[ennui2]

That organization/think tank may have receded but the mindset of US world-wide hegemony persists as witnessed by the fact that we are not sending the troops back home in any substantial numbers. That imperialistic mindset Ennui is not going away that easily.

You could make the case that ISIS exists exactly BECAUSE we pulled too many troops back. You know, we broke it, and had to buy it. So the negative slant you're putting on the application of the military and evoking the "hegemony" epithet isn't necessarily something everyone is going to run with.

Point being that blame is a fungible commodity. Everyone starts following the house that jack built back to the crusades if they want to keep pinning blame on "the west". At some point the individual actions of the nation states in question, Iran and Saudi Arabia being the most recent, are the primary driving force, not "US Hegemony(TM)".

How we choose to deal with it is a political question, with interventionists (neocons) on one side and isolationists (Chomsky-ites or Bernie Sanders) on the other, and if you try to strike a middle-path (as Obama has done) all it does is cause you to be branded both a wimp and a warmonger from both sides because he won't take it to either extreme.

And so each side just continues to try to out-shout the other with invectives.

[ennui2]

How do you keep that from erupting into an inferno?

But isn't that inferno the point of all our efforts? You know . . . we cause/allow/wait for chaos so we can then be Good Samaritans (and smart contractors) and pick up the pieces. Does a thinking person really believe this changes from administration to administration? The same guys revolve around and around the military-industrial merrygoaround as they always have.

Of course it doesn't, because generalization and constructing boogeymen like this is too comforting in its simplicity to think differently about it. If you actually had to deviate from 100% cynicism it would, you know, take some engagement with the political process rather than just shuffling down the street with a scowl on your face and shaking your fist at TPTB.

Oh, and while you're at it, you also seem to ignore the portion of the voting public who are devout hawks and who have absolutely no problem with the US as the world's policemen. This doesn't factor into your helpless woe-is-me fatalism. It's much easier to shake your fist at TPTB than to be angry at your everyday voter who voted for Bush twice.

[AdamB]

Well isn't that the mandate also of NATO. To safeguard Europe but again the question is more nuanced. It is about the Oil and safeguarding and attaining it. So, I certainly believe the US military is there first and foremost to safeguard and attain it for ourselves. Everything and everyone else would be of secondary importance.

We don't get as much as we once did I think. 13% seems like a terribly small amount to fight about, what would it take to replace 13% of US 18 million barrels a day of consumption? Go drill some more wells in North Dakota and west Texas?



<shrug>

Done it before, no reason we couldn't run off and do it again I suppose, if the price were right. Certainly a 16% interruption would drive up prices high enough to kickstart drilling again, and get the Canadians into the game with even more tar sands production as well.

[onlooker]

Ennui in your last two posts your putting the cart ahead of the donkey. Voters, countries, consumers and others are all being manipulated, coerced or deceived by the Financial interests and Political puppets. Voters are fools, countries weak and easily corrupted, consumers mindless and addicted to consumption. The question is how did this state of affairs come to be. Some of you are saying it is all just the masses of people and the sum of their actions or lack of action that is writing history in recent times. A few of us here are saying no. That everyone is being led, deceived, coerced, bribed, threatened etc. to go on this path. I cannot in a short commentary explain to you all the many factors that pretty much attest to this assertion I am making so I say simply that you should at least try and research for yourself and then get back here to further debate this issue. Monte wrote a book about it, maybe you can start there. I will simply say that in the world money is power and the powers behind the curtain have vast amounts and they have utilized it along with infiltration and hijacking of the US to proceed with this world-wide system of oppression and exploitation. IMF, the World Bank, the WTO, the US military, the United Nations, and different countries around the world cooperate and are part of this scheme. Also, many other parts of civilization have become beholden to money and thus to elites. Now is this some super secretive esoteric discovery I have made? Hardly. Simply enough research to convince myself in the power of money, in the intentions of the trajectory and trends being manifested and in the rather disturbing qualities of those in the highest pinnacles of power in the world. They are addicted to power and wealth is the best way I can explain it. I will stop here.

[Newfie]

I was being a little more concrete, referring to the pic of all the tents (biput a couple of others got ahead of me while I was pecking at the screen).

So, how do you keep a tent city like that from burning? Sprinklers?

[MonteQuest]

PNAC = neocons. Died with the Bush administration.

Yet, the same neocons are Jeb's advisers and the CFR is still very much alive.

[MonteQuest]

We don't get as much as we once did I think. 13% seems like a terribly small amount to fight about, what would it take to replace 13% of US 18 million barrels a day of consumption? Go drill some more wells in North Dakota and west Texas?

The US has 2% of the world's oil reserves, the Middle East has 2/3rds of the remaining reserves. By the time you could add 2.3 mbpd to US production we would probably be consuming 20 mbpd.

[GregT]

PNAC = neocons. Died with the Bush administration.

Hillary is the CFR's poster child, and happens to be US Secretary of State. Victoria (F the EU) Nuland, assistant to Hillary, happens to be Robert Kagan's wife. Kagan was co-founder of the PNAC.

And of course Obama, not sure of whether he is an official card carrying member of the CFR or not, seems to be fairly certain that there is no official handshake, even though he might have only spoken there "once or twice".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gEnuhSScLgc

[SeaGypsy]

Not since Feb 2013 sh ain't, that would be the other liar & boofhead, John Kerry.

[GregT]

Not since Feb 2013 sh ain't, that would be the other liar & boofhead, John Kerry.

For some strange reason, most feel the need to hide their affiliation while in DC.

[StarvingLion]

Gotta laugh at the retards: "Get rid of oil war mongering luddites, go tech innovation"

The tech "innovation" future is so beautiful you will all be living in paradise...lol. It seems even the dimmest dimbulbs are finally catching on about the reality of their fantastic toys:

http://peakoilbarrel.com/bakken-single- ... /#comments

Arceus says:
01/05/2016 at 12:16 pm

Ves wrote: “Could you explain how Uber works when 10 million employees in LA each morning have to leave for work at 8:00 am in order to be at their desk sharp, at 9:00 am ? Who gets a priority in the Uber pickup line?”

Uber and Lyft are just an intermediate step as the U.S. and the world move away from “democracy” toward a totalitarian form of government. The removal of individual transportation will allow fairly broad and sweeping control of society along with control of information (and access to that information), banning of weapons and digital only currency. Future companies will provide automated transport for employees as part of their compensation for more efficient worker productivity (never late to work and can begin immediately) – what jobs remain will be for government owned entities mostly and the movement of those employees will need to be tracked.

[Plantagenet]

Obama was crying again during his news conference. Acting like a wimp hurts Os credibility in his dealings with Iran and KSA

[Cog]

Fake tears. He doesn't give a damn about NewTown or any other mass killing. He also doesn't give a damn about blacks killing blacks by the truck-load. What he cares about is disarming people who could possibly resist his tyrannical proposals.

[Plantagenet]

I don't think Obamas crying is faked. The man cries all the time. He cried at least 3 times in the week after his re-election ---- and that was just when it was caught on camera He cries for all sorts of reasons too

Nope--- O is just a sensitive flower who cries a lot

[Newfie]

Now be nice, I cry too, in fact I also cried when he was re-elected.

[AgentR11]

pstall, Lion, that reads more like a bucket list of complaints wide and varied, such that if you try to debate them as a group you end up with a unfalsifiable conspiracy debate devoid of tangibles; but if you debate one, you get a "but all the others.." syndrome.

So I will debate.. one.

Personal transportation.

No one is taking away personal transportation.

Reasons to use personal transportation to make up for poor planning or design are however being nibbled at.

Just look at the example Lion uses for a "personal transportation" example... there's nothing personal about that, that's simply using your hardware and your fuel to subsidize your employer and some idiot that made it impossible to live near your employer as a result of zoning or cost or whatever. You get in the same box, and travel the same route, at the same inch-by-inch congested speed, back and forth, over and over for years. Nothing changes whether you are in your own vehicle, or a bus, or an uber lifty; and if you're within 20 miles, pretty much nothing changes even if you ride a bicycle.

Personal transportation is being able to go where you want, when you want, for any reason, or no reason at all. Its not about a commute. And that is not going away. No one is pursuing such a policy objective; if anything, the objectives being pursued are all about buying more cars, not fewer.

Ability to do without a car because of an offered service, does not imply that cars are going to fade away or be banned.

And heck, fine, couple others:
What difference does it make whether I hand a clerk a piece of paper that only has value because the digital systems of the United States say it has value; or if I stick a piece of plastic and silicon in a reader, that moves bits that only have value because the digital systems of the United States say it has value. There's nothing magic or sacred about that scrap of paper; neither God nor Nature have imbued it with any value at all; its simply a marker, a temporary placeholder for moving bits from one account to another account. Even in the catastrophic sense, I can get my "cash" bits into equities faster than you can get your paper place markers into gold or silver, and much much faster than you can get them into any wider assortment of liquid assets that preserve purchasing power.

banning of weapons? You're kidding me right, the US is going in the opposite direction over the past couple decades, more states offering carry licenses, more court rulings defending the basic right to be armed in some fashion. The congress is quite supportive of civilian ownership of firearms, and that is unlikely to change for many years. Just because the press is harping on the "ban those bad ole guns" doesn't mean that is what is happening or will happen any time soon.

However... lol. None of the above invalidates the proposed notion that we are moving to a totalitarian system both nationally and internationally. In fact we are, but don't expect it to look anything like previous iterations. You see, those bad ole elites, they learned something. Controlling the rabble is pointless; instead simply remove yourself from the possibility that the rabble could somehow inconvenience you; completely remove the physical possibility. Then you need not care; if truckloads of rabble want to shoot each other, fine, sell em guns and bullets; and make sure their bullets are very unlikely to ding up the expensive waste water treatment plant. If they strike, say fine, and move the job and production to folks that don't want to strike. If they protest, nudge their protest to spots that look important, but aren't. (occupy xyz). Given them lots of fire and brimstone candidates of two parties that really hate each other... and manage to vote exactly the same way on most issues.

No, we're getting totalitarian. Not with a silk glove, nor iron boot. Its a straitjacket in a world turned into a funny farm. The elite, playing the role of Nurse Ratchet will occasionally select one of you for amusement, but otherwise... meh, they don't care. All physically possible avenues of motion result in obedience willingly given or not.

[MonteQuest]

What he cares about is disarming people who could possibly resist his tyrannical proposals.

That's just rich. And funny. And ludicrous. Tyranny?

[SeaGypsy]

Uber is a joke designed to sucker mathematical dunces into working for free. There is no real profit in driving for uber. For example the tax office here has ruled the cost of running a private car is 78 cents per km. When my employer pays me $780 to drive 1000 km in a week, the tax office doesn't touch it. Uber charges $1.15 km, from which- 10% gst, 20% uber, income tax, costs, out & back etc. Just a big scam really.