"Truth is not a democracy."
- Robert Bauval -
"The most dangerous man to any government is the man who is able to think things out for himself, without regard to the prevailing superstitions and taboos. Almost inevitably he comes to the conclusion that the government he lives under is dishonest, insane, and intolerable." ~~ H.L. Mencken
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy, always followed by dictatorship" ~~ Alexander Fraser Tytler (1747–1813)
"It is the policy of independence favored by our own love of justice and by our own power. It is the policy of peace suitable to our interest. It is the policy of neutrality, rejecting any share in foreign brawls, and ambitions upon other continents, repelling their intrusions here. It is the policy of Monroe and of Washington and of Jefferson: peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations; entangling alliances with none." ~~ Grover Cleveland (pre-1900 American foreign policy)
"Our government has kept us in a perpetual state of fear, kept us in a continuous stampede of patriotic fervor-with the cry of grave national emergency. Always there has been some terrible evil-to gobble us up if we would not blindly rally behind it by furnishing the exuberant funds demanded. Yet in retrospect, those disasters seem never to have happened, seem never to have been quite real." ~~ General McArthur
| "The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy." | |
| - Martin Luther King, Jr | |
Feel like having your mind blown?
In favor of civil disobedience...
What happens when you animate classic paintings?
What a one man band looks like...
How could this happen to 28% of kids on our watch?
How to devour a 72 ounce steak in a little over 3 minutes...
The year in pictures...
What does a map of the New World Order look like?
Why motorcycle racing is nuts...
Where's Waldo?
Did someone kill Bigfoot?
What's in your alcohol?
What capitalism is like when it has no limits...
How a submarine pitcher pitches...
What happens when you jump on a frozen trampoline...
The poster is mesmerizing...the story it tells electrifying...
Does the Bible teach Blood Moon theology?
How to get rid of headaches naturally...
What are the best burgers of 2013?
Cosmic latté...
How to catch a really, really big fish...
What happened to those old Pizza Huts?
7 things you didn't know about Jesus' birth...
Did you forget about your Microbiota?
What is greed?
How a virus attacks your body...
The school shootings you DON'T hear about...
What the hidden meaning of the Wizard of Oz is...
Watch the amazing change of this woman who suffers from cerebral palsy...
The wisdom of thieves...
What do you make of this pic?
We need to end overfishing...
Rope + candle = Mandle...
What happens when you re-upload a video 1000x to YouTube...
Why life doesn't exist...
Lunar conspiracies...
What you should be doing to protect against radiation fallout...
Only 1% of the Snowden leak was published!
What is depression?
Loretta Fuddy...and why this death seems suspicious...
Suspicion part deux...
A lesson in cognitive dissonance...
Over 11,588,500 words make up the regulations surrounding the Affordable Care Act.
Which is impressive, considering the law has "only" 381,517 words in it.
Feds admit (accidentally) that flu vaccine is worthless
You'd think with all the BILLIONS our bumbling government spends on expensive satellite technology, they'd do a better job getting out of their own way.
But just a few days ago, Uncle Sam did something I promise you he never meant to do. In fact, it could go down as the single greatest slip of the tongue in medical history.
Our government actually admitted that the flu vaccine is worthless. They just didn't mean to.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention actually called a press conference to announce that during the 2012-2013 season, the flu vaccine prevented 6.6 million cases of flu. I mean, who could argue with success like that?
Well, I don't know. Let me give it a try.
First, if you're wondering how the CDC could possibly know how many cases of flu we would have developed, that's a great question. If the feds were so good at predicting the future, how did we end up $17 trillion in debt?
But this time let's just take them at their word. According to the CDC about 45% of the population got a vaccine last year. That translates to roughly 135 million shots. But the shot only "prevented" 6.6 million cases of the flu.
That means your chance of EVER getting the flu was less than 5% to begin with. In other words, the vaccine was totally worthless for 95% of the poor sons of guns who lined up to have their arms pricked.
Better safe than sorry, right? I mean, who wants to be one of the HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of people who drop dead of the flu each year? There are hundreds of thousands of them, right?
Not exactly. A 30-year analysis of the flu found that annual deaths averaged about 6,300. For half of the years, the total was fewer than 5,000. That wouldn't fill the end zone seats in the stadium where the Dallas Cowboys play.
