Almost every day I read stories about Republican actions to subvert the wellbeing of the middle class. It is amazing to me. They just roll in day after day, each one more extreme and hurtful than the one before it. Here is an example. Frankly, and I know this will offend the 14 per cent of my readers who are conservatives, as presently configured ! I do not think is is possible to be an ethical person and to vote Republican. I am sorry, but on the facts, in my view, that is the case.
The retired Marine colonel who cued me to this report opined that, “This is a hell of a lot closer to the mark than any Administration or DoS blathering.” I would be totally unsurprised to find him 100% spot-on. I invite your attention to the final para, highlighted. If that is true, the (in)actions of our government may have rendered us incapable, fiscally and operationally, of effective response. Another Task Force Smith, another Kaserine Pass could be the foreseeable result.
Embassy closures are a signal of the rapidly escalated intervention in the region by the US
There is one thing certain about the publicized threat to our embassies; it is not what it is presented to be. To accept the official explanation of a nebulous threat from al Qaeda as the reason for closing our embassies across the Middle East and North Africa is being dangerously naive and simplistic.
This is much more serious than what we are being told, but not for the reasons we are being given. We are seeing the consequences of a long running “Cold War” on two major fronts of political conflict that could escalate into military engagement with proxy nations of world super powers. The world, and life as we know it, could change in an instant should we awaken one morning to the news of bombs flying across the Middle East. That is a very real possibility, as we are now in a heightened proxy war environment. We are standing in a thick forest of dry tinder, and the smallest of sparks could ignite a conflagration the likes of which we have never before seen.
Hot on the heels of my last blogpost “Israel: The contrarian agenda” comes this. Michael Scheuer – the ex CIA man who is throwing his word around the world on media and at International book festivals as if he is some “guru” of the Intelligence world – which, being ex CIA, I guess he has the right to think so.
EXTRACT:
2. Michael Scheuer is a jesuit
Scheuer was born in Buffalo and graduated from Canisius College in 1974, and went on to earn an M.A. from Niagara University in 1976 and another M.A. from Carleton University in 1982. He also received a Ph.D. in British Empire-U.S.-Canada-U.K. relations from the University of Manitoba in 1986.
Germany canceled a Cold War-era surveillance pact with the United States and Britain on Friday in response to revelations by National Security Agency leaker Edward Snowden about those countries' alleged electronic eavesdropping operations.
The move appeared largely symbolic, designed to show that the German government was taking action to stop unwarranted surveillance directed against its citizens without actually jeopardizing relations with Washington and London. With weeks to go before national elections, opposition parties had seized on Snowden's claim that Germany was complicit in the NSA's intelligence-gathering operations.
My good friend Pierre Sprey emailed me the attached article by Jonathan Latham along with his introduction. While this truly frightening critique applies to genetics, the politicization of science is a widespread phenomenon that is now undermining our contemporary culture. It can be seen many fields ranging from defense science to climate science. With Pierre's permission I am his forwarding introductory comment and as Latham very important essay to you.
—-[Begin Pierre's email]—-
I commend to you this excellent article, a most interesting example of negative marginal returns in science research:
The third and fourth paragraphs from the end are particularly telling:
“Not sufficiently understood by outsiders is the fact that most of science is essentially now a top-down project. There persists a romantic notion (retained by many scientists) that science is a process of free enquiry. In this view, the endless grant applications and the requests for applications are merely quality control measures, or irritants imposed by bureaucrats.
But free enquiry in science is all but extinct. In reality, only a tiny proportion of research in biology gets done outside of straightjackets imposed by funding agencies. Researchers design their projects around funding programs; universities organize their hiring around them, and every experiment is carefully designed to bolster the next grant application.
The consequences of this dynamic are that individual scientists have negligible power within the system; but more importantly it opens a route by which powerful political or commercial forces can surreptitiously set the science agenda from above.”
Needless to say, the article in toto is a reminder that the despicable Progressive penchant for eugenics–so fulsomely admired by Hitler and so eloquently excoriated by Alexander Cockburn–is once again flourishing among us.
Can it be a coincidence that this eugenic resurgence comes just when our ever-present native American fascist undercurrents are rising on a perigean spring tide of metasticizing secret surveillance, police aggrandizement, corporate kleptocracy, Judeo-Christian fanaticism and racist xenophobia?
Phi Beta Iota: Clicking the link leads to an article in Security Watch that contains a classified NSA slide on the NSA Query hierarchy, with substantive commentary. We are balancing our respect for contributing editor selections, with a commitment to not directly represent anything classified within this website.
Almost every day I read stories about Republican actions to subvert the wellbeing of the middle class. It is amazing to me. They just roll in day after day, each one more extreme and hurtful than the one before it. Here is an example. Frankly, and I know this will offend the 14 per cent of my readers who are conservatives, as presently configured ! I do not think is is possible to be an ethical person and to vote Republican. I am sorry, but on the facts, in my view, that is the case.
