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Americans Are Only Now Beginning to Learn that We Live in a Dictatorship

Americans Are Only Now Beginning to Learn that We Live in a Dictatorship

Americans Are Only Now Beginning to Learn that We Live in a Dictatorship

The first time when it became clear to me that I live in a dictatorship was in 2014 when reading, prior to its publication, the landmark (and still the only) scientific empirical study to address the question as to whether or not the United States federal Government is, authentically, a democracy — or, whether, alternatively, it’s instead more of a dictatorship, than a democracy. This study documented conclusively that America’s Government is the latter.

So, on 14 April 2014, I headlined “US Is an Oligarchy, Not a Democracy, Says Scientific Study”. Subsequently, my editor linked it to the published article at the Journal where the study was published, Perspectives on Politics, from the American Political Science Association, and the full study can be read there.

On 30 April 2014, was posted at youtube the video that remains, to this day, the best and clearest ordinary-language summary of what that badly-written academic study proved. See its explanation here:

That summary’s title is also better than the title of my article was; this excellent video headlines “Corruption is Legal in America”, which is another accurate conclusion from that study. Every American citizen should know what this 6-minute video says and shows from the academic study, because it explains how the super-rich, as a class, steal from everyone else (everyone who isn’t super-rich): They do it through corruption.

Then, that same person who created the video did another presentation of it, but this time with text accompanying the video, and this article was titled “One graph shows how the rich control American politics”, and it indeed showed how.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination)

It’s Time to Rethink Education – Part 1 (Indoctrination)

Education consists mainly of what we have unlearned.
– Mark Twain

As a father of two young children, my thoughts have increasingly started to center around their young lives and the future world they’ll inhabit. Such considerations quickly lead to stressful questions such as, what are the best schools in the area? Which option can provide the best environment in which to thrive? If the best options aren’t public, can we afford them? Is it worth the money? All these questions and more have filled the minds of my wife and I over the past couple of years, but lately we’ve started to ask even bigger questions; such as whether the compulsory education system as it exists in the U.S. in 2017 makes any sense in the first place. I’m increasingly starting to conclude that it doesn’t.

Before I get into that, let’s take a step back. A lot of what I do here at Liberty Blitzkrieg is highlight what’s perverse and destructive about human behavior at this time, and how things can be made dramatically better in the future. If I had to summarize my worldview concisely, I’d state that human beings at the moment are living under highly centralized, hierarchical power structures which are gamed by unethical, greedy and corrupt people at the top who exploit the masses ruthlessly.

Since the worst of humanity will always work hardest and most violently to attain power (this will always be the case), the only way to achieve lasting, positive change is to systemically move to a different model for human activity. Trying to get decent people at the top of a highly centralized power structure is counterproductive and merely a short-term solution if it can even be achieved in the first place.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Is Washington the Most Corrupt Government in History?

Is Washington the Most Corrupt Government in History?

The man who died twice

Robert Mueller, a former director of the FBI who is working as a special prosecutor “investigating” a contrived hoax designed by the military/security complex and the DNC to destroy the Trump presidency, has yet to produce a scrap of evidence that Russiagate is anything but orchestrated fake news. As William Binney and other top experts have said, if there is evidence of Russiagate, the NSA would have it. No investigation would be necessary. So where is the evidence?

It is a revelation of how corrupt Washington is that a fake scandal is being investigated while a real scandal is not. The fake scandal is Trump’s Russiagate. The real scandal is Hillary Clinton’s uranium sale to Russia. No evidence for the former exists. Voluminous evidence for Hillary’s scandal lies in plain view. http://www.foxnews.com/opinion/2017/10/25/hillary-clinton-and-real-russian-collusion.html

Why are the clearly false charges against Trump being investigated and the clearly true charges against Hillary not being investigated? The answer is that Hillary with her hostility toward Russia and her denunciation of Russian President Putin as the “New Hitler” is not a threat to the budget and power of the US military/security complex, while Trump’s aim of normalizing relations with Russia would deprive the military/security complex of the “enemy” it requires to justify its massive budget and power.

Why hasn’t President Trump ordered the Justice Department to investigate Hillary? Is the answer that Trump is afraid the military/security complex will assassinate him? Why hasn’t the Justice Department undertaken the investigation on its own? Is the answer that Trump’s government is allied with his enemies?

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Corruption is Pervasive & Standard Operating Procedure

Feinstein Dianne

COMMENT: I read your post on Trump, Jr. and it does appear obvious that there is no investigation into the whole Maginsky Act and why are Trump Jr.’s lawyers not exposing this more? It seems that corruption only really exists when it always involves government.