And now consider this -- if the flu vaccine truly was preventing 6.6 million cases of flu a year that means your chances of dying from it are no better than one tenth of one percent! Yet we're spending billions a year on flu campaigns as if we have some national emergency on our hands!
Numbers never lie, friend, and the numbers on the flu vaccine are a joke. Even Uncle Sam is starting to admit it -- he just didn't mean to.
How this "standard" is costing you -- big time
If you flip a coin, but hide it every time it comes up tails, it looks like the result is always heads.
That's how Dr. Ben Goldacre put it in a recent New York Times article...
And Big Pharma had uncovered an ingenious way of hiding all the tails.
Until now...
Everyone who takes a prescription drug is stepping into the unknown. And I mean EVERYone. Including your doctor.
Your doctor might think he has a clue about the drugs he's prescribing. But he's still only seeing those "heads."
That's because almost nobody outside of the inner circle of drug company employees gets a complete look at drug company trials.
And that's because drug companies get to decide what to do with most of their research.
Goldacre, a crusader for drug trial transparency, notes that only about half of all trials are reported. And you can be certain there's no good news in those unreported trials.
Two attempts to fix this problem have been complete failures.
A few years ago, the FDA started a trial transparency program. But the agency never enforced it. (Shocking...right?)
The program turned into a joke. Literally. I'm sure drug company honchos get a laugh every time they think of it.
Medical journal editors also gave transparency a try back in 2005. Under that program, no trial would be published unless it was entered in a publicly accessible registry before the trial began.
That plan was just about as successful as the Titanic's maiden voyage.
Ironically, these two plans BENEFIT drug companies. That's because the industry pretends the plans are successful. They promote the fantasy that alert watchdogs are in place. In fact, those dogs are sound asleep in a dog house out back somewhere while Big Pharma tiptoes around and puts poison in our medicine cabinets.
One day, little Johnny's teacher asked the class to go home and think of a story with a moral. The following day, the teacher asked for the first volunteer.
Little Suzy raised her hand. "My dad owns a farm and every Sunday we load the chicken eggs on the truck and drive into town to sell them at the market. Well, one Sunday we hit a big bump and all the eggs flew out of the basket and onto the road."
When the teacher asked for the moral of the story, Suzy replied, "Don't keep all your eggs in one basket."
Little Lucy went next. "My dad owns a farm too. Every weekend, we take the chicken eggs and put them in the incubator. Last weekend, only eight of the 12 eggs hatched."
Again, the teacher asked for the moral of the story. Lucy replied, "Don't count your chickens before they hatch."
Next up was little Johnny. "My uncle Ted fought in the Vietnam War, and his plane was shot down over enemy territory. He jumped out before it crashed but could only take a case of beer, a machine gun and a machete. On the way down, he drank the case of beer. Then he landed right in the middle of 100 Vietnamese soldiers. He shot 70 with his machine gun, but then he ran out of bullets! So he pulled out his machete and killed 20 more. Then the blade on his machete broke, so he killed the last 10 with his bare hands."
The teacher looked a little shocked. After clearing her throat, she asked what possible moral there could be to this story.
"Well..." Johnny replied, "I suppose... the lesson is… don't f**k with Uncle Ted when he's been drinking."
Ba-dah pah!
America is Barely Identifiable
by Dr. Ron PaulOver two hundred years ago the United States Constitution was written as a guide for America's unique experiment in freedom. Today the free society that the Founders envisaged is barely identifiable.
America is no longer a bastion of freedom. Prevailing ideology, grounded in economic ignorance and careless disregard for individual liberty, is nurtured by a multitude of self-serving, power-seeking politicians spouting platitudes of compassion for the poor who are created by their own philosophy. Reelection is paramount in the minds of most of those who represent us, while freedom and constitutional restraint of power are considered old-fashioned and unwise.
The feeling of frustration prevalent in the country today is certainly understandable. Government is so big and the bureaucracy so cumbersome that the average person has little to say about his economic destiny unless he resorts to the underground economy. In a free society, of course, individual initiative and ability are the principal factors in determining one's economic well-being.
Not surprisingly, half of the people don't register to vote and less than half of those who do rarely vote. When permitted on the ballot, "None Of The Above" is the most attractive candidate. Something certainly has gone wrong. The role of government and the people's attitude toward government have changed dramatically since 1787, with most of the changes occurring in the twentieth century. It appears that we are in the waning days of the American Republic.
