Home » Posts tagged 'dwight d. eisenhower'

Tag Archives: dwight d. eisenhower

March of Folly: Fall of American Empire

February 21, 2023

MARCH OF FOLLY: FALL OF AMERICAN EMPIRE

“Folly is a child of power.” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

“A phenomenon noticeable throughout history regardless of place or period is the pursuit by governments of policies contrary to their own interests. Mankind, it seems, makes a poorer performance of government than of almost any other human activity. In this sphere, wisdom, which may be defined as the exercise of judgment acting on experience, common sense, and available information, is less operative and more frustrated than it should be. Why do holders of high office so often act contrary to the way reason points and enlightened self-interest suggests? Why does intelligent mental process seem so often not to function?” ― Barbara W. Tuchman, The March of Folly: From Troy to Vietnam

The term “folly” is particularly apt at this stage in the decline of the great American empire. Folly is defined as: criminally or tragically foolish actions or conduct; an excessively costly or unprofitable undertaking. If ever a word captured the actions of American political leaders in the 21^st Century and reflect the tragic downfall of an empire borne out of the ashes of the Second World War, it is the term “folly”.

For the last two decades I’ve been befuddled by the inane foolishness of our leaders, as they have driven the nation into a bottomless pit of debt at an astoundingly ridiculous pace, initiated military conflict across the globe, and in the last three years initiated anti-human policies guaranteed to destroy our economic system, depopulate the planet, increase human suffering, and turn the world into a techno-gulag where we will own nothing, eat bugs, and bow down to the commands of globalist overlords.

…click on the above link to read the rest…

60 Years After Eisenhower’s Warning, Distinct Signs of a ‘Digital-Intelligence Complex’

February 24, 2021

60 Years After Eisenhower’s Warning, Distinct Signs of a ‘Digital-Intelligence Complex’

In June 2019, Susan Gordon stood on a stage at the Washington Convention Center. Behind her loomed three giant letters, “AWS,” the abbreviation for Amazon Web Services, the cloud computing division of the giant Internet retailer. After three decades at the Central Intelligence Agency, Gordon had risen to one of the top jobs in the cloak-and-dagger world: principal deputy director of national intelligence. From that perch she publicly extolled the virtues of Amazon Web Services and the cloud services the tech giant provides the CIA.

U.S. intelligence official Susan Gordon, top photo, extolling Amazon Web Services in 2019 and, just above, at a “FedTalks” in 2015 with AWS Vice President Bill Vass. He spoke glowingly of the government-AWS partnership. She agreed: “… If you believe in the engine of a great society, you’ve just described it.”

YouTube/AWS

The agreement was also a “real game-changer,” said André Pienaar, founder and CEO of a tech firm called C5 Capital, whose business includes reselling AWS services. “When the CIA said they were going adopt the AWS cloud platform,” Pienaar said at another AWS event. “People said if the U.S. intelligence community has the confidence to feel secure on the AWS cloud, why can’t we?”

Ike Was Right

January 20, 2020

IKE WAS RIGHT

“In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist.
Now this conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence—economic, political, even spiritual—is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet, we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources, and livelihood are all involved. So is the very structure of our society.”
General Dwight D Eisenhower
Farewell address 1961

Congress just passed a near trillion dollar military budget at a time when the United States faces no evident state threats at home or abroad. Ike was right.

Illustrating Ike’s prescient warning, Brown University’s respected Watson Institute just released a major study which found that the so-called ‘wars on terror’ in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria and Pakistan have cost US taxpayers $6.4 trillion since they began in 2001.

The extensive study found that over 800,000 people have died as a result of these military operations, a third of them civilians. An additional 21 million civilians have been displaced by US military operations. According to the Pentagon, these US wars have so far cost each American taxpayer $7,623 – and that’s a very conservative estimate.

Most of this money has been quietly added to the US national debt of over $23 trillion. Wars on credit hide the true cost and pain from the public.

As General Eisenhower warned, military spending has engulfed the nation. A trillion annual military budget represents just about half the world’s military expenditures. The Pentagon, which I’ve visited numerous times, is bustling with activity as if the nation was on a permanent war footing.

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

Personal Politics, Public Impeachment, Persuasion and Post-Apocalyptic Planning

November 16, 2019

Personal Politics, Public Impeachment, Persuasion and Post-Apocalyptic Planning

One of my primary concerns regarding the forthcoming economic chaos and societal breakdown is that there will be nowhere to run and nowhere to hide. As normalcy bias evaporates like tears on dehydrated sunken cheeks, hungry neighbors and pre-collapse friends and acquaintances will soon assimilate into zombie hoards and come knocking like its Halloween.

What are you going to do? Shoot them?

Regardless, saying “I told you so” or “I tried to warn you, but you didn’t listen” will not be an effective deterrent. Furthermore, the resultant chaos will also deliver local strongmen and gangs ready to thieve and plunder amidst widespread violence and starvation.

In such a scenario, any lone bananas are sure to be skinned.

Are you ready?

Because very few will have the opportunity to bug out to a remote location and surprisingly, an isolated cabin in the woods, or a fenced-off hidden homestead in a rural area may not be best after all. Take it from Fernando Ferfal Aguirre, who survived the economic collapse in Argentina. In his book, “Surviving the Economic Collapse”, he described geographic areas as like organisms dying; where the extremities perish first. Aguirre identifies the urban areas as the safer places to work, trade, and live; with the rural areas as targets for roving gangs to raid and set up camp out of the reach of city services, police, and fire departments.

Therefore, since we know the endgame, what if we could parlay that into building trust with others now? Perhaps entire regions could be fortified in a balkanized America, simply by reorganizing current civil administrations. All that would be required would be for the heads of select institutions and agencies to work in coordination, quickly, and decisively as the proverbial excrement collides into the whirling flabellum. Roving bands, gangs, cartels, and feral feds, might then decide to move on to easier targets.

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

Think You’re Prepared For The Next Crisis? Think Again.

October 6, 2018

BLOG

Think You’re Prepared For The Next Crisis? Think Again.

Even the best-laid preparations have failure points

No plan of operations extends with any certainty beyond the first contact with the main hostile force.

~ Helmuth von Moltke the Elder

Everybody has a plan until they get punched in the mouth.

~ Mike Tyson

Scottish poet Robert Burns aptly penned the famous phrase: “The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men/Gang aft a-gley.” (commonly adapted as “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.”)

How right he was.

History has shown time and time again that the only 100% predictable outcome to any given strategy is that, when implemented, things will not go 100% according to plan.

The Titanic’s maiden voyage. Napolean’s invasion of Russia. The Soviet’s 1980 Olympic hockey dream team. The list of unexpected outcomes is legion.

Dwight D. Eisenhower, the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces in Europe during WW2, went as far as to say: “In preparing for battle, I’ve always found that plans are useless but planning is indispensable.”

This wisdom very much applies to anyone seeking safety from disaster. Whether preparing for a natural calamity, a financial market crash, an unexpected job loss, or the “long emergency” of resource depletion — you need to take prudent planful steps now, in advance of crisis; BUT you also need to be mentally prepared for some elements of your preparation to unexpectedly fail when you need them most.

Here are two recent events that drive that point home.

Lessons From Hurricane Florence

A family member of mine lives in Wilmington, NC, which received a direct hit last month from Hurricane Florence.

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

Beware the Common Thread that runs through War

September 24, 2018

Beware the Common Thread that runs through War

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong; You seem to argue that the sanctions against Russia are unjustified with respect to their invasion of Ukraine. I understand that Kiev was the original capital of the Rus. You do not agree with the sanctions I assume because you argue they are pointless and will not work. Can you elaborate on that view?

Thank you for your insights.

ANSWER: I look for patterns and when you see the same pattern time and time again, history becomes merely a Shakespear play performed for centuries where the plot remains the same and the only difference is the actors in the performance. So let us look at this objectively and without bias.

There was the famous parting speech of President Eisenhower who warned about the risk of the growing military establishment. Most people do not know that in December 1897, Otto von Bismarck met with the last Emperor of Germany Wilhelm II. It was then when Bismarck had warned Wilhelm about the rising influence of military establishment just as Eisenhower warned the American people. He warned that especially of the admirals were pushing to construct of a battle fleet. They even named a ship after the man who warned against their aggression. In reality, you cannot have a standing army always training for a war that never comes. They get their toys and they historically always want to use them to the detriment of the people and the nation.

What does Japan, German and Austria-Hungarian Empire all have in common? In the case of Japan, World War II was instigated by its military and the Emperor was subservient to the military class. In Germany, Emperor Wilhelm II was not the instigator of World War I.

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

Ike was right!

June 23, 2018

Ike was right!

POITOU, FRANCE – We wait for the world to fall apart.

The Dow is still more than 1,000 points below its high; so we presume the primary trend is down. Treasury yields – on the 10-year note – are near 3%… twice what they were two years ago. So we presume the primary trend for bonds is down, too.

If we’re right, we are at the beginning of a long slide… down, down, down… into chaos, destitution, and destruction.

Faked Out

Our working hypothesis is that General Eisenhower was right. There were two big temptations to the American Republic of the 1950s; subsequent generations gave in to both of them.

They spent their children’s and grandchildren’s money. Now, the country has a government debt of $21 trillion. That’s up from $288 billion when Ike left the White House.

And they allowed the “unwarranted influence” of the “military/industrial complex” to grow into a monster. No president, no matter how good his intentions, can stop it.

A corollary to our major hypothesis is that the rise of the Deep State (the military/industrial/social welfare/security/prison/medical care/education/bureaucrat/crony complex) was funded by the Fed’s fake-money system.

Now, investors, businesses, households, and the feds themselves have all been “faked out” by a fraudulent money system. None of them can survive a cutback in credit.

For nearly 30 years, central banks have backstopped markets and flooded the world with liquidity.

But last week, the Fed turned the screws a little further. It now targets a 2% Fed Funds Rate and claims to be on the path of “normalization.”

And the European Central Bank (ECB) made it official, too; it hasn’t quite begun tightening, but it’s got its toolbox open. And command of the ECB work crew is set to change hands next year anyway, passing on to a German engineer.

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

There Is No Freedom Without Truth

February 2, 2016

There Is No Freedom Without Truth

“This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence — economic, political, even spiritual — is felt in every city, every statehouse, every office of the federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists, and will persist. We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals so that security and liberty may prosper together.” — President Dwight D. Eisenhower

Dwight D. Eisenhower was a five-star general in charge of the Normandy Invasion and a popular two-term President of the United States. Today he would be called a “conspiracy theorist.”

Were Ike to be issuing his warning from the White House today, conservative Republicans like Senators Lindsey Graham (R-SC) and Marco Rubio (R-FL) would be screaming at Ike for impugning the motives of “the patriotic industry that protects our freedom.”

Neoconservatives such as William Kristol would be demanding to know why President Eisenhower was issuing warnings about our own military-industrial complex instead of warning about the threat presented by the Soviet military.

The presstitute media would be implying that Ike was going a bit senile in his old age, a tactic the presstitutes used against President Reagan as he struggled to end stagflation and the Cold War.

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

Tag Archives: dwight d. eisenhower

Content

Post categories

Economic Links

Energy/Resource Links

Environmental Links

Geopolitical Links

Liberty Links

News Links

Other Links

Survival Skills

Post Archives by Category

Latest Posts