KA

ANSWER: Corruption is a huge problem in all governments worldwide. It is the possession of power in the hands of authorities that can be bribed which regularly instigates corruption. The ONLY possible way to prevent this corruption is term limits. Believe it or not, California’s notorious Senator Dianne Feinstein announced that she said she was running for reelection in 2018. “I’m all in!” she tweeted and wrote in a Facebook post. These people have to be dragged out of office by their hair. She is 84 years old! Feinstein is the oldest Senator in Washington. Her next term, if Californian elect her again, which is likely, she will be past her 91st birthday. She has been the leading person taking all our liberty and a staunch supporter of the NSA. I have written before that “She is an outright liar” claiming if the government had more power they would have prevented 911. They were in on it!

Feinstein’s husband, Richard C. Blum, is chairman of C.B. Richard Ellis, or CBRE. Because of his wife, his real estate firm was hired in 2011 to serve as the exclusive agent to the Postal Service, selling facilities from post offices to plots of land worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They claim it was a competitive bid and Blum owns less than 5% of the stock. Blum’s investment firm, Blum Capital Partners, is the real estate company’s fifth-largest institutional shareholder, according to Factcheck.org.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Corruption In China Risks A Soviet-Style Collapse – Party’s Graft Buster

Corruption In China Risks A Soviet-Style Collapse – Party’s Graft Buster

Yang Xiadou is the Party’s number two man in Xi Jinping’s crackdown on corruption in the Chinese Communist Party – although some have seen this, in part, as a convenient way for Xi to bolster his power base.

During the 19th Party Congress last month, Yang was asked about the anti-corruption drive and how to achieve a balance between human rights and party discipline. Yang replied that, having worked in the Tibet Autonomous Region for many years, human rights was an “interesting question”. He recounted a conversation he had with a US assistant secretary of state where he likened Abraham Lincoln freeing slaves in America to China’s actions in Tibet.

“I said in the hearts of Chinese people, Lincoln is a hero, because he freed the slaves.

On this point the Chinese people and the American people have the same understanding – this is a human rights issue.

In turn, we freed the serfs in Tibet, how come American friends cannot understand this? From Lincoln’s perspective, he should have supported China’s overturning of the serfdom in Tibet.”

No matter that the Central Tibetan Administration, usually called the “Tibetan Government in Exile” has a starkly different view.

Yang’s ability to “paint broad canvases” was in evidence again when he stated that corruption in China could lead to a collapse similar to the Soviet Union. According to the Times of India.

 China must step up its battle against corruption in order to safeguard against a Soviet-style collapse, the country’s second most senior graft buster said in an editorial on Wednesday. Yang Xiaodu, the deputy secretary of the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection, who was promoted to the ruling Communist Party’s 25-strong Politburo last month, said failure would risk the “red country changing colour”.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

How Broke is the House of Saud?


Salvador Dalí The oecumenial council 1960
Trying to figure out what on earth is happening in the Middle East appears to have gotten a lot harder. Perhaps (because) it’s become more dangerous too. There are so many players, and connections between players, involved now that even making one of those schematic representations would never get it right. Too many unknown unknowns.

A short and incomplete list of the actors: Sunni, Shiite, Saudi Arabia, US, Russia, Turkey, ISIS, Syria, Iran, Iraq, Libya, Kurds, Lebanon, Hezbollah, Hamas, Qatar, Israel, United Arab Emirates (UAE), Houthis, perhaps even Chechnya, Afghanistan, Pakistan. I know I know, add your favorites. So what have we got, or what do we know we’ve got? We seem to have the US lining up with Israel, the UAE and Saudi Arabia against Russia, Iran, Syria, Hezbollah. Broadly. But that’s just a -pun intended- crude start.

Putin has been getting closer to the Saudis because of the OPEC production cuts, trying to jack up the price of oil. Which ironically has now been achieved on the heels of the arrests of 11 princes and scores of other wealthy and powerful in the kingdom. But Putin also recently signed a $30 billion oil -infrastructure- deal with Iran. And he’s been cuddling up to Israel as well.

In fact, Putin may well be the most powerful force in the Middle East today. Well played?! He prevented the demise of Assad in Syria, which however you look at it at least saved the country from becoming another Iraq and Libya style failed state. If there’s one thing you can say about the Middle East/North Africa it’s that the US succeeded in creating chaos there to such an extent that it has zero control left over any of it. Well played?!