Has America become known for lies? Our presidents lie about foreign affairs while secretly carrying out activities never approved by Congress. Scientists falsify records for career purposes. Wall Street is filled with stories of lies and scandals. Sadly, lying and deceit have become a way of life for many in America today.
Samuel Adams, at the time of the Constitutional Convention, accurately warned: "Neither the wisest constitution nor the wisest laws will secure the liberty and happiness of a people whose manners are universally corrupt."
We certainly are blessed with a unique and inspired Constitution, probably the best in the history of man, despite its shortcomings. Yet today, two hundred-plus years since its ratification, the Constitution doesn't restrain the pernicious and steady growth of government at the expense of personal liberty. Our manners are now corrupt.
| “Yet today, two hundred-plus years since its ratification, the Constitution doesn’t restrain the pernicious and steady growth of government at the expense of personal liberty.” |
Sadly, we rarely hear serious proposals for limiting the role of government to that of protecting liberty. Both liberals and conservatives give lip service to limited government ideas, but only to serve some special view of government that they might endorse, rather than to promote consistently the principles of freedom.
In the twentieth century we have come to accept demands and needs as rights at the expense of someone else's rights. Responsibility for our own acts and livelihood has been replaced by lawsuits demanding and getting unrealistic settlements.
We have a massive government, passing out wealth stolen from one group and giving it to another. Those with clout in Washington do well, while those who do not understand the lobbying system and seek only their individual freedom are left out. The survival of a car company like Chrysler is now more dependent on lobbying tactics than on management skills.
Government has come to mean something entirely different than what was intended by the writers of the Constitution. It is an entity capable of confiscating and distributing wealth ad infinitum. Government no longer serves the people by guaranteeing equal rights to all. Government is now expected to provide profits, medical care, jobs, homes, and food whenever the people demand these benefits as a right. Most people today fail to accept the obvious fact that government largesse can come only as a result of a systematic scheme of government theft.
Compromise is universally accepted as the only tool for political stability, while the leaders argue that anything less is rigid and confrontational and will inevitably lead to chaos. Yet this so-called tool of compromise, on each occasion it is used, is an attack on someone's freedom. Most fail to see that interventionism, welfarism, and socialism are very rigid philosophies. Continued sacrifice of a portion of one's rights has led to a disintegration of self-reliance in America today.
The latter part of the twentieth century has permitted the acceptance of the idea that "society" owes everyone a living. Vandalism by many is no longer seen as a crime, but only as an opportunity to get what is deserved or owed to them. Once the principle of government wealth-distribution is accepted at face value, it is logical to expect some individuals to bypass the slow-moving bureaucracy, especially in a time of crisis, and take what they claim is rightfully theirs.
| “Today, by majority vote, government can easily cancel out the earnings or rights of individuals without any debate as to constitutionality.” |
Throughout the twentieth century, the trend has been away from limited government and toward big government's intervening in every aspect of our lives. It has been financed with borrowed money and a fraudulent paper money system. We have come a long way from the Republic envisioned by the Founders. Today, by majority vote, government can easily cancel out the earnings or rights of individuals without any debate as to constitutionality. The only debate is between the competing special interests, deciding who will benefit and who will suffer.
We are witnessing the end stage of the Republic as we drift closer and closer to pure dictatorship. Dictatorship of the majority is every bit as oppressive as the dictatorship of the few. It is also more difficult to attack, since so many accept the notion that the majority has the authority to redefine rights.
Political leaders today are more interested in opinion polls than they are in the Constitution and freedom principles. Any event of importance is quickly analyzed by a poll, which the politician takes to heart and responds to in an appropriate way.
Keeping up with computer assessments of the people's superficial feelings has been the road to success for many modern politicians. Individuals seeking leadership are prodded to answer incessant and continuous surveys. The leaderless, disorganized, disinterested masses, through poll results, are collectively and unknowingly leading the leaders.
These instantaneous recordings, designed to tell the politician what to do, cannot provide reassurance that our rights will be protected in the foreseeable future. The main problem we face today is that we lack enough champions of freedom.
Leadership in the freedom movement has always come from intellectuals who have studied natural law and understood the benefits of the free market. When political oppression is accompanied by serious economic problems, the people will frequently, after years of suffering, overthrow the tyrants.
