empire management

food
DESTRUCTION OF TRADITIONAL CROPS
NEW PATENTED SEEDS
FUTURES
MARKETING OF PROCESSED FOOD AND DRINKS
WATER MANAGEMENT

resources
RESOURCES AND ENERGY
PLUNDERING OTHERS' BACKYARDS (AND FRONT YARDS)
ENVIRONMENTAL DESTRUCTION including CO2

money
REALIGNMENTS OF THE MONEY MARKET — BOOM AND BUSTS
SUBPRIME
GREECE
AUSTRALIA - kill the bitch
GREED, GAMBLING AND DEBT

communication
INTERNET
KILLING OFF THE MINITEL
NSA SPYING AND OTHER MISCHIEF
CONTROL OF INFORMATION

war
GETTING OTHERS TO FIGHT ON YOUR BEHALF
FODDER FOR DUTY
SUPPORTING THE DESPOTS WE LIKE
THE ILLUSION OF FREEDOM
SYRIA

media
DISINFORMATION THROUGH THE PRESS
THE MURDOCH PHENOMENON (A BLESSING for the empire)
DISTRACTIONS & INANE ENTERTAINMENT
CULTURE
ROUNDABOUT DISCUSSIONS
DESTRUCTION OR LIMITATION OF PUBLIC MEDIA
BELIEFS

dividing "allies"
CONTROLLING THE SATELLITES NATIONS
THE DESTRUCTION OF EUROPE
FRANCE/GERMANY

blaming and using "evils" for self aggrandisement.
RUSSIA
CHINA
THE MUSLIMS

The female conundrum
USING RELIGIOUS BELIEFS AND VARIOUS TRICKS TO KEEP THE FEMALE MANAGEMENT OF THE EMPIRE QUOTA BELOW 25 PER CENT

comforts
HEALTH AND THE PHARMACEUTICALS
TRANSPORT
MATERIALISM
HOUSING

SOMEWHERE PEOPLE ARE GOING TO SUFFER, THROUGH NO FAULT OF THEIR OWN, FROM THE EXCLUSIVE ACTION OF THE EMPIRE. FOR THOSE WITHIN THE EMPIRE, THE PRICE IS OFTEN JUDGED (touted by the media disinformation) WORTH IT.

 

Why We Might Bomb Syria Is Explained Perfectly By — A Dead Comedian?https://www.upworthy.com/why-we-might-bomb-syria-is-explained-perfectly-by-a-dead-comedian-2?c=upw1

 

Judge Andrew Napolitano, the author of “Theodore and Woodrow: How Two American Presidents Destroyed Constitutional Freedom,”  joined Glenn Beck on The Glenn Beck Program Wednesday to discuss the legal issues surrounding the conflict in Syria, the NSA spying scandal, and libertarianism.

In Beck’s opinion, Napolitano possesses “one of the best minds” out there today, and is a man who “actually can save our nation.”

Beck began by playing “devil’s advocate” on Syria, asking solemnly, “what about the children?”

“The lynchpin for American involvement in a foreign war is not revulsion at what’s happening,” Napolitano replied firmly.  “The lynchpin for American involvement in a foreign war is, will our freedom and security be affected if we don’t get involved?  Answer: no.  How could we possibly be affected by a war 6,700 miles from here?”

Napolitano proceeded to lay out four circumstances under which the American military can legally get involved in a foreign war, based on “the treaties we’ve signed and the body of international law to which we agree.” 

1)         “When we’ve been attacked.  Hasn’t happened, we haven’t been attacked by Syria.”

2)         “When we are about to be attacked.  When the enemy’s at the gates, we don’t have to wait for them to fire the first bullet.  When an attack is imminent… Not the case with Syria.”

3)         “When we’ve been invited into the country of an ally that’s been attacked…Doesn’t apply for Syria.”

4)         “When a country has violated an international norm to which it has agreed, and the U.N. has authorized us to do it.”

Some might say the use of chemical weapons has violated an “international norm,” but Napolitano pointed out that Syria didn’t sign the treaty against the use of chemical weapons.

He then went a step further: “Who’s used chemical weapons on their own people? How far are we from Waco, Texas, where federal agents used chemical weapons to murder 76 Americans in 1993, in the Clinton administration? Can you imagine if China or Russia wanted to bomb us to punish us for what we did at the time?”

Beck then asked Napolitano whether any of what is happening constitutes treason, saying “common sense” tells him fighting on the same side as Al-Qaeda certainly seems like aiding and abetting the enemy.

“[Treason] would be providing material assistance to an organization that is waging war, or a state that is waging war against you,” Napolitano began. “The government prosecutes people for providing material assistance to terrorist organizations – that’s life in prison.  How could the government itself provide material assistance to a terrorist organization?”

