- UAE Buys World's Largest Rocket Launcher "Jobaria" From Turkey
One of the leading firms in the Turkish defense industry, Roketsan, set a record with world’s largest rocket artillery, capable of launching hundreds of rockets in 2 minutes from a single military vehicle, the company announced on Saturday.
Jobaria, a Multiple Cradle Launcher (MCL), was developed by Roketsan for the United Arab Emirates (UAE), has achieved legend status with Guinness World Records for the world’s largest rocket artillery in terms of the number of barrels, the company said in a statement sent to journalists.
ROKETSAN, Guinness Rekorlar Kitabı’na girdi
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ROKETSAN’ın Birleşik Arap Emirlikleri için ürettiği Jobaria Çok Kundaklı Lançer, “namlu sayısı bakımından dünyanın en büyük roket topçusu” olarak Guinness Rekorlar Kitabı’na girdi.
.#savunmasanayi #teknoloji #roketsan #donanımhaber pic.twitter.com/b2fQrejuog— DonanımHaber (@donanimhaber) August 28, 2018
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The UAE requested the large rocket artillery battery on one vehicle since its military is phasing out the older, BM-21 Grads, a Soviet truck-mounted 122 mm multiple rocket launcher.
The MCL has a significant advantage over the BM-21 Grads; it replaces the use of six launcher vehicles which require a team of over 30 troops, whereas the MCL only needs a group of three to operate and launch the same number of rockets (240).
#ROKETSAN tarafından Birleşik Arap Emirlikleri için geliştirilen Jobaria Çok Kundaklı Lançer, “namlu sayısı bakımından dünyanın en büyük roket topçusu” olarak Guinness Rekorlar Kitabı’nda yerini aldı. pic.twitter.com/xYgRRtnmDv
— EHA MEDYA (@eha_medya) August 26, 2018
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The system has four rocket launchers attached to the trailer each carrying sixty 122mm rockets. It can fire 240 Roketsan 122mm T-122 Sakarya rockets fitted with a high-explosive warhead at targets with a maximum range of around 37 kilometers (23 miles). All missiles can be fired in under two minutes, making the rate of fire two rounds per second. After launching the rockets, a support team can reload the missile system in about 30 minutes.
Established in 1988, Roketsan started production in 1992 under the program of the “Stinger European Joint Production Project.” In the last several decades, the firm has manufactured air defense systems, precision-guided missiles, ballistic protection solutions, and an array of turnkey land systems.
While it is still unclear why the UAE would need the world’s most massive rocket launcher, perhaps, the missile system may find a new home in the Saudi-led alliance against Yemen. There is also another possibility the country is gearing up for conflict in the Strait of Hormuz, as Washington and Tehran bicker over who controls the strait between the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman. In any case, war is coming, and the world’s largest rocket launcher will be used.
- The Other Side Of John McCain
Authored by Max Blumenthal via Consortium News,
If the paeans to McCain by diverse political climbers seems detached from reality, it’s because they reflect the elite view of U.S. military interventions as a chess game, with the millions killed by unprovoked aggression mere statistics.
As the Cold War entered its final act in 1985, journalist Helena Cobban participated in an academic conference at an upscale resort near Tucson, Arizona, on U.S.-Soviet interactions in the Middle East. When she attended what was listed as the “Gala Dinner with keynote speech”, she quickly learned that the virtual theme of the evening was, “Adopt a Muj.”
“I remember mingling with all of these wealthy Republican women from the Phoenix suburbs and being asked, ‘Have you adopted a muj?” Cobban told me. “Each one had pledged money to sponsor a member of the Afghan mujahedin in the name of beating the communists. Some were even seated at the event next to their personal ‘muj.’”
The keynote speaker of the evening, according to Cobban, was a hard-charging freshman member of Congress named John McCain.
During the Vietnam war, McCain had been captured by the North Vietnamese Army after being shot down on his way to bomb a civilian lightbulb factory. He spent two years in solitary confinement and underwent torture that left him with crippling injuries. McCain returned from the war with a deep, abiding loathing of his former captors, remarking as late as 2000, “I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live.” After he was criticized for the racist remark, McCain refused to apologize. “I was referring to my prison guards,” he said, “and I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends.”
‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison where McCain was tortured. (Wikimedia Commons)
McCain’s visceral resentment informed his vocal support for the mujahedin as well as the right-wing contra death squads in Central America — any proxy group sworn to the destruction of communist governments.
So committed was McCain to the anti-communist cause that in the mid-1980s he had joinedthe advisory board of the United States Council for World Freedom, the American affiliate of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL). Geoffrey Stewart-Smith, a former leader of WACL’s British chapter who had turned against the group in 1974, described the organization as “a collection of Nazis, fascists, anti-Semites, sellers of forgeries, vicious racialists, and corrupt self-seekers. It has evolved into an anti-Semitic international.”
Joining McCain in the organization were notables such as Jaroslav Stetsko, the Croatian Nazi collaborator who helped oversee the extermination of 7,000 Jews in 1941; the brutal Argentinian former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla; and Guatemalan death squad leader Mario Sandoval Alarcon. Then-President Ronald Reagan honored the group for playing“a leadership role in drawing attention to the gallant struggle now being waged by the true freedom fighters of our day.”
Being Lauded as a Hero
On the occasion of his death, McCain is being honored in much the same way — as a patriotic hero and freedom fighter for democracy. A stream of hagiographies is pouring forth from the Beltway press corps that he described as his true political base. Among McCain’s most enthusiastic groupies is CNN’s Jake Tapper, whom he chose as his personal stenographer for a 2000 trip to Vietnam. When the former CNN host Howard Kurtz asked Tapper in February, 2000, “When you’re on the [campaign] bus, do you make a conscious effort not to fall under the magical McCain spell?”
“Oh, you can’t. You become like Patty Hearst when the SLA took her,” Tapper joked in reply.
Ocasio-Cortez: Called McCain ‘an unparalleled example of human decency.’
But the late senator has also been treated to gratuitous tributes from an array of prominent liberals, from George Soros to his soft power-pushing client, Ken Roth, along with three fellow directors of Human Rights Watch and “democratic socialist” celebrity Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, who hailed McCain as “an unparalleled example of human decency.” Rep. John Lewis, the favorite civil rights symbol of the Beltway political class, weighed in as well to memorialize McCain as a “warrior for peace.”
If the paeans to McCain by this diverse cast of political climbers and Davos denizens seemed detached from reality, that’s because they perfectly reflected the elite view of American military interventions as akin to a game of chess, and the millions of dead left in the wake of the West’s unprovoked aggression as mere statistics.
