an powerful, not some magical natural equilibrium.

    “Our own institutions” are not our own. Ever hear of regulatory capture? Never mind.

    Even Greenspan, “Mr. Freemarket,” had a moment of sobriety in 2008, admitting briefly to his own failings. With a recession every 10 years or so at this point, eventually the whole neoliberal fantasy will go up in smoke. Sooner the better IMO.

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    1. Greenspan certainly was a tortured soul.

      “In 1966, Alan Greenspan, then under the wing of Ayn Rand, published an article on the gold standard. It appeared in her newsletter. She later reprinted it in her book, “Capitalism: The Unknown Ideal.” The article was titled, “Gold and Economic Freedom.” It began with this take-no-prisoners paragraph:

      An almost hysterical antagonism toward the gold standard is one issue which unites statists of all persuasions. They seem to sense — perhaps more clearly and subtly than many consistent defenders of laissez-faire — that gold and economic freedom are inseparable, that the gold standard is an instrument of laissez-faire and that each implies and requires the other.”

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      1. Swede, capitalism fucking died in 1929, and FDR replaced it with socialism, which has kept the county afloat since that time. Why we don’t call it fucking socialism I don’t know but that’s what it is and that’s the only reason we still have an economy. Fucking socialism. Fucking capitalism failed, never resuscitated. Fucking failed in 1929. Nixon abandoned the gold standard in 1972 because he had no choice. After that the dollar lost 80% of its purchasing power even before Reagan took office. It’s fucking nice to talk about fucking things like fucking capitalism and the fucking gold standard, but in the real fucking world, they are not used because they do not fucking work.

        Damn you’re impenetrable. There I go again with the swear words. I mean “Darn.”

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        1. The whole part of the gold standard is to restrict the ability of politicians and central bankers to manipulate the currency. More importantly limiting the power of inflation.

          What we have now is “computer money” based on Central Bank reserves of governmental debt.

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            1. Any system of external control will work, whether it is gold or manhole covers. But no system can work because it is defined by the people in the system, who are susceptible to greed. You got yourself a conundrum. See the problem? Gold worked until it didn’t. Bretton Woods was undone by people.

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            2. Swede, Hiroheto said the Monarchy worked, Everyone says everything works. It’s bullshit dude.

              The gold standard is stupid for a whole slew of reasons.

              We are currently on the plutonium 239 standard, or haven’t you noticed?

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  10. Newsflash Mark. There is no such thing as an “original thought”.

    All the garbage you spew here has been written and recorded publicly or mumbled in an insane asylum.

    When I want my taxes down I go to professional, when my livestocks sick a vet, when my pivots need work I call Big Sky Irrigation. Likewise with matters on the economy. My Forbes link was a perfect example I’ll take the learned economists opinion on whether the gold standard worked over a raving lunatic.

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    1. You diligently seek out the opinions of others, and when you find you agree with them, you stop thinking. Right then and there. You never go deep. You never really understand anything because you don’t know how to even begin to think about things.

      I took Econ 01 02 03 in college, found it exasperating and stifling, boring beyond the pale. I thought Friedman was aces and loved his Free To Choose series, as that was where I was at then. Had I stopped thinking, I’d still be there, where you are now. But neoclassical economics does not describe the real world. It describes the world as wealth and power want us to imagine it works, which is why dimwits like Milton Friedman are elevated to high station and given prizes.

      You read it in Forbes? So fucking what? That only shows me that in your narrow range of confirmation bias endeavors, you sometimes pay a quick visit to Forbes.

      One of my links above is to Steve Keen – he writes about neoclassical economics in depth. I’ve read whole books by him, and some of his papers are over two pages long! He’s just one person you won’t go near because you know you won’t like what he says. There are many others.

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                1. I try to stick to evidence, and you’ve given no evidence over the years of diligence. Your blog comments are generally one-liners or links, and it is painfully obvious throughout that you do not read the posts that you comment under. You’ve admitted as much to me, saying that you don’t think you need to read what I write, as you have heard it all before. That’s fine. Only, then don’t comment.

                  If by chance you did head over to the Keen article, I’ll give you no more credit than having skimmed it, Googled detractors and debunkers, and perhaps read some of that material with more effort.

                  That’s the best you are going to get out of me.

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                  2. You really know what I get out of you? A diagnosis of NPD.

                    The symptoms of Narcissistic Personality Disorder tend to have a lot of self importance. For example when I admit I don’t I hang on your every word you become incensed. Or how about constantly evaluating what I know and what I read? Your constant bragging how deeply you’ve researched furthers the height of the pedestal you place yourself on.

                    Was this affliction a factor in your first failed marriage? Seems like you’d be a prick to live with.

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                    1. Not even close. You would have liked my first wife, however. She hung on every word of every dime novel she could find. You’re not that far

                      “You’ve admitted as much to me, saying that you don’t think you need to read what I write, as you have heard it all before. That’s fine. Only, then don’t comment.” You probably didn’t make it to the end of that comment.

                      I did not say you don’t “hang on every word.” I do not give a shit. Just don’t hang around places and torment people who read, think and write, with your mindless bullshit.

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    3. Hooey! Pure Hooey. Swede, you fucking never cease to crack me up.

      Here you are, the raving lunatic, calling someone else that.

      Heh heh, that’s funny. Got Newt in ’16?

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  11. “Capitalism” was replaced with “Pump and Dump.” Most smart investment is insider trading, which is why it’s so hard for Congress to give up their legal exemption from insider trading.

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    1. You take any debate classes in High School Steve?

      What would be the reaction of the judges be if an opposing member cited a conservative source and you responded with “right-wing talking points”?

      Wouldn’t they demand a more intellectual response?

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      1. What we are trying to do here, Swede, is not to win debates, which is what talking points are for (handed to politicians and others to use when on media). We want to know what is real, and that requires something far more rigorous: evidence.

        So you threw $22 trillion at us, having taken it off Heritage. We don’t know where Heritage got it. We don’t know if it means anything. It’s a useless throwaway point. Same with concepts like “free markets” and capitalism, which you would first have to prove even exist before prattling on about their wonders.

        It takes time and essential honesty.

        For myself, I have seen too many failures of neoclassical economics, and too many economists who do not even have to be right to advance in the profession. Keen is trying to come at the problem of macroeconomics from another direction. Rather than take small things believed to be true, like the demand curve, and use them as a basis for broad policy, Keen is trying to work chaos theory into the picture. It’s a rigorous field of mathematics that I do not understand, of course, but might yield better results.

        But here is the problem: We’re not dealing with a “science” when dealing with neoclassical economics. We are dealing with ideology. That’s why neoclassical economists don’t have to be right. They only have to preach to the choir about the shared beliefs in things that do not exist, such as capitalism and free markets. It’s more like religious faith than science.

        Just a small matter, like “do lower taxes stimulate economic growth” or “does increasing the minimum wage create unemployment among the poor?” would seem simple matters. But they are not because neoclassical economists are not paid to find out what is true, but rather to obfuscate and deny anything that might prove neoclassical economics wrong. So we cannot even get a rigorous study on these matters, and when someone does do such a study, as did Card/Krueger, predictably it become a circle the wagons affair where the entire profession seeks to destroy them, not even wanting to know what is true.

        So I was where you are at. I loved reading Freidman and was a big fan of Brookhiser for many years. Neoclassical economics sounds like it should work. When it doesn’t, when it fails to predict the future, explain the present and the past, people circle the wagons. There must be a reason for that, and it has nothing to do with what is true, but rather only with what is useful.

        Ayn Rand, by the way, was barely literate on the subject of economics. Anytime her ideas are put in practice, disaster quickly follows.

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