Starship
Blows Against the Empire, 1970
Lyrics: Paul Kantner, Marty Balin, Grace Slick, Gary Blackman
Music: Paul Kantner, Grace Slick
What you gonna do when you feel your lady rollin'
How you gonna feel when you see your lady strollin'
On the deck of the starship
With her head hooked into Andromeda
C'mon Hijack
Gotta get back and ahead to the things that matter
Amerika hates her crazies
And you gotta let go you know
gotta let go you know
gotta let go you know
gotta let go you know or else you stay
Spillin' out of the steel glass
gravity gone from the cage
a million pounds gone from your heavy mass
all the years gone from your age
Hydroponic gardens and forests
Glistening with lakes in the Jupiter starlight
Room for babies and Byzantine dancing astronauts of renown
The magician and the pantechnicon
Take along the farmer and the physician
We gotta get out and down
Back into the future
Beyond our own time again
Reachin' for tomorrow
It's so fine, the starshine
The melting acid fever streakin' thru my mind
makes it ah so difficult to see you
and ah so easy to touch you
i melt with you
feel with you
make love for you
at you
around you
I love you
Dear Brumus, the ship'll be ours and you got to roll with it
And tho' your master's head's blown off you got to go with it
Roll with the natural flow
Like water off a spinning ball
Out - the one remaining way to go
Free - the only way to fall
The light in the night is the sun
And it can carry you around the planetary ground
And the planetary whip of the sun
Will carry you well past Gideon
And the people you see will leave you be
more than the ones you've known before
Hey - rollin' on
We come and go like a comet
We are wanderers
Are you anymore?
The land is green and you make it grow
And you gotta let go you know
You gotta let go you know
You gotta let go you know
Or else you stay
mankind gone from the cage
all the years gone from your age
At first I was iridescent
Then I became transparent
Finally I was absent
Can you believe in no more war?
Saturday, July 30, 2016
U.S. military interventions
FROM WOUNDED KNEE TO SYRIA:
A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS
by Dr. Zoltan Grossman
The following is a partial list of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 2014.
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
* making the world safe for American corporations;
* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."
This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.
A CENTURY OF U.S. MILITARY INTERVENTIONS
by Dr. Zoltan Grossman
The following is a partial list of U.S. military interventions from 1890 to 2014.
and
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
* making the world safe for American corporations;
* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."
This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.
Tuesday, July 26, 2016
Wednesday, July 20, 2016
Why the Ukraine Crisis Is the West’s Fault
The Liberal Delusions That Provoked Putin
By John J. Mearsheimer
According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.
But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics.
Link here.
By John J. Mearsheimer
According to the prevailing wisdom in the West, the Ukraine crisis can be blamed almost entirely on Russian aggression. Russian President Vladimir Putin, the argument goes, annexed Crimea out of a long-standing desire to resuscitate the Soviet empire, and he may eventually go after the rest of Ukraine, as well as other countries in eastern Europe. In this view, the ouster of Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych in February 2014 merely provided a pretext for Putin’s decision to order Russian forces to seize part of Ukraine.
But this account is wrong: the United States and its European allies share most of the responsibility for the crisis. The taproot of the trouble is NATO enlargement, the central element of a larger strategy to move Ukraine out of Russia’s orbit and integrate it into the West. At the same time, the EU’s expansion eastward and the West’s backing of the pro-democracy movement in Ukraine -- beginning with the Orange Revolution in 2004 -- were critical elements, too. Since the mid-1990s, Russian leaders have adamantly opposed NATO enlargement, and in recent years, they have made it clear that they would not stand by while their strategically important neighbor turned into a Western bastion. For Putin, the illegal overthrow of Ukraine’s democratically elected and pro-Russian president -- which he rightly labeled a “coup” -- was the final straw. He responded by taking Crimea, a peninsula he feared would host a NATO naval base, and working to destabilize Ukraine until it abandoned its efforts to join the West. Putin’s pushback should have come as no surprise. After all, the West had been moving into Russia’s backyard and threatening its core strategic interests, a point Putin made emphatically and repeatedly. Elites in the United States and Europe have been blindsided by events only because they subscribe to a flawed view of international politics.
Link here.
Goodbye Lenin, Hello Bernanke
Enter Ben Bernanke. In the space of a mere eight years, the former Federal Reserve chief has managed to achieve what Vladimir could barely conceive. He's convinced the United States of America, the United Kingdom, Japan and Europe to embark on a revolutionary journey to completely subvert free market instincts.
Unlike his Russian predecessor, Ben has opted for the calm, congenial exterior of Central Banker from Central Casting, complete with a mogadon monotone designed to lull his audience into a state of torpor.
He's also wisely decided to modify the wealth distribution bit. As western governments have raided the kitty, plunging themselves into an ocean of debt, much of the proceeds have flowed directly into asset markets - stocks, bonds and property - which has helped maintain the flow of wealth towards the wealthy. Brilliant!
Unlike his Russian predecessor, Ben has opted for the calm, congenial exterior of Central Banker from Central Casting, complete with a mogadon monotone designed to lull his audience into a state of torpor.
He's also wisely decided to modify the wealth distribution bit. As western governments have raided the kitty, plunging themselves into an ocean of debt, much of the proceeds have flowed directly into asset markets - stocks, bonds and property - which has helped maintain the flow of wealth towards the wealthy. Brilliant!