There were few figures in recent American life who dedicated themselves so personally to the perpetuation of war and empire as McCain. But in Washington, the most defining aspect of his career was studiously overlooked, or waved away as the trivial idiosyncrasy of a noble servant who nonetheless deserved everyone’s reverence.
McCain did not simply thunder for every major intervention of the post-Cold War era from the Senate floor, while pushing for sanctions and assorted campaigns of subterfuge on the side. He was uniquely ruthless when it came to advancing imperial goals, barnstorming from one conflict zones to another to personally recruit far-right fanatics as American proxies.
In Libya and Syria, he cultivated affiliates of Al Qaeda as allies, and in Ukraine, McCain courted actual, sig-heiling neo-Nazis.
While McCain’s Senate office functioned as a clubhouse for arms industry lobbyists and neocon operatives, his fascistic allies waged a campaign of human devastation that will continue until long after the flowers dry up on his grave.
American media may have sought to bury this legacy with the senator’s body, but it is what much of the outside world will remember him for.
‘They are Not al-Qaeda’
McCain with Abdelhakim Belhaj, leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, a former Al Qaeda affiliate.
When a violent insurgency swept through Libya in 2011, McCain parachuted into the country to meet with leaders of the main insurgent outfit, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), battling the government of Moamar Gaddafi. His goal was to make kosher this band of hardline Islamists in the eyes of the Obama administration, which was considering a military intervention at the time.
What happened next is well documented, though it is scarcely discussed by a Washington political class that depended on the Benghazi charade to deflect from the real scandal of Libya’s societal destruction. Gaddafi’s motorcade was attacked by NATO jets, enabling a band of LIFG fighters to capture him, sodomize him with a bayonet, then murder him and leave his body to rot in a butcher shop in Misrata while rebel fanboys snapped cellphone selfies of his fetid corpse.
A slaughter of Black citizens of Libya by the racist sectarian militias recruited by McCain immediately followed the killing of the pan-African leader. ISIS took over Gaddafi’s hometown of Sirte while Belhaj’s militia took control of Tripoli, and a war of the warlords began. Just as Gaddafi had warned, the ruined country became a staging ground for migrant smugglers on the Mediterranean, fueling the rise of the far-right across Europe and enabling the return of slavery to Africa.
Many might describe Libya as a failed state, but it also represents a successful realization of the vision McCain and his allies have advanced on the global stage.
Following the NATO-orchestrated murder of Libya’s leader, McCain tweeted, “Qaddafi on his way out, Bashar al Assad is next.”
McCain’s Syrian Boondoggle
Like Libya, Syria had resisted aligning with the West and was suddenly confronted with a Salafi-jihadi insurgency armed by the CIA. Once again, McCain made it his personal duty to market Islamist insurgents to America as a cross between the Minutemen and the Freedom Riders of the civil rights era. To do so, he took under his wing a youthful DC-based Syria-American operative named Mouaz Moustafa who had been a consultant to the Libyan Transitional Council during the run-up to the NATO invasion.
In May 2013, Moustafa convinced McCain to take an illegal trip across the Syrian border and meet some freedom fighters. An Israeli millionaire named Moti Kahana who coordinated efforts between the Syrian opposition and the Israeli military through his NGO, Amaliah, claimed to have “financed the opposition group which took senator John McCain to visit war-torn Syria.”
“This could be like his Benghazi moment,” Moustafa remarked excitedly in a scene from a documentary, “Red Lines,” that depicted his efforts for regime change. “[McCain] went to Benghazi, he came back, we bombed.”
During his brief excursion into Syria, McCain met with a group of CIA-backed insurgents and blessed their struggle. “The senator wanted to assure the Free Syrian Army that the American people support their cry for freedom, support their revolution,” Moustafa said in an interview with CNN. McCain’s office promptly released a photo showing the senatorposing beside a beaming Moustafa and two grim-looking gunmen.
Days later, the men were named by the Lebanese Daily Star as Mohammad Nour and Abu Ibrahim. Both had been implicated in the kidnapping a year prior of 11 Shia pilgrims, and were identified by one of the survivors. McCain and Moustafa returned to the U.S. the targets of mockery from Daily Show host John Stewart and the subject of harshly critical reports from across the media spectrum. At a town hall in Arizona, McCain was berated by constituents, including Jumana Hadid, a Syrian Christian woman who warned that the sectarian militants he had cozied up to threatened her community with genocide.
McCain with then-FSA commander Salam Idriss, an insurgent later exposed for kidnapping Shia pilgrims.
But McCain pressed ahead anyway. On Capitol Hill, he introduced another shady young operative into his interventionist theater. Named Elizabeth O’Bagy, she was a fellow at the Institute for the Study of War, an arms industry-funded think tank directed by Kimberly Kagan of the neoconservative Kagan clan. Behind the scenes, O’Bagy was consulting for Moustafa at his Syrian Emergency Task Force, a clear conflict of interest that her top Senate patron was well aware of. Before the Senate, McCain cited a Wall Street Journal editorial by O’Bagy to support his assessment of the Syrian rebels as predominately “moderate,” and potentially Western-friendly.
Days later, O’Bagy was exposed for faking her PhD in Arabic studies. As soon as the humiliated Kagan fired O’Bagy, the academic fraudster took another pass through the Beltway’s revolving door, striding into the halls of Congress as McCain’s newest foreign policy aide.
McCain ultimately failed to see the Islamist “revolutionaries” he glad handled take control of Damascus. Syria’s government held on thanks to help from his mortal enemies in Tehran and Moscow, but not before a billion dollar CIA arm-and-equip operation helped spawn one of the worst refugee crises in post-war history. Luckily for McCain, there were other intrigues seeking his attention, and new bands of fanatical rogues in need of his blessing. Months after his Syrian boondoggle, the ornery militarist turned his attention to Ukraine, then in the throes of an upheaval stimulated by U.S. and EU-funded soft power NGO’s.
Coddling the Neo-Nazis of Ukraine
On December 14, 2013, McCain materialized in Kiev for a meeting with Oleh Tyanhbok, an unreconstructed fascist who had emerged as a top opposition leader. Tyanhbok had co-founded the fascist Social-National Party, a far-right political outfit that touted itself as the “last hope of the white race, of humankind as such.” No fan of Jews, he had complained that a “Muscovite-Jewish mafia” had taken control of his country, and had been photographed throwing up a sieg heil Nazi salute during a speech.
None of this apparently mattered to McCain. Nor did the scene of Right Sector neo-Nazis filling up Kiev’s Maidan Square while he appeared on stage to egg them on.
“Ukraine will make Europe better and Europe will make Ukraine better!” McCain proclaimed to cheering throngs while Tyanhbok stood by his side. The only issue that mattered to him at the time was the refusal of Ukraine’s elected president to sign a European Union austerity plan, opting instead for an economic deal with Moscow.