But a wealthy nation, grown soft on the prosperity produced by a previously free generation, tends to vote for that individual who promises the biggest piece of the pie to his constituents.
Ironically the prosperity that comes from a free society is the fuel that feeds the fire which brings on the demise of that society. Materially we are much better off today than people were in 1776, but our philosophy of freedom is in much worse shape.
During the twentieth century, America has gone through a transition that has radically changed the political system established by the Founding Fathers. Although many seeds of statism were sown in the nineteenth century, they have matured in the twentieth century.
The trends in legislation in this century are clearly anti-free-market, starting with the Sherman Antitrust Act passed in 1890 to the strong federal control over trade with the Clayton Act of 1914. With the establishment of the FTC to current-day regulations, this century has certainly witnessed a loss of confidence in a truly free market. Even the term "laissez faire" is universally shunned by all politicians who fear that in championing capitalism, support will be lost.
Theodore Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson revolutionized foreign policy, dramatically changing our traditional belief in neutrality to one of perpetual meddling in the affairs of every nation throughout the world. Today it is mind-boggling that extensive emergency powers are available to the President. Literal dictatorial control of the country is available to an aggressive president faced with a contrived or real crisis.
The executive orders, which have the force of law, are issued on a routine basis. Secret agreements and commitments by our presidents are routine and no longer considered unconstitutional. The usual thing is that Congress almost always accepts the secret and dangerous agreements as if they were law.
The year 1913 certainly was a banner year for the anti-constitutional movement. The Sixteenth Amendment, the Personal Income Tax, and the Federal Reserve Act were all passed. The central bank monopoly guaranteed the destruction of our gold dollar. The recessions, depressions, and inflations of the twentieth century can be laid at the doorstep of the Federal Reserve.
The Founding Fathers intended that the federal government be totally dependent on the individual states and their legislatures for the collection of taxes and the election of Senators. Since that time, we have abandoned the concept of sovereign individual states and accepted a strong centralized federal government. The Senate was intended to protect states' rights and impede the natural tendency of government to grow large, abusive, and centralized.
| “Violent crime continues to grow at a rapid rate and can be expected to continue as economic conditions worsen.” |
The twentieth century's near deathblow to the concept of individual liberty has today produced a multitude of problems. The people's manners are now universally corrupt. Violent crime continues to grow at a rapid rate and can be expected to continue as economic conditions worsen. Thousands of new prisoners are sentenced each week. Many of those who are sentenced should not be, and many of those who are out on the streets, tragically, should be in prison.
Our government routinely lies to us and uses "disinformation." The luxuries of the current generation are financed by the sweat and blood of the next. Yet flowery slogans are used to describe the wonderful prosperity we enjoy, with few realizing the seriousness of the indebtedness incurred in the process. In the midst of a market glut, more and more people each year get pushed into the poverty class.
Liberty has become a term that offends establishment intellectual leaders. Feeble attempts at fairness in the forceful redistribution of wealth are considered noble, but principles that guarantee free-market incentive systems are considered immoral and selfish. Even the businessman today is more accustomed to getting special privileges or contracts from the government than in minimizing the role of government. Difficult choices by our national leaders are postponed, and gimmicks are devised to further consume the wealth and capital of the country instead.
Passion for liberty has faded from the hearts of most Americans and is now cherished only by a remnant diligently working to reestablish its rightful place as one of our most important concerns. The challenge to keep alive the legacy of the Founding Fathers is overwhelming. Now is certainly an appropriate time to restate and emphasize the importance of the freedoms embodied in this great document.
The erosion of freedom seems of little concern where the promise of government security motivates the people and encourages the politicians' extravagant ways. Living for immediate material benefits has replaced concern for long-term freedom principles necessary to guarantee peace and prosperity for the next generation.
American society is characterized by hopelessness and operates without a moral, constitutional, or monetary standard. A basic understanding of the problems we face is vital if we expect to reestablish the constitutional principle of equal rights.
The Daily Reckoning Presents
The Fed Turns 100: A Survey of the Critics
by Gregory Bresiger
End America's central bank because it caused the crashes of 2008, 1987, and 1929 and will blunder again.
That's what many critics are saying about the Federal Reserve System (the Fed), which turns 100 on December 23. They note that on the Fed's watch America has endured numerous bubbles, crashes, and inflationary cycles that have greatly devalued the dollar. The Fed, they say, has caused or aggravated several crashes.