When Beck pointed out that the administration would argue they’re not providing assistance to Al-Qaeda, they’re providing assistance to “the good guys,” Napolitano noted that if Assad falls, Al-Qaeda will kill all those “good guys” who stand in their way, take their weapons, and take control.

“If we do anything to help Al-Qaeda by harming Bashar al-Assad, by weakening him, by degrading him, by leveling the playing field of the battlefield, as John McCain said, that will be the moral equivalent of providing aid and comfort to the enemy, that is known as treason,” Napolitano said.  “And if we bomb a country, if we enter the country militarily absent those four conditions we just talked about, the president could be charged for a war crime for which there is no statute of limitations.”

The two briefly discussed the developments on the NSA’s domestic surveillance program, before Beck asked if the judge would “press for treason” if President Obama decides to strike Syria, and if he believes we should impeach him?

“Yes, I believe we should impeach him for the NSA spying alone,” Napolitano responded without hesitation. “It is the most massive, organized, systematic violation of expressly articulated Constitutional freedoms in the history of the United States, again, putting aside the Civil War era.  Treason would be more difficult. Why? A treason charge would have to be brought by a federal prosecutor, which he controls.”

We are not only less safe as a result of such programs, Napolitano argued, we are also less free.

He referenced a line from a former head of the KGB, “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.”

“There are 4,400 federal crimes…You can find a criminal act to apply to almost anyone,” he said.  “The reason that that doesn’t happen is because we have areas of human behaviour immune from government surveillance…but when the government can watch everything we do, and listen to everything we say it will, if it wants to… find something you did or said that violates one of those 4,400 crimes and then ruin you with a prosecution, and really ruin you with a conviction.”

“Freedom requires breathing room,” he concluded, and Beck added that it also needs morality.

So what does the future look like? Both agreed that Americans on both sides of the political spectrum are increasingly disgusted with and fed up with the parties.  Is there a possibility of a “real libertarian movement for the first time in 100 years,” Beck asked?

“Look, do I think that Rand Paul could lead us to an era of prosperity, happiness, and small government…?  The answer is yes,” Napolitano responded. ” That will presume that there is a constituency for that, and that people are elected to Congress who agree with that.  But just having a president in the White House who would shy away from power, rather than use it to his own ends, would be something the likes of which the country hasn’t seen in 175 years.”

And it’s very likely, he added, that such a constituency will exist.

“I think we are about to endure some of the most trying times in the post-World War II era and the electorate will react to that in 2016 by moving in huge numbers in the direction of a libertarian, or libertarian-minded candidate, someone like Rand Paul,” he commented.

Syria, Treason & Impeachment: Judge Napolitano Weighs In With Gripping Constitutional Perspective

 

food
As Thomas Jefferson wrote his famous words, inspired by English Liberalist philosopher John Locke:

"We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."...

 

(Locke said basically the same thing apart from "happiness" being "property")

a few things went astray... Jefferson had a few extra word tacked at the end of the sentence that excluded the "blacks" from this equality. These offensive words were taken out in the final draft. But the basic concept in Jefferson's mind was that black people were "inferior". After his famous uttering, Jefferson started to build his house in 1778, on a 5000 acres plantation where black slaves were used to grow his crops... 

It was not until the American Civil War that slaves were emancipated and only as recently as 1963 that blacks really got equal rights, away from punitive segregation... Even today, in some states of the US, the laws and actions from the police are geared to make blacks feel inferior.

By the 1950s a lot of agriculture was mechanised and who knows if the need to find ways not-to-pay for workers, especially to "emancipated black people", led to the development of farm machinery. Farm machinery also developed in other countries mostly due to lack of workers in some regions and ease of production. In Australia for example, technology leaped ahead such as the invention of the world's first mechanised grain stripper...

Since the beginning of crops, staples have been a battle ground for profiteers and warmongers at the expense of the poor and of the nature-carers. 

The four major modern prongs of growing crops are:

Land clearing, rezoning and removing indigenous populations

Insecticides, herbicides, fertilisers

mechanisation of production.

seed patenting

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All these ways of growing crops have major problems. 

LAND CLEARING

Land clearing in Australia for example leads to the massive destruction of natural habitats. Most of the lands cleared are of poor soils — but home to many species of plants and animals. These areas lack water for at least six months of the year and the rest of the time it can be flooding. These areas can experience droughts lasting beyond five years.

Land clearing in the USA lead to the famous dust bowl in the early 1930s. There the native grasses that had long roots, able to cope with flood and droughts, were replace by shallow roots crops... the result ended with several years of desertification of the area. 