McCain met with Social-National Party co-founder Oleh Tyanhbok.
McCain was so committed to replacing an independent-minded government with a NATO vassal that he even mulled a military assault on Kiev. “I do not see a military option and that is tragic,” McCain lamented in an interview about the crisis. Fortunately for him, regime change arrived soon after his appearance on the Maidan, and Tyanhbok’s allies rushed in to fill the void.
By the end of the year, the Ukrainian military had become bogged down in a bloody trench war with pro-Russian, anti-coup separatists in the country’s east. A militia affiliated with the new government in Kiev called Dnipro-1 was accused by Amnesty International observers of blocking humanitarian aid into a separatist-held area, including food and clothing for the war torn population.
Six months later, McCain appeared at Dnipro-1’s training base alongside Sen.’s Tom Cotton and John Barasso. “The people of my country are proud of your fight and your courage,” McCain told an assembly of soldiers from the militia. When he completed his remarks, the fighters belted out a World War II-era salute made famous by Ukrainian Nazi collaborators: “Glory to Ukraine!”
Today, far-right nationalists occupy key posts in Ukraine’s pro-Western government. The speaker of its parliament isAndriy Parubiy, a co-founder with Tyanhbok of the Social-National Party and leader of the movement to honor World World Two-era Nazi collaborators like Stepan Bandera. On the cover of his 1998 manifesto, “View From The Right,” Parubiy appeared in a Nazi-style brown shirt with a pistol strapped to his waist. In June 2017, McCain and Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan welcomed Parubiy on Capitol Hill for what McCain called a “good meeting.” It was a shot in the arm for the fascist forces sweeping across Ukraine.
McCain with Dnipro-1 militants on June 20, 2015
The past months in Ukraine have seen a state sponsored neo-Nazi militia called C14 carrying out a pogromist rampage against Ukraine’s Roma population, the country’s parliament erecting an exhibition honoring Nazi collaborators, and the Ukrainian military formally approving the pro-Nazi “Glory to Ukraine” greeting as its own official salute.
Ukraine is now the sick man of Europe, a perpetual aid case bogged down in an endless war in its east. In a testament to the country’s demise since its so-called “Revolution of Dignity,” the deeply unpopular President Petro Poroshenko has promised White House National Security Advisor John Bolton that his country — once a plentiful source of coal on par with Pennsylvania — will now purchase coal from the U.S. Once again, a regime change operation that generated a failing, fascistic state stands as one of McCain’s greatest triumphs.
McCain’s history conjures up memory of one of the most inflammatory statements by Sarah Palin, another cretinous fanatic he foisted onto the world stage. During a characteristically rambling stump speech in October 2008, Palin accusedBarack Obama of “palling around with terrorists.” The line was dismissed as ridiculous and borderline slander, as it should have been. But looking back at McCain’s career, the accusation seems richly ironic.
By any objective standard, it was McCain who had palled around with terrorists, and who wrested as much resources as he could from the American taxpayer to maximize their mayhem. Here’s hoping that the societies shattered by McCain’s proxies will someday rest in peace.
- Visualizing World Arms Sales: US Vs Russia, 1950-Present
Excellent video presentation by Will Geary, @wgeary, on US and Russia arms sales to the rest of the world.
The U.S. and Russia are the world’s largest weapons dealers. Geary mapped the flows of arms exports leaving the U.S. and USSR/Russia from 1950 to 2017 to produce the fascinating video…
Arms Sales: USA vs Russia from Will Geary on Vimeo.
The underlying data comes from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute’s Arms Transfers Database. Units are expressed in trend indicator values (TIV). Each dot on the map = one TIV. Visualization by Will Geary (@wgeary).
This won’t end well.
- As MSM & Hollywood Distract, US Government Quietly Prepares For Nuclear War
The MSM (Mainstream Media) and Hollywood forms a conglomerated consortium of Marxists, Socialists, creepy-refugee professors from Woodstock, and wanna-be left-wing revolutionaries. They have two different paths. The MSM forces non-news down the throat of the public while decrying the true news in the alternative media. Hollywood is shaping the formation of the public consciousness and forcing a paradigm shift (Overton window principle), a shift to the left through popular culture, film, television, and the music industry. Both of them have one end objective in mind: the dissolution of the United States, and the destruction of its borders, language, religions, culture, and society as a whole in all of its forms.
You don’t receive news anymore from reporters or journalists. It is a collage of sensationalism coupled with reality TV shows, all sans morals or any form or semblance of decency. This has been repeated throughout history. The Visigoths were at the gates of Rome, yet her citizens would not drag themselves away from the chariot races to man the walls and the battlements. Now is the same, merely fast-forwarded. In all this, if you have not noticed, the U.S. is quietly assuming the same footing they did during the Cold War, and more.
On 8/24/18, BuzzFeed News published an article by Dan Vergano entitled “The US Government is Updating its Nuclear Disaster Plans and They are Truly Terrifying.” I strongly recommend reading it.
The article begins with this:
“Amid concerns over North Korea, federal emergency managers are updating disaster plans to account for large nuclear detonations over the 60 largest US cities, according to a US Federal Emergency Management Agency official. The shift away from planning for small nuclear devices that could be deployed by terrorists toward thermonuclear blasts arranged by “state actors” was discussed on [8/23/18]…”
“The North Koreans have really changed the calculus…we really have to look at thermonuclear now.”
“In response to an audience question, [FEMA Chief of Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Branch] said the agency has also considered scenarios where a nuclear bomb, a cyberattack, a coordinated electromagnetic pulse, and biological weapons all hit the US at the same time.”
I have written numerous articles on the threat posed by North Korea, especially with regard to an EMP (Electromagnetic Pulse) strike against the United States. I did not arrive upon these assertions without research and study: the conclusions of such notables as Dr. Peter Vincent Pry, Former Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R-MD), and others of the (now-disbanded) Committee to Assess EMP Threat against the United States… their research provided a great deal for the basis of my assertions. I stand by what I wrote.
We are in a difficult time currently in the world situational arena. Russia and China are strengthening their militaries, economies, and influence, and the reformative acts by President Trump may be too little and too late. The midterms may turn him into a tiger without the teeth to enable the passage of any laws. Even with the teeth…and current Republican control of the Senate and House, it has proven to be a battle between a combination of turncoats and fifth columnists that has slowed down the reforms considerably.
Now the “conga line” of communists follows after smear tactics such as “Russiagate” and election conspiracy accusations, the endless “witch hunt” by Mueller, and the Stormy Daniels nonsense. All of these actions are taken to derail the President and deny a turnaround for the country after 8 years of Obama.