"The Fed's performance over the century has been abysmal, no matter how you look at it," says Professor Joseph Salerno, a business professor and monetary expert at Pace University.
"If you say the goal of the Fed was to prevent calamities, then you have to say that it has been a failure," says William A. Fleckenstein, a hedge fund manager and the author of Greenspan's Bubbles.
Fleckenstein says he's seen two bubbles over the past quarter century. He also believes that, under the Fed's system of easy money, of interest rates of close to zero percent over the past few years that, "the Fed is once again creating a bubble." The Fed should be abolished, he adds, because it has no accountability for its mistakes.
The length of the Fed's charter is indefinite, said Fed sources, who would only speak on background. And that is generally the only way Fed sources will speak when asked about the bank's current policies or historical record.
| “If you say the goal of the Fed was to prevent calamities, then you have to say that it has been a failure.” |
The Fed began with the goal of protecting the dollar. It was given the exclusive right to create money in 1913.
The Fed would "provide a means by which periodic panics which shake the American Republic, and do it enormous injury, would be stopped," according to Robert Latham Owen, one of the authors of the original Federal Reserve Act.
After the Wall Street banking Panic of 1907 led numerous banks to fail, "there was a growing consensus among all Americans that a central banking authority was needed to ensure a healthy banking system and provide for an elastic currency," according to the official Federal Reserve history.
But critics claim the Fed has made things worse. Subsequent problems were the result of Fed governors giving in to political pressure, providing elastic or "cheap money." This is the controversial Fed policy of setting interest rates. If set too low, the rates will mislead consumers and businesses, causing them to borrow too much. And that can lead to a cycle of boom and bust.
That's what many believe happened in 2007-2008 as millions of Americans were encouraged through cheap-money policies to use subprime loans to buy homes they couldn't afford. But Fed critics contend that it had happened before.
For instance, interest rates were dirt cheap in 1972, which led later to an economic disaster as inflation jumped to 10 percent and interest rates went to over 20 percent in the 1970s.
"The consequence of the monetary framework of the 1970s was two bouts of double-digit inflation," said Fed Chairman Bernard Bernanke in a recent speech entitled, "A Century of U.S. Central Banking: Goals, Framework, Accountability." These 1970s events killed interest sensitive industries and destroyed many small businesses that couldn't obtain credit.
These controversial money policies have lead to crashes, depressions, and recessions, including the crash of 1929 and resulting Great Depression, critics say. Some 10,000 banks failed between 1930 and 1933, according to Fed numbers.
"Tragically, the Fed failed to meet the mandate to maintain financial stability," Bernanke said in his speech.
"Many people," according to the official Fed history, "blamed the Fed for failing to stem speculative lending that led to the crash, and some argued that inadequate understanding of monetary economics kept the Fed from pursuing polices that could have lessened the depth of the Depression."
One of the people blaming the Fed was economist and monetary historian Milton Friedman. He criticized Fed policies for triggering the 1929 crash and then causing a depression that lasted over a decade.
"Throughout the contraction, the System [the Fed] had ample powers to cut short the tragic process of monetary deflation and banking collapse," according to The Great Contraction 1929-1933, by Milton Friedman and Anna Schwartz.
To Fed critics, the Great Depression of 1929 and the great inflation of the 1970s were part of a series of policy blunders that happened again in 2008.
"There never would have been a subprime mortgage crisis if the Fed had been alert," Schwartz told the Wall Street Journal. "This is something Alan Greenspan must answer for."
| “There never would have been a subprime mortgage crisis if the Fed had been alert.” |
Economist Laurence Kotlikoff of Boston University says he'd give the Fed a C grade in its first century.
"It didn't prevent the Great Depression or the Great Recession. It hasn't fixed the core problems: opacity and leverage in the banking system," Kotlikoff said.
"Central banking has a poor record but other methods do as well," adds Jeffrey Gundlach, the manager of the Doubleline Total Return Bond Fund, which invests in mortgage backed securities. Gundlach has been very critical of cheap money policies of the Fed and predicted the crash of 2008. He believes the government should balance the budget first and then consider the Fed's future.
Other critics, in reviewing the Fed's record are harsher. They say it is time to end the Fed, in part because it favors certain banking interests.