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Saudi Arabia’ Government Purge–And How Washington Corruption Enabled It

MECCA, SAUDI ARABIA - JUNE 21: (----EDITORIAL USE ONLY  MANDATORY CREDIT - "BANDAR ALGALOUD / SAUDI ROYAL COUNCIL / HANDOUT" - NO MARKETING NO ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS - DISTRIBUTED AS A SERVICE TO CLIENTS----)  Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman al-Saud (C) attends a ceremony held for pleding Saudi local emirs and other notable people's allegiance to him as the new Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia in Mecca, Saudi Arabia on June 21, 2017. Saudi Arabia's king has appointed his son Mohammed bin Salman as his crown prince, deposing his nephew Mohammed bin Nayef. In a royal decree early Wednesday, King Salman bin Abdulaziz placed deputy crown prince Mohammed bin Salman, 31, as the first in line to the throne. The decree relieved prince Mohammed bin Nayef, 57, from his position as the deputy prime minister and interior minister.  (Photo by Bandar Algaloud / Saudi Royal Council / Handout/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images)
Photo: Bandar Algaloud/Saudi Royal Council/Anadolu Agency/Getty Images

SAUDI ARABIA’S GOVERNMENT PURGE — AND HOW WASHINGTON CORRUPTION ENABLED IT

THE MASS ARREST of high-ranking Saudi businessmen, media figures and royal family members Saturday has shaken the global business community. Among 10 other princes and 38 others, the roundup netted Prince Alwaleed bin Talal, one of the world’s richest men, who owns significant shares in everything from Citibank to Twitter to the parent company of Fox News.

Prince Alwaleed has done business with President Donald Trump in the past, but during the campaign turned into a fiery critic, drawing Trump’s Twitter ire.


Dopey Prince @Alwaleed_Talal wants to control our U.S. politicians with daddy’s money. Can’t do it when I get elected.


The move against Alwaleed and the other officials was couched as the result of a secret investigation carried out by a “high committee on fighting corruption.” Minister of Education Dr. Ahmed bin Mohammed Al-Issa “hailed the royal decree,” according to the Saudi Press Agency, saying, “this committee heralds a future of firmness against those who are trying to to undermine the capabilities of the homeland.”

Whatever the official explanation, it is being read around the world as a power grab by the kingdom’s rising crown prince. “The sweeping campaign of arrests appears to be the latest move to consolidate the power of Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the favorite son and top adviser of King Salman,” as the New York Times put it. “The king had decreed the creation of a powerful new anti-corruption committee, headed by the crown prince, only hours before the committee ordered the arrests.”

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

So This Is What Happens With Government Disaster Relief?

So This Is What Happens With Government Disaster Relief?

There is no possibility of eliminating corruption in government.

The idea of having government assist after a natural disaster sounds great. It makes us feel good. Houston floods? Send millions. New Orleans floods? Send hundreds of millions. Puerto Rico? The place is a mess and needs billions and billions. It all seems right.

The great truth about government is that every penny it spends must come from somewhere and must land somewhere else. 

Until you look at the details. Someone gets the money. Whether they are the same institutions who actually do the reconstruction is another matter. And what kind of relief they provide is still another question. Other people’s money usually works this way. Look closely enough and you find corruption at every level.I recall living in a town hit by a hurricane many years ago. The town mayor instructed people not to clean up yet because FEMA was coming to town. To get the maximum cash infusion, the inspectors needed to see terrible things. When the money finally arrived, it went to the largest real estate developers, who promptly used it to clear cut land for new housing developments. That’s some nice capital if you can get it.

And now we have the remarkable case of Whitefish Energy. It’s a good example of how a website can make anything seem awesome. You would never know by looking at the impressive digital space that this is a father/son business. That’s right: just two employees.

It does seem highly strange that this desktop operation in Montana would be awarded a $300 million contract to rebuild the electrical grid in Puerto Rico. That sounds outrageous. But guess what? This is a day and a half of disaster relief spending.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

If You Want to Understand the Next 10 Years, Study Spain

If You Want to Understand the Next 10 Years, Study Spain

Some of you may be confused as to why a U.S. citizen living in Colorado has become so completely obsessed with what’s going on in Spain. Bear with me, there’s a method to my madness.

I believe what’s currently happening in Spain represents a crucial microcosm for what we’ll see sweep across the entire planet over the next ten years. Some of you will want to have a discussion about who’s right and who’s wrong in this particular affair, but that’s besides the point. It doesn’t matter which side you favor, what matters is that Madrid/Catalonia is an example of the forces of centralization duking it out with forces of decentralization.