With all of this in consideration, though, the threat of a nuclear war is real, and (as I’ve mentioned in the past) a first strike would be precipitated by an EMP attack. North Korea is the perfect source as an individual “aspirant” or with the prompting of the “state actors,” singly or in unison. The last sentence in the referenced article summarizes it simply yet eloquently: an attack would be multifaceted and simultaneous.
The summit with North Korea was one of those George Bush Jr. moments, where he declared victory in Iraq a decade before the U.S. withdrew its forces. Everyone made fun of North Korea and said the game was over with the summit because Kim Jong-Un and the President shook hands.
With the reassessment: nothing has changed, except North Korea has now gained time to prepare that it did not have before.
The Russians and the Chinese have a major joint military exercise scheduled to commence on 9/11/18, in which for the first time drills will be conducted to include responses to nuclear attack. In addition, many nations are dumping their holdings in U.S. debt and there is a lot of volatility in the world, such as the Brexit actions, the trade status of Britain with the EU after it occurs, NATO instability, and the continuing influx of Muslims into Europe.
Trouble usually arises in the midst of confusion or where one side assesses that the other is ripe to attack. The President was elected and the leadership redefined, but the country has not been extricated from the quagmire that Obama and his cronies (including such as McCain and Graham) placed it in. At such times and when beset by difficulties and a looming midterm election, a lack of policy is potentially worse than bad policy. The information from the referenced article is serious. Threats have not reemerged: in fact, they never left. The Potemkins of the MSM and Hollywood managed to screen them, yet the U.S. government is altering assessments and plans to address those threats, and the potential for a nuclear war is still very real.
- Drone Wars Unleashed In Idlib Province?
Authored by Sophie Mangal via Oriental Review,
The current situation in the Syrian province of Idlib continues to alarm.
Although the green buses brought to Idlib hundreds of militants from Aleppo, Deir-Ezzor, Eastern Ghouta, and other areas of the country, Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) will be extremely difficult to resist the battle-hardened Assad’s Government army.
In this regard, the radicals are trying to line up the entire population of the Idlib Governorate and take under control all the terror groups inside the province that are now at turf war among themselves. Also, terrorists learn the ropes of intimidation of the enemy trying to inflict damage without contact and entering a battle.
Speaking of the population in the besieged province everything is more or less understandable. The civilians in Idlib do not belong to the militant families are robbed, raped, used as slaves, killed or forced to join terrorists. But as to some quarreling field commanders disagreeing with their policies, Jabhat al-Nusra launched a large-scale war.
Thus, one of the leaders resisting HTS, Khalid al-Wazir, was killed in a drone attack recently. Not even the fact of the elimination, but the way draws attention. Apparently, the al-Nusra militants run in the tactics of the fight using combat UAVs and the experience of the Taliban’s leaders elimination in Afghanistan and Pakistan. However, their indiscriminate attacks against other radicals could be a threat to the suppressed locals.
But the field commanders who are in terror of their life for being opposed to Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham, they are not the single purpose. Inside Syria Media Center military sources report that such a tactic has also been actively used against the Syrian Arab army (SAA). Only during last week, the SAA in Idlib province shot down eleven unmanned aerial vehicles launched by radicals. UAV’s were launched from the territory controlled by the jihadists to the position of government troops near the western outskirts of Abu-Dalib, Kafr Zayta in the south of Idlib and Jisr al-Shughur in the southeast.
It has been affirmed that all the drones were knocked down. The representatives from the Government troops inspected the drones’ fragments said that the drone-attacks are marked by an increase in the past few decades.
They also claimed most of the UAV’s were made by the skilled practitioners or western-made.
By all accounts, HTS understand that they are too weak to organize effective armed resistance. So, they try to maintain their strength and defense by using drones. Still, their tactics do not confuse the Syrian army. But for peaceful residents of Idlib, the inevitable drones’ strikes will become another of many endless threats to life.
- STDs Hit Record Highs As Antibiotic Resistant Gonorrhea Concern Emerges: CDC
The US saw record numbers of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) in 2017 – as nearly 2.3 million cases of gonorrhea, chlamidya and syphilis were reported, marking the fourth straight year of sharp increases, according to preliminary data from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).
What’s more – the CDC is now warning that antibiotic-resistant gonorrhea is now spreading, while prevention efforts have stagnated as people use condoms less frequently.
Via the CDC:
- Gonorrhea diagnoses increased 67 percent overall (from 333,004 to 555,608 cases according to preliminary 2017 data) and nearly doubled among men (from 169,130 to 322,169). Increases in diagnoses among women — and the speed with which they are increasing — are also concerning, with cases going up for the third year in a row (from 197,499 to 232,587).
- Primary and secondary syphilis diagnoses increased 76 percent (from 17,375 to 30,644 cases). Gay, bisexual and other men who have sex with men (MSM) made up almost 70 percent of primary and secondary syphilis cases where the gender of the sex partner is known in 2017. Primary and secondary syphilis are the most infectious stages of the disease.
- Chlamydia remained the most common condition reported to CDC. More than 1.7 million cases were diagnosed in 2017, with 45 percent among 15- to 24-year-old females.
“We are sliding backward,” said Jonathan Mermin, director of the agency’s national STD center. “It is evident the systems that identify, treat and ultimately prevent STDs are strained to near-breaking point.”
According to the CDC, while most cases of chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis are curable with antibiotics, most cases go undiagnosed and untreated, increasing the risks of infertility, stillbirth, and an increased risk of contracting HIV.
Treatment options for gonorrhea are now limited to the antibiotic ceftriaxone – as the diseas has become resistant to nearly every other class of antibiotic. Doctors will usually prescribe a single shot of ceftriaxone with an oral dose of azithromycin, another antibiotic. Call it a benefit to big pharma thanks to the “sharing economy.”
“We expect gonorrhea will eventually wear down our last highly effective antibiotic, and additional treatment options are urgently needed,” said Gail Bolan, director of CDC’s Division of STD Prevention.
- Asymmetric Financial War And Radical US Leverage – What Will It Bring?
Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
It seems that the Chinese leadership has concluded that the Trump Administration is determined to use its full spectrum radical leverage to hobble China as a rival, and to resurrect its own global domination – Xi seems to foresee a long struggle for position in the global future: one that will be played out geo-politically (in the jostling in the South China Sea, over North Korea, Taiwan and the BRI), as much as in the economic domain. If this is so, there is real risk of the ‘jostling’ spontaneously escalating into a military clash, whether limited and contained, or not.
Xi is essentially correct. Until recently, Washington subscribed to the western cultural conviction of the linear itinerary of historical ‘progress’ – that is to say, that the introduction of the western-style economic liberal market, under Deng Xiaoping, constituted part of an inevitable Chinese journey towards ever greater economic and political liberty (i.e. they would become like ‘us’).