"The Fed is an instrument of crony capitalism," warns Hunter Lewis, a money manager and the co-founder of Cambridge Associates, an investment advisory firm.
"The Fed should be abolished because its legal monopoly of the money supply renders it an inherently inflationary institution able to create money at will and without limit," says Salerno, noting that the value of a 1913 dollar is now five cents.
"History and current experience," Salerno adds, "reveal to us that groups endowed with a legal monopoly over any area of the economy are prone to use it to the hilt to enrich themselves, their friends and allies."
America’s New Cold War
Addison Wiggin
In the late 1980s, when it was apparent the Soviet Union was on its last legs, Colin Powell was Ronald Reagan’s national security adviser. One day, he found himself sitting at a table in the Kremlin across from the last Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev.
“Ah, General, I’m so sorry,” said Gorbachev, “you’ll have to find a new enemy.”
Or that’s how Powell remembered it during an interview last year.
“We lost our best enemy,” he said. “Our whole structure depended on there being a Soviet Union that might attack us.”
Powell’s candid admission spotlights something we’ve said going back to at least our book Empire of Debt: Washington’s empire operates on a logic all its own. It’s best if you shape your investments accordingly…
Taking Aim at “America’s Default Adversary”
The year 2013 is ending much the way we described it at the start: China and Japan holding a urination match over some tiny uninhabited islands — with the United States in the, um, line of fire.
Chinese and Japanese fighter jets are buzzing each other’s territory. Chinese and Japanese leaders are spewing indignant rhetoric.
Fortunately for the lives of those soldiers who have sworn to uphold their leaders’ promises to engage, that’s all it’s amounted to. But as we said to our paid-up readers in January and again in early October, the threat of hot war is ever-present. And the United States is obligated by treaty to side with Japan.
As for a “new enemy,” it took more than 20 years of stumbling about for Washington to find a suitable one. Saddam Hussein was a placeholder for a while. There was also the amorphous “terror,” which is no longer deemed worthy of a “war on,” but merely designated as “overseas contingency operations.”
Enter China: “Since the disappearance of the Soviet Union,” writes James Dobbins at RAND Corp., “China has become America’s default adversary, the power against which the United States measures itself militarily, at least when there is no more proximate enemy in sight.”
Thus is the United states “the most intrusive outside actor in China’s internal affairs,” write Andrew Nathan and Andrew Scobell in Foreign Affairs, “the guarantor of the status quo in Taiwan, the largest naval presence in the East China and South China seas, the formal or informal military ally of many of China’s neighbors and the primary framer and defender of existing international legal regimes.”
And that’s with “the pivot” barely underway. In November 2011, when Hillary Clinton was still secretary of state, she declared, “The United States stands at a pivot point” — withdrawing troops from Iraq and Afghanistan and shifting attention to East Asia. The D.C. wonk class has spoken of “the pivot” ever since.
Two years on, we daresay history might well look upon this moment as the formal declaration of a new Cold War.
According to former CNN journalist Mike Chinoy, the pivot entails the Navy locating “60% of its assets” in the Pacific Ocean. “It will involve deploying six aircraft carriers, destroyers, littoral combat ships, submarines and an increase in military exercises and port visits.”
Nor does it end there. “One means of improving the prospects for direct defense and reducing the risk of escalation,” writes RAND’s Dobbins, “is for the United States to enable the capabilities and buttress the resolve of China’s neighbors.
“Such a strategy,” he adds, “should not be — or be seen — as a U.S. attempt to encircle or align the region against China, lest it produce greater Chinese hostility.”
Too late: No sooner did Clinton declare the pivot than the Center for Strategic International Studies forecast “a shift in Chinese foreign policy based on the new leadership’s judgment that it must respond to a U.S. strategy that seeks to prevent China’s re-emergence as a great power.”
A Spark for Nuclear War?
“Buttressing the resolve” of China’s neighbors is only the beginning of U.S. strategy, however. The Pentagon has formulated a strategy called Air-Sea Battle (ASB).
The aim is to sprinkle so many bases and airstrips around the region that China would be too hemmed in to safely attack if conflict broke out.
“Stealthy American bombers and submarines would knock out China’s long-range surveillance radar and precision missile systems located deep inside the country,” reads a Washington Post scenario. “The initial ‘blinding campaign’ would be followed by a larger air and naval assault.”