Madrid represents the nation-state as we know it, with its leaders claiming Spain is forever indivisible according to the constitution. Madrid has essentially proclaimed there’s no possible avenue to independence from a centralized Spain even if various regions decide in large number they wish to be independent. This sort of attitude will be seen as unacceptable and primitive by increasingly large numbers of humans in the years ahead. Catalonia should be seen as a canary in the coal mine. The forces of decentralization are rising, but entrenched centralized institutions and the bureaucrats running them will become increasingly terrified, panicked and oppressive.

As I’ve discussed, this isn’t coming out of nowhere. Humanity’s current established centralized institutions and nation-states have become clownishly corrupt, merely existing to protect and enrich the powerful/connected as opposed to benefiting the population at large. As such, legitimacy has been shattered and people have begun to demand a new way. Whether we see this with the rising popularity of Bitcoin, or the UK decision to leave the EU, evidence is everywhere and we’ve already passed the point of no return. This is precisely why EU leaders are rallying around Madrid. They’re scared to death and fear they might be next. They’re probably right.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Which Rotten Fruit Falls First?

Which Rotten Fruit Falls First?

I predict the current investigations will widen and take a variety of twists and turns that surprise all those anticipating a tidy, narrowly focused denouement.
The theme this week is The Rot Within.

To those of us who understand the entire status quo is rotten and corrupt to its core, the confidence of each ideological camp that their side will emerge unscathed by investigation is a source of amusement. The fake-progressives (fake because these so-called “progressives” support Imperial over-reach and a status quo whose only possible output is soaring wealth and income inequality) are confident that a “smoking gun” of corruption will deliver their most fervent dream, the impeachment of President Trump, while Trump supporters are equally confident there is no “smoking gun.”

One camp is confident that the wily Clintons and their army of enablers, from former FBI Director Comey on down, will finally be brought to long-evaded justice for their various perfections of corruption and collusion: pay to play, and so on.

Clinton supporters are equally confident that there is no “smoking gun” that will bring down the House of Clinton, and by proxy, the organs of the Democratic Party.

The implicit historical model each camp is anticipating is of course Watergate, which unfolded with a dramatic inevitability that in retrospect almost seems scripted: a minor burglary led to the hubris of cover-up which led to the destruction of the Nixon presidency.

Often overlooked in this history is the key roles played by insider informants (such as Deep Throat) and the wider political demands for greater transparency the scandal triggered.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

The United States of Weinstein: Complicity, Greed and Corruption Is the Status Quo

The United States of Weinstein: Complicity, Greed and Corruption Is the Status Quo

If integrity means more than any of these baubles, then prepare to fail.
The theme this week is The Rot Within.

The sordid story of Harvey Weinstein is being presented as an aberration. It is not an aberration; it is merely a high-profile example of how the status quo functions in the USA, a.k.a. The United States of Weinstein, in which complicity, greed and corruption reign supreme in every sector and in every nook and cranny of power.

The dirty secret of America’s status quo is that power and wealth are both extremely concentrated, which means there are gatekeepers who must be bribed, sated or serviced if you want to claw your way up the wealth-power pyramid. Mr. Weinstein’s alleged conduct and payoffs of those he exploited is par for the course in the corridors of power in the USA.

As a gatekeeper in Hollywood, Mr. W. could make or break careers with absurd ease.

Gatekeepers are the key functionaries in a rentier economy in which the few at the top skim the wealth of the many. Want to play in the big leagues of Hollywood, Washington D.C., the Pentagon, or the various HQs of Global Corporate America? You have to pay the Gatekeepers what they demand.

It might be the casting couch or a slice of the profits, or a vote in committee, but the price of admission will always include complicity–silence about the crimes committed and the endemic corruption, and a sacrifice of moral standards. This is the minimal price of “success” in the elite circles of wealth and power in America.

If you doubt this, dig deep into any concentration of power in America and see what you find. Outsiders won’t find anyone willing to talk, of course; that’s how complicity works.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Dan Rather Exposes Corrupt Media – But Back in 2008

It Gets Ugly in Brazil

It Gets Ugly in Brazil

The price of corruption.

In a stunning deterioration, the unemployment rate in Brazil spiked to 12.6% in the rolling three-month period through January, a record in the new data series going back to 2012, according to Brazil’s statistical agency IBGE. Up from 11.8% in the three-month period through October. Up from an already terribly high 9.5% a year ago. And more than double the 6.2% in December 2013.

Economists had expected the unemployment rate to rise to 12.4%. After three years of underestimating the political, fiscal, and economic fiasco in Brazil, they’re still underestimating it.

For example, by the end of 2015, the consensus forecast for unemployment by the end of 2016 was 9.1%, according to Focus Economics. On average, economists essentially expected the unemployment rate to remain flat for the year. A huge miss, when in fact the unemployment rate soared by 3.1 percentage points in the four quarters through January.

At the time, they figured that the unemployment rate would drop to 8.8% by the end of 2017. It is now clear that it would take a miracle to accomplish that.

The report also pointed out:

  • The number of unemployed soared by 34.3% year-over-year to 12.9 million persons (Brazil has a total population of 210 million).
  • The number of employed dropped by 1.9% year-over-year, or by 1.7 million to 89.9 million people.

This chart shows the unemployment rates of the three-month rolling periods. Note the brutal jump in January (via Trading Economics, red marks added):

Here are the sectors that shed the most workers compared to the same quarter last year:

  • General industry: -7.4% (-897,000 workers)
  • Construction: -9.6% (-755,000 workers)
  • Agriculture, livestock, forestry, fishing and aquiculture: -4.6% (-434,000 workers)
  • Domestic services: -3.5% (223,000 workers)

Employment rose only in lodging and food services: +8.7% (+393,000 workers). The remaining sectors maintained stable employment.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

 

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Three Day Weekend – Times of General Corruption

Stocks and Precious Metals Charts – Three Day Weekend – Times of General Corruption

 “And I’ll leave you with one set of numbers that I found today, which is just an absolute for this whole thing. In 2015, Wall Street Bonuses, not regular compensation, bonuses, seven years after they were bailed out with the public purse, totaled $29.4 billion dollars. Total compensation paid to every single person in this country who makes minimum wage totaled $14 billion…

The era of neo-liberalism is over. The era of neo-nationalism has just begun.”
Mark Blyth

“Caesar was swimming in blood, Rome and the whole pagan world was mad.  But those who had had enough of transgression and madness, those who were trampled upon, those whose lives were misery and oppression, all the weighed down, all the sad, all the unfortunate, came to hear the wonderful tidings of God, who out of love for men had given Himself to be crucified and redeem their sins.

When they found a God whom they could love, they had found that which the society of the time could not give any one— happiness and love.”
Henryk Sienkiewicz, Quo Vadis: The Time of Nero

When historians look back on this period of the last forty years and diagnose what went wrong, they might do worse than to conclude that at the root of it was a general failure of character, from the top down.

The replacing of honor and duty with egoism and greed as the most honored of civic virtues was a long and slow process.  It took root and was nurtured in a portion of the population that was served by it during the Reaganomics revolution, but eventually spread to those institutions and groups that had generally provided a bulwark for freedom and justice against the perennial amorality of the greedy.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Reasons to Risk Nuclear Annihilation

Reasons to Risk Nuclear Annihilation

Exclusive: The latest neocon/liberal-hawk scheme is for the U.S. population to risk nuclear war to protect corrupt politicians in Ukraine and Al Qaeda terrorists in east Aleppo, two rather dubious reasons to end life on the planet, says Robert Parry.


Obviously, I never wanted to see a nuclear war, which would likely kill not only me but my children, grandchildren, relatives, friends and billions of others. We’d be incinerated in the blast or poisoned by radiation or left to starve in a nuclear winter.

But at least I always assumed that this horrific possibility would only come into play over something truly worthy, assuming that anything would justify the mass extinction of life on the planet.

Peter Sellers playing Dr. Strangelove as he struggles to control his right arm from making a Nazi salute.

Peter Sellers playing Dr. Strangelove as he struggles to control his right arm from making a Nazi salute.

Now, however, Official Washington’s neocons and liberal interventionists are telling me and others that we should risk nuclear annihilation over which set of thieves gets to rule Ukraine and over helping Al Qaeda terrorists (and their “moderate” allies) keep control of east Aleppo in Syria.

In support of the Ukraine goal, there is endless tough talk at the think tanks, on the op-ed pages and in the halls of power about the need to arm the Ukrainian military so it can crush ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine who dared object to the U.S.-backed coup in 2014 that ousted their elected President Viktor Yanukovych.

And after “liberating” eastern Ukraine, the U.S.-backed Ukrainian army would wheel around and “liberate” Crimea from Russia, even though 96 percent of Crimean voters voted to leave Ukraine and rejoin Russia – and there is no sign they want to go back.

So, the world would be risking World War III over the principle of the West’s right to sponsor the overthrow of elected leaders who don’t do what they’re told and then to slaughter people who object to this violation of democratic order.

…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…

Olduvai IV: Courage
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Olduvai II: Exodus
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