But Washington DC had its ‘tipping point’. It slid across, into a very different understanding. This was that China’s liberal economic reforms were all about restoring China’s former global economic primacy and power – and never about ‘empowering the individual’ in the western mode of thinking. In that context, China remaining compliant and well-behaved within the global order made sense for China – so long as it remained on course to become the global Number One, by 2049 (the CCP Centenary Year).
But, like all ‘Road to Damascus’ late converts, US foreign policy élites now have become fervent proselytisers for the Chinese ‘threat’ meme. So, the question arises: does it make sense any more for China to pursue its instinctive policy of not confronting the US, especially if Trump is known for keeping up the pressure, never backing off, and always doubling down? How can China too, stick with its ‘quietist’ posture if Trump ups the pressure in the South China Sea, or in North Korea, or decides to adopt Taiwan as a ‘democracy cause’? Xi can’t.
Russia, on the other hand, is witnessing an extremely defensive US President – a longstanding believer in good relations with Russia, but whose persistent vulnerability to the ‘Russiagate’ hysteria is pushing him to polish his anti-Russian credentials to the extent that he is now becoming holier than the Pope (more ‘hard-on-Russia’ than the Russophobes); more neocon, than the neocons. With rafts of crushing sanctions against Russia already in the Congressional pipeline (over which the US President has minimal ability to limit their implementation), Russia too must prepare for a long period of economic attrition. The depth of the American crisis is such that President Putin (like everyone) cannot guess how it may all turn out.
For Europe, Iran, Turkey, Pakistan and Venezuela, the outlook is similar: It will be a period in which the US weaponises all the leverage it has at its command to restore the US global primacy – and to bring all into line with the wider US agenda. Trump is escalating – intent, it would seem, on having the first capitulation, or political fissure to burst apart, by November. But what if that doesn’t happen?
The ‘market’ (with a few exceptions) take the view of America’s victory in the trade war as certain: the US is easily the predominant consumer market and concomitantly, it hurts US trade partners the more to be shut out from it – which is also to say, that retaliatory tariffs imposed by others will hurt US exporters the less (because US outwards exports are the lesser, in most cases).
With states such as China, its exports to the US are at least double the value of US exports to the US, therefore the US owns the leverage (in the White House view) – because there are twice as many possibilities for US to impose import tariffs as China has to impose export tariffs. Additionally, the US uses the US dollar hegemony (i.e. currency war) to create an artificially strong dollar – which weakens emerging markets, and concomitantly weakens their leverage (as their US dollar-denominated debt and interest payments, become toxically elevated, in relation to their domestic currencies).
This ‘market’ view of trade war somehow is a mirror of America’s military zeitgeist. The US has the biggest military by far; it can outgun everyone (except Russia), so anyone challenging the US is bound to be ‘a loser’ (it is assumed). Indeed, the US can, and does, begin its wars with a slick show of destructive capability that pummels the adversary. But what then? Then, the US military doesn’t seem to have answers to the subsequent phases: It bogs down, and then finds itself losing to asymmetric retaliation. Its only answer is the ‘forever’ wars.
Alastair Macleod of the Mises Institute suggests that such market sanguinity is wrong:
“Comments that China is in trouble from trade tariffs and being undermined by a strong dollar, are wide of the mark. Geopolitics dominates here. America’s occasional successes in attacking the rouble and yuan are no more that transient pyrrhic victories. She is not winning the currency war against China and Russia. China is not being deflected from her strategic goals to become, in partnership with Russia, the Eurasian super-power, beyond the reach of American hegemony.”
Russia and China are intent on playing – and winning – the long game. Both states, presently are sounding out Washington (prior to November) as to whether, in the words of Putin’s spokesman, there is any “common ground, trying to understand if it is possible at all – and if the other party is willing at all.” Beijing too is exploring whether Trump is ready to compromise on some sort of a face-saving, PR trade deal – ahead of the November midterms – or, not. This ‘scenting the wind’ should not be misinterpreted for weakness, or a readiness to capitulate. These states are simply doing ‘due diligence’ before events take them to the next stage of the conflict – in which the risks will be graver.
What is less noticed – because there has been no ‘shout out’ occurrence – is how much the preparations for the next phase have been incrementally unfolding (since some time). Small steps, perhaps, but of great significance nonetheless. Because the platforms for countering US financial bullying are being put into place at an accelerating pace – particularly since Trump started to sanction ‘the world’.
And this old axiom is the first point to grasp: ‘Every crisis is also an opportunity’. And Trump’s lambasting and sanctioning of ‘the world’ is catalyzing a powerful push-back. When America sanctions ‘the world’ it is an easy ‘sell’ for China and Russia to push others towards de-dollarisation, and to trading in local (non-dollar) currencies. And this is happening. It is almost ‘done’ in respect to oil. The advent of Shanghai Futures Exchange symbolically marked the beginning of the upending of the Bretton Woods world (with Gulf States likely to succumb to the inevitable, in due course).
The ‘market’ sees the selling of US government debt (US Treasuries) by the PBOC as China’s Damocles Sword hanging over the US; but at the same time, ‘the market’ believes that China will never do such a thing – as it would lower the value of its holdings. It would be counter to China’s own interest. (It is never asked however, why China should want these holdings – at all – if China is debarred, by the US, from purchasing dollar-denominated assets with its US dollars).
China has always been wary of disrupting markets – that is true. But, it maybe that the ‘market’ is misreading China’s ‘war-plan’. The expectation might be that China’s only resort is to sell US Treasuries (as Russia has just done). But, as usual, that would be the ‘market’ looking to the short-term view of China’s possibilities. China however, clearly is playing the long game. Recall what Maj. Gen. Qiau Liang said in 2016: “The US needs a large ‘capital return’ to support the daily life of the Americans, and the US economy. Under such circumstances, [any nation that] blocks the return of capital to the US is the enemy of the US. We must understand this matter clearly … To effectively contain the United States, other countries shall think more about how to cut off the capital flow to the United States while formulating their strategies”.
And what China can – and is – doing with those US dollar assets, is to deploy them in another important way. It is not selling them, but rather is using them – without fanfare – to support its key allies, whose currencies are under periodic, concerted, Wall Street ‘short’ selling raids on their currencies: that is to say, China is supporting quietly Turkey and Iran (more through the purchase of its crude, in the latter case). So China is quietly subverting, and undermining Trump’s strong dollar card that is intended to force Turkey and Iran to capitulate. This is asymmetric financial war for the long game.