=============================================
Even investment banks, having ridden this artificial boom for seven years, have grown wary of the overbearing influence the state on financial markets.
Take this note from Macquarie to clients last week, reprinted by blogsite Macrobusiness:
Others are starting to think that it all may never end; that we've discovered the elixir of permanent wealth; that given governments have bought all their own debt, they'll just forgive themselves or extend the payment date into the never never.
But even Lenin realized there were limits to revolutionary activity.
Even investment banks, having ridden this artificial boom for seven years, have grown wary of the overbearing influence the state on financial markets.
Take this note from Macquarie to clients last week, reprinted by blogsite Macrobusiness:
We believe that the global economy and investors are residing in the twilight zone between an era of relatively free market capitalist economies (with its own set of signals) and a new environment which is likely to be completely dominated by the state.Who knows where this all will end? Many are concerned that all this Central Bank intervention not only has prolonged the inevitable, but created an environment for a much greater collapse.
Others are starting to think that it all may never end; that we've discovered the elixir of permanent wealth; that given governments have bought all their own debt, they'll just forgive themselves or extend the payment date into the never never.
But even Lenin realized there were limits to revolutionary activity.
Link here.
The Long Con, Mail-order conservatism
And that, at last, may be the explanation for Mitt Romney’s apparently bottomless penchant for lying in public. If the 2012 GOP nominee lied louder than most—and even more astoundingly than he has during his prior campaigns—it’s just because he felt like he had more to prove to his core following. Lying is an initiation into the conservative elite. In this respect, as in so many others, it’s like multilayer marketing: the ones at the top reap the reward—and then they preen, pleased with themselves for mastering the game. Closing the sale, after all, is mainly a question of riding out the lie: showing that you have the skill and the stones to just brazen it out, and the savvy to ratchet up the stakes higher and higher. Sneering at, or ignoring, your earnest high-minded mandarin gatekeepers—“we’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers,” as one Romney aide put it—is another part of closing the deal. For years now, the story in the mainstream political press has been Romney’s difficulty in convincing conservatives, finally, that he is truly one of them. For these elites, his lying—so dismaying to the opinion-makers at the New York Times, who act like this is something new—is how he has pulled it off once and for all. And at the grassroots, his fluidity with their preferred fables helps them forget why they never trusted the guy in the first place.
Link here.
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Netanyahu vs. the Generals
Yaakov Peri, a former head of the Shin Bet—Israel’s internal intelligence agency—who has also served as a cabinet member in one of Netanyahu’s governments, told me recently that "some people like to say the security establishment is in fact leading the opposition in this country. I think that's an exaggeration, but there's no doubt that on two issues—Iran and Palestine—the security establishment's professional analysis has consistently contradicted Netanyahu’s policies and statements.”
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Next came a lengthy interview Diskin provided to a documentary film called “The Gatekeepers.” The film's director, Dror Moreh, set out to interview all the living former heads of the Shin Bet, in order to ask them what they thought were the implications of Israel's decadeslong occupation of the Palestinians. All of them said, each in his own words, that Israel had to make a serious effort to end the conflict. The strongest moment in the interview with Diskin was when Moreh read aloud a quote by Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a famous Israeli intellectual, who warned back in 1968 that if Israel kept the occupied territories, "it will be inflicted with the corruption typical to colonial regimes. The government will constantly have to deal with oppressing an Arab rebellion, and with acquiring Arab Quislings. The IDF will suffer from atrophy and become an occupation army.” Moreh then asked Diskin: "What do you think about this statement, when you look at the state of Israel today?" Diskin looked straight into the camera and said: "I agree with every word of it.”
=======================================
Next came a lengthy interview Diskin provided to a documentary film called “The Gatekeepers.” The film's director, Dror Moreh, set out to interview all the living former heads of the Shin Bet, in order to ask them what they thought were the implications of Israel's decadeslong occupation of the Palestinians. All of them said, each in his own words, that Israel had to make a serious effort to end the conflict. The strongest moment in the interview with Diskin was when Moreh read aloud a quote by Prof. Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a famous Israeli intellectual, who warned back in 1968 that if Israel kept the occupied territories, "it will be inflicted with the corruption typical to colonial regimes. The government will constantly have to deal with oppressing an Arab rebellion, and with acquiring Arab Quislings. The IDF will suffer from atrophy and become an occupation army.” Moreh then asked Diskin: "What do you think about this statement, when you look at the state of Israel today?" Diskin looked straight into the camera and said: "I agree with every word of it.”
Link here.
‘I was wrong in my presumption that Israel desired peace’ – Chas Freeman
"With great reluctance, I came to see that, given U.S. enablement, Israel has never been prepared to risk peace with those it displaced from their homes in Palestine. When faced with a choice between territorial expansion and advances toward reconciliation with Arabs, Israel always chooses land over peace. The now-defunct American-sponsored 'peace process'— on which the United States staked its reputation in the Middle East and elsewhere, and which I labored to support—has been revealed to all as part of an elaborate diplomatic deception, intended to provide political cover for Israel’s continued territorial expansion at Palestinian expense."
Link here.
Link here.
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