Land usage along the Murray Darling Rivers System in Australia led to salt coming to the surface, reduced water-flow in the rivers and to the draining of natural water reservoirs. It was only recently that Prime Minister Julia Gillard managed to get all states and stake holders, including environmentalists to agree to a settlement of water allocation that had been more than 100 years in the making. Then, as the new irate mob of politicians come to stake their claims to Canberra, they plan to delay the implementation of this important legislation, to save a few bucks — or rob the till.

In some parts of Africa, traditional lands cultivated for local crops and herding have been rezoned as intensive cultivation areas, giving the locals no subsistence food. The populations now have to get their supplies from super markets, the net stage in controlling food supplies... including providing "processed food". Processed food is a euphemism for starch-loaded salt-loaded sugar-loaded prefabricated stodge, including fake cheese.

In Indonesia, virgin forests have been cleared to plant palm trees for the production of palm oil on a gigantic industrial scale. Many species of animals and plants there are of course under threats of extinction. As well, this clearing of land changes the carbon footprint of the area, with the release of enormous amounts of smoke and CO2 from the burning of  "wet" forests. This year has been particularly bad as a thick blanket of smoke hovered above Malaysia and Singapore.

Some people argue that cattle and herds use far more space than crops, though only a few crops can provide enough equivalent proteins for a growing world population, unless we go nuts...

In order to create a market with profit-making (always needing an increase in value of the same goods) , growth of population is essential, including "food-forcing" on people. The advertising of most processed foods and fast food encourages people to over-eat and drink. As well, food "portions" are double or triple-sized for a modest increased in price. This lure thus make people eat far too much, but enforcing the need for "growing more food" — the bases of which are soy, corn and sugar for bigger stodgy profits. The counterpoint to this is obesity and giant health-bills that are exponentially increasing. Doctors and pharmaceuticals don't mind so much. The ugly food industry provides them with an endless source  of "customers" in need of pills, surgery and stomach stapling. This loop of food "freedom" is why, most governments are reluctant (or impotent) to properly legislate against the low-value and the over-size of fast-food and legislate restrictions on sugary drinks... New York Mayor Bloomberg discovered how hard it was to legislate for such. 

The benefit of over-feeding to the empire is that most "well-fed" people — poor or rich alike — are content with the system, while those who are "lean and hungry" have the tendency to challenge the system or parts of the system... On average, overfed people have little chance of acquiring the "ability" to challenge to system... It is a well known saying: "give food to your enemies and they will buckle..."

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Insecticides, herbicides and fertilisers

Presently, runoffs from farms have turned the edges of Lake Eerie in a swamp of toxic algae. This is not the first time. Some people may thing that this is occasional or accidental, but it's not. The regularity of such events in the last few years around the world is testimony of the process of fertilising with intense products. Fertilisers such as ammonium nitrate are also dangerous and can explode with extreme force. Other fertilisers like super-phosphate can burn plants. The use of these chemical fertilisers is often decried by the "organic" growers who prefer natural methods of composting and recycling... On an intensive farm scale, bio-dynamic farming techniques are the closest to the natural processes and can grow some substantial crops without any need for chemical fertilisers nor insect killers.

Apparently, the world use above 2 million tonnes of PURE pesticides per annum, in various proportions depending on various countries usage...  Some pesticides have had good purposeful results yet the side effects are totally beyond the pale. The most recent pesticides are contentious about the destruction of bees and other beneficial insects... 

The major argument is that often the threat of destruction is not always from a single source but a combination of influences. 

For example recent studies have pointed out that the major induction of the extinction of mammoths was "global warming" but one knows of course this was also exacerbated by humans killing of the mammoths... One of the proof of this "secondary" influence is shown in an island in Russia where mammoths lived at least 5000 years after the mainland mammoths — an island where they were not under stress from human hunting. 

Thus, insecticides can and have a major detrimental impact on ALL INSECTS...

Herbicides are used to kill off "weeds". Native grasses are deemed weeds should they grown in exotic crops. The other problem with all these product is their yearly usage with decades of effects upon the land and water supplies. 

---------------------------

Patented seeds

Farmers used to be at the mercy of the weather... Then as well they became at the mercy of wholesale customers who play the future markets. Often, due to the vagaries of weather, farmers have become dependent upon the banking and insurance systems that largely profit from the debt of farmers. Recent droughts and floods have increased the problem. In France, recently some vintage of Bordeaux and Burgundy got nearly wiped out by massive hail storms related to global warming. Some of the Chateaux were not insured and the bill is basically the loss of a year's work, possible a few years in regard to the need to "clean up" the mess...

Beyond these impediments, some crops have also become dependent of suppliers of seeds. Due to the "science" of genetic manipulation, the profiteers have turned a most unnatural process into a money making monopoly with no other benefit than money... The health side-effects of genetic manipulation are not fully known as yet, though some study have shown some detrimental effects and others have not. Some strains of GM crops have been abandoned though their pollens can still be around.

One of the major problem with GM crops is the contamination by GM pollens of natural crops. This is UNACCEPTABLE.

But the purpose of the exercise is to MAKE PROFITS.  Thus patented seeds business is a business which adds cost to the production of food for few benefits, including the "reduction of insecticides". The "reduction of insecticides " is in the quantity used, while the potency of the products is often multiplied by a factor of four, with obvious decimation of good insect populations.

Eat well, eat less, eat roughage, shit more. 

Gus Leonisky

 

 

When the British ran an empire they did it the right way, if one is into imperial management. They created an entire bureaucracy, the Colonial Service, which was manned by officers who were expected to go out to foreign posts for extended periods, to learn the local language, and to acquire an understanding of the indigenous culture. The knowledge gained was invaluable, enabling John Bull to skillfully manage a polyglot empire upon which the sun never set. Understanding the interplay of local ethnicities enabled London to play off one group against another, often empowering a minority which would remain loyal to the crown because to do otherwise would be suicidal. The formula worked in places like Iraq, where the minority Sunnis, initially propped up by Britannia, held sway over the more numerous Shi’ites until the Baath regime was toppled by U.S. forces in 2003.

Washington, failing to understand the formula, moved quickly in Iraq to disband all vestiges of Sunni hegemony and sought to impose democracy. Ethnic cleansing of the Sunni in Baghdad followed, the disempowered Sunni not surprisingly rose in revolt, the Kurdish region exploited the power vacuum to obtain de facto autonomy and start its own ethnic cleansing program, and al-Qaeda entered the country. Today, terrorist bombings occur nearly every day, killing scores of Iraqis, and while it would be a stretch to call the situation a civil war, the deep divisions in the country suggest that all-out conflict along sectarian lines might well be the next stage. U.S. forces were compelled to leave at the end of 2011, their legacy consisting of a ruined Iraqi infrastructure, a huge war debt, 4,500 dead Americans, and scores or even hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis. Politically, Baghdad continues to move ever closer to neighboring Iran, underlining a complete policy failure for Washington.

Washington’s inability to generate a modicum of stability in the places that it has come to dominate militarily is characteristic of the delusional nature of the American imperial experience itself. Even as early as the conquest of the Philippines and Cuba, Washington claimed that it was delivering liberty, not seeking to acquire colonies. As many as one million Filipinos died as the United States imposed its freedom agenda, which included the use of the water cure, today referred to as waterboarding.

read more: http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/cias-deadly-cultural-ignorance/

Interesting article coming from the "conservative" side of politics...

 

“TOO many Americans go to too many prisons for far too long, and for no truly good law-enforcement reason.” The person who said that was neither a defence lawyer, nor a prisoners’-rights advocate, nor a European looking down his nose across the Atlantic. It was instead America’s top law-enforcement official, Eric Holder, the attorney general. On Monday Mr Holder announced several changes to federal prison policy, the most important of which was that federal prosecutors will no longer charge low-level, non-violent drug offenders with crimes that trigger “draconian” mandatory-minimum sentences. But how did America’s prison population become so unmanageably huge?

America has around 5% of the world’s population, and 25% of its prisoners. Roughly one in every 107 American adults is behind bars, a rate nearly five times that of Britain, seven times that of France and 24 times that of India. Its prison population has more than tripled since 1980. The growth rate has been even faster in the federal prison system: from around 24,000—its level, more or less, from the 1940s until the early 1980s—to more than 219,000 today.

Probably the biggest driver of this growth has been ever-harsher drug penalties. In response to the crack epidemic of the 1980s, Congress and state legislatures began passing laws that meted out mandatory-minimum sentences for drug-related crimes. These were intended to help nab major traffickers, but the sentences were triggered by the possession of tiny quantities of drugs: five grams of crack, for instance, resulted in a mandatory-minimum sentence of five years. Conspiracy laws made everyone involved in a drug-running operation legally liable for all of the operation’s activities: a child hired for a few dollars a day to act as a lookout at the door of a crack house was on the hook for all the drugs sold in that house and all the crimes associated with their sale. These sorts of laws kept America’s prison population growing even as its crime rate declined.

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read more of the article at: http://www.economist.com/blogs/economist-explains/2013/08/economist-explains-8