Both these states (together with Pakistan) are key hubs of the ‘Belt and Road’ initiative; but more than that, they are directly strategically significant components to the national security of China. China is very concerned by the Muslim, Turkic, Uighurs of Xinjiang province, thousands of whom already fight as jihadists in Syria. China does not want the latter returned, nor does it want Muslims to be radicalised in China, or in the states to the West of China.
President Erdogan has been significantly instrumental in their radicalisation. They want Erdogan to stop his game with the ethnic Turkic populations, in and near to China, in return for which, China is helping with the Lira. Equally, China’s economy is vulnerable to America closing the Malacca Strait. To offset that vulnerability, China needs Pakistan, and its ‘corridor’, down to the port at Gwadar. And Iran is absolutely central to both China’s and Russia’s national security.
What we see therefore is China and Russia quietly sewing together the fabric of a de-dollarised, currency-swap equipped, and credit-supplied, belt across Central Asia – in opposition to America’s attempt to break it up. Russia, which largely already has de-dollarised its economy, has the particular role of ensuring that Europe is not lost as a market for the Belt and Road to Trump’s leveraged bullying, and that his aim to reacquire energy dominance remains no more than ‘an aspiration’.
Taken in aggregate, all these quantitatively, mini-steps, represent a qualitatively significant diminution of the use of the dollar, outside of the US domestic sphere. Its depth, beyond the US homeland, is being salami-sliced away. The import of this should not be underestimated — the US enjoys the high standard of living that it has because it can buy cheap goods, paid for, in paper (fiat) US debt, that others are obliged to hold, for purposes of trading in the global reserve currency. Americans’ standard of living is, in effect, subsidised by the rest of the world.
It can only afford the military it has because it can – unlike any other state – run budget deficits to pay for its outsized military, whimsically, and without concern, since foreigners (until now), simply go on filling the budget gap.
America has radical financial leverage at this moment precisely because of the ‘strong dollar’. Make no mistake. This is not just the result of Fed hiking rates: Trump well understands that: “Money is pouring into our cherished DOLLAR like rarely before.” Donald Trump tweeted, on 16 August. It is, of course, all about leverage.
With a strong dollar, trading partners’ currencies devalue, their interest and capital payments soar – and, traditionally, they are pushed to the IMF for a dose of austerity and the sale of their national assets. This is the ‘play’ which Russia and China intend to end. They have set up alternatives to the Word Bank and to the IMF to which Turkey may have recourse – instead of being forced into an IMF programme.
Alasdair Macleod notes the dichotomy between Trump’s ‘short game’ and China and Russia’s ‘long game’:
“For now, and probably for only a few months ahead of the US mid-term elections in November, President Trump is forcing currency difficulties on his enemies by aggressive trade policies, including sanctions, and by weaponising the dollar. It is a trick that has been used by successive American administrations for a considerable time…
President Trump’s actions over trade… are driving countries away from her sphere of influence. Ultimately this will prove counterproductive. Speculators buying into Trump’s short-termism and the Fed’s normalization policies are, for the moment, driving the dollar higher … This seems certain to lead to the dollar’s downfall [in the longer term].
The dollar is rising only on short-term considerations, driven by nothing more substantial than speculative flows. Once these abate, the longer-term prospects for the dollar will reassert themselves, including the escalating budget and trade deficits… and rising prices fueled by a combination of earlier monetary expansion, and the extra taxes of trade tariffs.”
This may well be Russia and China’s ‘long game’. For now, the strong dollar (and geo-political fear), is causing a safe-haven flight into easily marketable, US assets. The recent US Tax Bill has deepened this flow of dollars ‘returning home’ (through its amnesty for returning, corporate, off-shore, cash holdings). The financial leverage presently lies with the US. All looks well: the stock market is up; traders think the trade war will be an easy ‘win’; and economic indicators, the Federal Reserve says, are ‘strong’.
But Russia and China can be patient. Those overseas dollars “pouring in [to America], as rarely before” – are sucking out the oxygen, (i.e. dollar-liquidity) from everywhere. It will either soon exhaust itself, or will result in a contagious credit crisis (with Europe likely the prime victim), triggered precisely by the liquidity-drought engineered to give Trump more leverage.
At this point, the relative strengths between the US and Russia-China invert, and leverage flips to the latter’s advantage.
- Will Trump's New NAFTA Deal End Up Doing More Harm Than Good
Throughout his campaign, President Trump relied heavily on the promise that he would create more balanced trade for the United States, which would then result in more domestic manufacturing and more domestic jobs. Unfortunately, the details of NAFTA 2.0 could do just the opposite according to various industry insiders.
Tangentially, many of the newly proposed automobile industry provisions – the crux of the deal – come at the same time that automobile industry is suffering its worst slowdown since the financial crisis, as reported earlier.
There are other nuances: as Bloomberg notes, the new agreement still needs to be approved by Congress and already has critics from both sides of the aisle. Mickey Kantor, who helped usher in NAFTA in under Bill Clinton as his trade representative told Bloomberg “It will cost us jobs,” arguing that Trump was doing it “mainly to fulfill a political philosophy rather than create jobs.”
In a separate analysis, looking at the financial impact of the proposed NAFTA overhaul, Goldman Sachs wrote in a report last night that they “…do not expect the revised terms to have substantial macroeconomic effects in the U.S. if they do take effect.”
Arguing the other side, Kevin Hassett, the head of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, disagrees with Goldman:
Kevin Hassett, the head of Trump’s Council of Economic Advisers, says that the White House’s own modeling shows that when the new Nafta goes into effect it will create “many, many thousands of manufacturing jobs” and reduce a trade deficit with Mexico that in goods was worth about $70 billion last year.
“Any way an economist would model this you end up with a big positive shock to manufacturing jobs in the U.S.,” he said in an interview, predicting a flood of capital spending on new plants.
Meanwhile, Trump insists that he is rebuilding the country with his proposed “very special” and “incredible” deal. It’s notable that Trump’s plans are heavily reliant on the automobile industry – where the administration would hope to see a majority of the plan’s rubber hit the road.
A lot of Trump’s proposed changes are to encourage automobile manufacturers to purchase and produce more in the United States.
The main reason to believe that, administration officials say, is the new package of auto content rules that are designed to encourage companies to locate more plants in the U.S. and source more parts from within North America rather than places like China and Thailand.
The new rules will within three years raise the percentage of a car that has to be produced in North America to enjoy its duty-free benefits to 75 percent from the existing 62.5 percent.
The key innovation included is a requirement that 40 percent to 45 percent of that content be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour.
The counterpoint to the automobile industry changes is that, as Bloomberg notes, the plan moves the goal posts for the parts of the new car it applies to. For instance, the 75% of the vehicle that needs to be produced in the US now can come from the entire vehicle, instead of just a specific list of parts. Also, companies are going to be allowed to include their research and development spending and certain SG&A-type costs related to their headquarters into the mix.