Could such a strategy backfire? “Some Asia analysts worry that conventional strikes aimed at China could spark a nuclear war,” the Post goes on. Other critics “see a dangerous tendency toward alarmism that is exaggerating the China threat to drive up defense spending.”
The Pentagon insists ASB — and the pivot in general — is not aimed at China. For the moment, the Chinese are playing along with the pretense. After a meeting with Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel in August, China’s defense minister, Gen. Chang Wanquan, said, “China is a peace-loving nation. And we hope that [America’s] strategy does not target a specific country in the region.”
The reality is rather different. “China will be much more discreet throughout the entire region because U.S. power is already there, it’s visible,” says Anthony Cordesman from the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “You’re not talking theory. You’re already there in practice… As part of this rebalancing to the Pacific, you have to show people it’s real at a time when so much of U.S. power is increasingly questioned by our budget debates.”
And indeed, the effort can be made without spending (much) more money. “We’re not gonna build any more bases in the Pacific,” says Gen. Herbert “Hawk” Carlisle, commander of all U.S. Air Force resources in the region. But existing bases will be expanded and abandoned bases will be reopened — including the airstrip on the island of Tinian where the Enola Gay took off with its atomic payload destined for Hiroshima.
Indeed, the very notion makes Gen. Carlisle almost misty-eyed with nostalgia. “Back in the late, great days of the Cold War, we had a thing called Checkered Flag: We rotated almost every CONUS [Continental United States] unit to Europe. Every two years, every unit would go and work out of a collateral operating base in Europe. We’re turning to that in the Pacific.”
Happy days are here again!
East Asia isn’t the only theater where the U.S. government aims to checkmate China. Let’s nervously turn our gaze to Africa — where we’ve been watching a nascent conflict building for the last two years.
“Washington’s Obsession in Africa and Beyond”
The United States recently deployed “200 Marines to a naval base in Sicily for possible operations in Libya,” according to UPI — one move among many to set up “a network of bases in Italy as launchpads for military interventions in Africa and the Mideast.”
“With the United States military out of Iraq and pulling out of Afghanistan,” says The New York Times, “the Army is looking for new missions around the world. ‘As we reduce the rotational requirement to combat areas, we can use these forces to great effect in Africa,’ Gen. David M. Rodriguez, the head of the Africa Command, told Congress this year.”
In December 2006, President Bush authorized the formation of AFRICOM — a new U.S. military command with oversight for Africa. The decision came one month after China hosted the leaders of 48 African nations in Beijing to discuss economic issues — especially access to energy and minerals.
So what Bush began, Obama continues. Obama’s one-time foreign policy mentor Zbigniew Brzezinski describes the stakes in a recent book with a title that manages to be at once ambitious and prosaic — Strategic Vision. “China-Africa trade grew 1,000%, from $10 billion in 2000 to $107 billion in 2008,” he writes.
No wonder Reuters reported last summer that “with some 4,000–5,000 personnel on the ground at any given time, the United States now has more troops in Africa than at any point since its Somalia intervention two decades ago.”
The wire service was refreshingly upfront in citing U.S. motives — both the stated one of countering al-Qaida and other militant groups, and the unstated one of “winning influence in a continent where China has surpassed the United States as the No.1 trade partner and has huge mining, energy and infrastructure investments.”
“Africa is China’s success story,” writes the veteran foreign correspondent John Pilger in The Guardian. “Where the Americans bring drones, the Chinese build roads, bridges and dams. What the Chinese want is resources, especially fossil fuels. NATO’s bombing of Libya drove out 30,000 Chinese oil industry workers” — and opened the way for al-Qaida’s presence in northern Africa, we might add.
“More than jihadism or Iran,” concludes Mr. Pilger, “China is Washington’s obsession in Africa and beyond.”
The Middle East’s New Best Friend
And even as the United States “pivots” away from the Middle East, China tries to make inroads there. Chinese trade with the region has grown to $222 billion a year — 12 times its level a decade ago. That’s more than U.S. trade with the Middle East — $193 billion.
As in Africa, infrastructure investments figure big: Cosco, the giant Chinese port operator, owns a part of the Port Said container terminal in Egypt. Chinese firms are building railroads in Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Israel. Longer term, the Chinese might even recreate the old Silk Road, laying rail from Turkey through central Asia to China.
Then there are the arms sales — mostly small arms to the likes of Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon and