War and Empire Links: January 2018

Mapping a World From Hell. 76 Countries Are Now Involved in Washington’s War on Terror. Tom Engelhard, TomDispatch. Jan. 4, 2018.

Big Guns, Better Chow, and More US-NATO Aggression. Brian Cloughley, Strategic Culture Foundation. Jan 16, 2018.

The New Cold War in 2018. T. Ferguson via zerohedge. Jan. 16, 2018.

The Biggest Secret: My Life as a New York Times Reporter in the Shadow of the War on Terror. James Risen, The Intercept. Jan. 3, 2018.

The One Fact Which Disproves Russiagate, But Nobody Wants To Talk About. Caitlin Johnstone, Medium. Jan. 14, 2018.

The Whole World Is Sick and Tired of US Foreign Policy. Darius Shahtahmasebi, Anti-Media. Jan. 16, 2018.

North Korea – an Agent of Peace? Peter Koenig, Saker blog. Jan. 16, 2018.

The false alarm on a ballistic missile attack on Hawaii last Saturday from North Korea did not help the Peace Talks which were essentially initiated by DPRK’s President, Kim Jong-un. They spread enormous fear of a nuclear annihilation of Honolulu, pulverization of homes and people – of Armageddon for the Hawaiian population. Was this a Trump attempt to boycott the talks? Or was it the war-mongering faction of the deep state wanting more threats of war, scaring the Hawaiian population into believing that this might become reality; pushing them with a false alarm into wanting the devastation once and for all the Korean Peninsula – because an attack on the North would not spare the South? Is the war industry desperate for more wars, more profit? They may be wheezing from exhaustion – as the world is turning towards peace. 

Another sign that the empire, the rogue controllers of the universe, are running on empty, that they are in sheer fear of losing their grip of the world, is that Canada and the US have decided to hold an international meeting in Vancouver, Canada, on North Korea on 15 and 16 January 2018. The Conference is hosted by Canada, sponsored by the US. In addition to Canada and the US, there are 18 countries in the “Vancouver Group”, including Denmark, Greece, Norway, New Zealand and others – but not Russia, nor China — and most ridiculously of all – North Korea itself is absent. Russia and China will be briefed at the end of the meetings, in the evening of 16 January; that was the proposal. – Have these wannabe hegemons along with their breath also lost their marbles? 

Russia’s Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov has said the obvious: This is not acceptable. Adding with his always positive humor, “With all due respect towards those who came up with such an initiative, I don’t expect anything productive. Hopefully, nothing counterproductive will happen. It’ll be a great result already, while it’s hardly believable.”

When sanity fails – the mindset of the “ideological drone”. The Saker. Dec. 22, 2017.

“Empire as a way of life” which is characterized by a set of basic characteristics:

1. First foremost, simple, very simple one-sentence “arguments”. Gone are the days when argument were built in some logical sequence when facts were established, then evaluated for their accuracy and relevance, then analyzed and then conclusions presented. Where in the past one argument per page or paragraph constituted the norm, we now have tweet-like 140 character statements which are more akin to shouted slogans than to arguments (no wonder that tweeting is something a bird does – hence the expression “bird brain”). You will will see that kind of person writing what initially appears to be a paragraph, but when you look closer you realize that the paragraph is really little more than a sequence of independent statements and not really an argument of any type. 
2. A quasi-religious belief in one’s superiority which is accepted as axiomatic. Nothing new here: the Communists considered themselves as the superior for class reasons, the Nazis by reason of racial superiority, the US Americans just “because” – no explanation offered (I am not sure that this constitutes of form of progress). In the US case, that superiority is cultural, political, financial and, sometimes but not always, racial. This superiority is also technological, hence the “there has to be” or the “would undoubtedly” in the example #1 above. This is pure faith and not something which can be challenged by fact or logic. 
3. Contempt for all others. This really flows from #2 above. Example 3 basically declares all of North Korea (including its people) as worthless. This is where all the expressions like “sand niggers” “hadjis” and other “gooks” come from: the dehumanization of the “others” as a preparation for their for mass slaughter. Notice how ... the DPRK leaders are assumed to be totally impotent, dull and, above all, passive. The notion that they might do something unexpected is never even considered (a classic recipe for military disaster, but more about that later). 
4. Contempt for rules, norms and laws. This notion is well expressed by the famous US 19th century slogan of “my country, right or wrong” but goes far beyond that as it also includes the belief that the USA has God-given (or equivalent) right to ignore international law, the public opinion of the rest of the planet or even the values underlying the documents which founded the USA. In fact, in the logic of such imperial drone the belief in US superiority actually serves as a premise to the conclusion that the USA has a “mission” or a “responsibility” to rule the world. This is “might makes right” elevated to the rank of dogma and, therefore, never challenged. 
5. A very high reliance on doublethink. Doublethink defined by Wikipedia as “the act of simultaneously accepting two mutually contradictory beliefs as correct, often in distinct social contexts“. A perfect illustration of that is the famous quote “it became necessary to destroy the town to save it”. Most US Americans are aware of the fact that US policies have resulted in them being hated worldwide, even amongst putatively allied or “protected” countries such as South Korea, Israel, Germany or Japan. Yet at the very same time, they continue to think that the USA should “defend” “allies”, even if the latter can’t wait for Uncle Sam’s soldiers to pack and leave. Doublethink is also what makes it possible for ideological drones to be aware of the fact that the US has become a subservient Israeli colony while, at the same time, arguing for the support and financing of Israel.
6. A glorification of ignorance which is transformed into a sign of manliness and honesty. This is powerfully illustrated in the famous song “Where were you when the world stopped turning” whoso lyrics include the following words “I watch CNN, but I’m not sure I can tell you, the difference in Iraq and Iran, but I know Jesus and I talk to God” (notice how the title of the song suggests that New York is the center of the world, when when get hit, the world stops turning; also, no connection is made between watching CNN and not being able to tell two completely different countries apart). If this were limited to singers, then it would not be a problem, but this applies to the vast majority of US politicians, decision-makers and elected officials, hence Putin’s remark that “It’s difficult to talk with people who confuse Austria and Australia“. As a result, there is no more discernible US diplomacy left: all the State Department does is deliver threats, ultimatums and condemnations. Meaningful *negotiations* have basically been removed form the US foreign policy toolkit. 
7. A totally uncritical acceptance of ideologically correct narratives even when they are self-evidently nonsensical to an even superficial critical analysis. An great example of this kind of self-evidently stupid stories is all the nonsense about the Russians trying to meddle in US elections or the latest hysteria about relatively small-size military exercises in Russia. The acceptance of the official 9/11 narrative is a perfect example of that. Something repeated by the “respectable” Ziomedia is accepted as dogma, no matter how self-evidently stupid. 
8. A profound belief that everything is measured in dollars. From this flow a number of corollary beliefs such as “US weapons are most expensive, they are therefore superior” or “everybody has his price” [aka “whom we can’t kill we will simply buy”, perfect recent example here]. In my experience folks like that are absolutely unable to even imagine that some people might not motivated by greed or other egoistic interests: ideological drones project their own primitive motives unto everybody else with total confidence. That belief is also the standard cop out in any conversation of morality, ethnics, or even the notions of right and wrong. An anti-religious view par excellence. 

Notice the total absence of any more complex consideration which might require some degree of knowledge or expertise: the imperial mindset is not only ignoramus-compatible, it is ignoramus-based. This is what Orwell was referring to in his famous book 1984 with the slogan “Ignorance is Strength”. However, it goes way beyond simple ignorance of facts and includes the ability to “think in slogans” (example #2 is a prefect example of this). 

There are, of course, many more psychological characteristics for the perfect “ideological drone”, but the ones above already paint a pretty decent picture of the kind of person I am sure we all have seen many times over. What is crucial to understand about them is that even though they are far from being a majority, they compensate for that with a tremendous motivational drive. It might be due to a need to repeatedly reassert their certitudes or a way to cope with some deep-seated cognitive dissonance, but in my experience folks like that have energy levels which many sane people would envy them. This is absolutely crucial to how the Empire, and any other oppressive regime, works: by repressing those who can understand a complex argument by means of those who cannot. Let me explain: 

Unless there are mechanisms set in to prevent that, in a debate/dispute between an educated and intelligent person and an ideological drone the latter will always prevail because of the immense advantage the latter has over the former. Indeed, while the educated and intelligent person will be able to immediately identify numerous factual and logical gaps in his opponent’s arguments, he will always need far more “space” to debunk the nonsense spewed by the drone than the drone who will simply dismiss every argument with one or several slogans. This is why I personally never debate or even talk with such people: it is utterly pointless. 

As a result, a fact based and logical argument now gets the same consideration and treatment as a collection of nonsensical slogans (political correctness mercilessly enforces that principle: you can’t call an idiot and idiot any more). Falling education standards have resulted in a dramatic degradation of the public debate....