Some could argue that Trump’s proposed change are not nearly enough: Kristin Dziczek, from the Center for Automotive Research, told Bloomberg that many cars that are already being manufactured in North America – such as the Honda Civic – already exceed the new requirements and new wage floor, with 70 percent of its content originating in the U.S. or Canada let alone Mexico.
“I don’t think it shifts things a whole lot right now.”
The situation is similar in Mexico, where Economy Minister Guajardohas stated that 70% of Mexican auto exports to the US already meet requirements.
Trump’s critics take the argument further, and claim that the “new NAFTA” will have the opposite of its intended effect. They argue not only that it will raise the cost of cars for consumers, but also that it will act as motivation for people to not produce vehicles in the United States.
Business leaders – who noted that Canada needs to be a part of any new deal – showed a tepid, at best, reception to the new deal. The Trump administration plans on trying to get the backing of automobile labor unions, which they believe can help them secure support from the Democrats in Congress. So far, labor leaders have stated that “more work needs to be done” while remaining on the sidelines.
Collective labor is likewise skeptical: Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, who works closely with labor unions said that “there are a lot of people who have been working very hard on the renegotiation of Nafta, but I don’t think that’s going to bring jobs home in vast numbers. I just don’t see it.” In a statement Monday labor leaders declared there is “more work that needs to be done” on Nafta and people close to the unions are still wary.
“There are a lot of people who have been working very hard on the renegotiation of Nafta,” said Robert Scott of the Economic Policy Institute, a Washington think-tank that draws some of its funding from labor unions. “But I don’t think that’s going to bring jobs home in vast numbers. I just don’t see it.”
All of the above could be moot if the Republicans lose control of the House: Congressional politics for trade deals are especially difficult, as they have been since Nafta first was ratified in 1993. If Democrats gain control of the House of Representatives in November’s mid-term elections – as they most likely will – would the party’s leaders really be ready to bring the new deal to a floor vote and give Trump a win?
The potential political pushback has not daunted Robert Lighthizer, who as Trump’s U.S. trade representative has been leading the negotiations, and pitched the Nafta efforts as a way to rebalance the politics of trade and build a grand coalition to back not just Nafta but other future trade pacts as well. And, for the time being, that effort is on track as far as Lighthizer is concerned.
“I’m not going to worry about the votes at this point,” he told reporters on Monday. But “my expectation is that it will pass overwhelmingly.”
Of course, it could all be just a negotiating ploy by Trump, to show the world that multilateral trade agreements can be done one nation at a time: as we discussed yesterday, the heat is already on Canada – devoid of bargaining capital after Mexico “defected” in the game theoretical negotiation – to reach a quick and amicable deal. Even if this particular attempt to rebuild Nafta fails to achieve what is meant to do, should Trump succeed in getting all participants to sign on the dotted line, it will serve as a framework for all of Trump’s future trade deals. Assuming, of course, that Mueller doesn’t get to Trump first.
- The Death Of Hope And Why It Is Crucial For An American Awakening
Authored by Elizabeth Lea Vos, via Disobedient Media,
The death of hope can push us into a very dark place, but that darkness is the birth canal of real change…
The Dream
For some people, hope came in the form of a red hat, with stenciled letters embracing their foreheads promising to Make America Great Again. My hopes were pinned instead on Bernie Sanders: my idealistic, naive trust was uniquely attached to the blue and white of the Bernie sticker I placed on the bumper of my car. Words can’t adequately describe the innocent hope I attached to those colors. As Jared Beck writes in his book, What Happened To Bernie Sanders:
“In 2016, the dream was shared by over twelve million Democratic primary voters, as well as nearly 2.5 million campaign donors, that for the first time in forty-four years, a genuinely progressive candidate might run for President of the United States as a major party candidate… In seeking the explanation for how the dreams of millions of Americans came to be shattered in this manner, I have found it necessary to come to terms with the potential demise of my own dreamscape – one that has propelled my life path since my middle school days in a small suburban community outside Albany, New York.”
Jared Beck and his wife Elizabeth Lee Beck are attorneys for the plaintiffs in the DNC Fraud lawsuit. What Happened To Bernie Sanders diagrams the reasoning behind Beck’s disillusionment with the efficacy of both the legal system and the Democratic Party. Ultimately, Beck concludes that the DNC is beyond saving and has successfully engineered the nomination process to such an extent that, in his opinion, there is no way in which an anti-establishment progressive could hope to be nominated as a Democratic Party Presidential candidate. He concludes that the only way for progressive ideals to germinate lies outside the DNC.
Like many others, I believed that Bernie Sanders intended to create a grassroots movement that served all of us, in contrast with Hillary Clinton’s overtly self-centered “I’m with her” campaign slogan. I thought Sanders would spearhead a challenge to the corrupt political establishment. This was the Sanders that inspired me. When he spoke about a movement that was made up of the people, not centered on the person who led it, I believed him.
In September 2015, my week was made infinitely better when a fellow Bernie supporter left the above note anonymously on my windshield. For me, this was an example of a fellowship among those who supported Sanders: one based on positivity, inclusiveness and genuine hope.
Such goodwill was epitomized by the famous incident in spring 2016 when a small bird landed on Sanders’s podium as he spoke to a packed rally in Oregon. The event inspired viral memes and articles almost instantaneously. Like so many others, my emotions and hopes were tied up in what I felt Sanders’s campaign represented: a movement driven by all of us, and that together we could make changes that were beautiful and real. The finch-on-the-podium embodied that emotion.
The near-biblical overtone of the finch landing on Sanders’ podium did not go unnoticed. Local press at the time reported Sanders’s remarks: “I think there’s some symbolism here, I know it may not look like it, but that bird is really a dove asking us for world peace.” There is nothing like a little divine intervention to inspire the emotions of a crowd, and that is exactly what the bird-on-the-podium moment did.
The Death Of The Dream
Faith keeps many of us in situations we might otherwise walk away from, whether in our personal lives, our professional spheres or on a national level. As a small-scale example, hope and a treasured ideal in relationship allows a person to ignore the cheating or violence of their partner, in hopes that next time they really mean it when they say they love you, and that they are telling the truth when they claim that whatever variety of betrayal won’t happen again. The death of that dream – the realization that the relationship will never change and that there is no hope for a different future with that person – is what finally frees one to leave the situation.
As Caitlin Johnstone puts it:
In a larger sense, the only way we can begin to tangibly change an unacceptable national reality is to begin by facing it head on: hope allows us to continue to live in unacceptable conditions. To run from the death of dreams, then, is to run from the death of an illusion that prevents change.
As a Sanders supporter, the dream didn’t die when he was cheated out of the Democratic nomination in the spring of 2016. It finally burned out only when Sanders refused to confront the rigging of the election by the DNC, and again when he endorsed the neo-Mccarthyist agenda engineered to deflect from the election rigging that stole the nomination from him. This represented a betrayal of the millions of people who spent their food and rent money to raise more than $200 million in support of his campaign.
Sanders didn’t stop at quietly allowing lies to circulate, he actively participated in perpetuating and endorsing them. Even as Clintonite trolls and hack jobs continued to blame him and his supporters for Clinton’s loss, spewing hatred at the same people they rigged an election to cheat, Sanders did not stand up for those who voted for him. Instead, he validated the lies used to silence them.
In an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Sanders said:
“We have a major government, the Russian government, led by Mr. Putin, actively interfering in our elections, determining, trying to do everything that they could to make sure that Mr. Trump won the election,” Sanders said. “Now, there may not yet be any evidence of direct collusion between the Russian government and the Trump campaign… Perhaps today we do not know, but clearly, this is an issue of enormous consequence.”
In response to the farcical Mueller indictments, USA Today reported Sanders’s sentiments:
“It has been clear to everyone (except Donald Trump) that Russia was deeply involved in the 2016 election and intends to be involved in 2018… It is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, not Mr. Putin and the Russian oligarchs… It is absolutely imperative that the Mueller investigation be allowed to go forward without obstruction from the Trump administration or Congress.”
Again: Sanders had the gall to state that it is the American people who should be deciding the political future of our country, while duplicitously ignoring the interference in that process that robbed his supporters of their democratic voice and ensured a Trump victory.
Sanders’ stance was not a simple betrayal of some abstract concept we label truth or justice. It represents a deep stab in the back of every person who donated to his cause, who believed in him and reflected that trust in their contribution and vote. It was a validation of the very corrupt forces Sanders spent his entire campaign railing against.
His 180-degree turn was one that ran so deeply counter to the courage of the Sanders I supported in 2015 and early 2016, that there was no possible way to reconcile the two. It was at this moment that the dream inspired by his campaign had to die, because it wasn’t based on reality.
No matter how painful, this is the challenge facing all of us as we move forward – or refuse to – in a world that is continually lying to us and hooking into our emotions to do so. This is the case, whether in terms of Sanders, Trump, Qanon, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, or anyone else who promises to buck the establishment while fully endorsing its harmful narratives.
The focus on Sanders in this article is entirely based on the fact that his campaign and his response to it being undermined by the DNC served as the specific impetus for this writer’s current understanding of the dangerous nature of misplaced hope. However, the basic premise is the same no matter who your savior is.
Unfortunately, the more intensely we feel we cannot survive without the dreams we hold dearest, the more likely we are to refuse to let such hopes go when they fail to conform with reality as it is. The deeper the suffering we seek to hold at bay with misplaced hopes, the more cognitive dissonance is provoked when evidence challenges such dreams.
The incomparable Caitlin Johnstone has written eloquently about the way in which manipulators have harnessed our most cherished dreams in order to abuse us. As Johnstone points out, we must recognize that our ability to feel is viewed by the sociopathic and psychopathic among us as a weakness to be harnessed and exploited.
As the plutocracy tightens its grip on the throat of the US public, demanding that people work themselves to death while barely able to avoid homelessness and hunger, justified misery will result in escalating desperation to find hope whether in an 8chan-based-persona or in opioid addiction. Hope that things aren’t as bad as they seem. Hope that if we wait a little longer, the ‘storm will come‘ and the corrupt unelected power structure will be swept away. Hope that even for a short time we can escape reality.
This article is not intended to demean anyone who feels this way: much of it is focused on my experience as a Sanders supporter to emphasize that this is something I’ve experienced, and is not meant to ‘look down on’ anyone.
The collective pain driving the need for respite from reality among the American working-class is near-unimaginable, with suicide rates increasing drastically across the country between 1999 and 2016. The Huffington Post reports that the experience of the United States’s working-poor is ‘pure hell.’
As Chris Hedges recently wrote:
“We live in a new feudalism. We have been stripped of political power. Workers are trapped in menial jobs, forced into crippling debt and paid stagnant or declining wages. Chronic poverty and exploitative working conditions in many parts of the world, and increasingly in the United States, replicate the hell endured by industrial workers at the end of the 19th century. The complete capture of ruling institutions by corporations and their oligarchic elites, including the two dominant political parties, the courts and the press, means there is no mechanism left by which we can reform the system or protect ourselves from mounting abuse.”
The deeper we sink into such unfathomable misery, the more desperate the public will be to believe in the promises of false saviors, no matter how obvious the sham is. The establishment is fully aware in that the more devastated we are by striving to make end meets, the more vulnerable we are to manipulation and the less likely we are to fight back against them.
Thus the betrayal by Bernie Sanders of the same public who he sold the dream of grassroots-change is doubly poisonous.
Moving Forward
This opinion is not a call for nihilism. It is intended to advocate that each of us realize our own power rather than handing it over to others. You, the reader – yes I am referring specifically to you as a unique individual – are the only one that can change a single thing about the world around you. You are powerful, and your choices have meaning and impact.
This is the same exhortation I’ve expressed multiple times during the Unity4J online vigils. You the reader are the ones who must act; you cannot merely watch a vigil, read an article, vote for a candidate or read Qanon posts and hope that reality will change thanks to someone else’s action.Fully realizing your own power is the ultimate goal and outcome of letting go of hollow dreams.
When we stop using false hopes to beat back the all-consuming darkness we sense around us, we are empowered to respond in a tangible way to the pain and suffering that exists. Only when we face reality as it is, is it possible for real change to start to unfold. It does not grow on its own – it is reliant on each of our individual choices.
Intentionally dousing a proverbial false light – no matter how reassuring – might seem ludicrous. Everything in our bodies screams at us that if we lose this source of comfort, we will be alone in the wilderness: however, it is only when we extinguish the flame, that our eyes can adjust enough to see what is actually around us. Our sincere, dearly-held hopes and misplaced dreams figuratively blinded us to our real surroundings.
Once we let go of the symbolic fire that we believed crucial to our survival, our adjusted vision enables us to become truly empowered as opposed to pacified. To find our own direction instead of interpreting the shadows on the wall thrown by the flame, to reference Plato’s cave allegory.
As in the prior comparison between the death of a dream and the birth of tangible change, after the cessation of a misleading light we are enveloped by pitch-black starless night for a moment, the space of a breath, as our eyes adjust.
In summation: it is only when we let go of our heroes that we can begin to save ourselves.
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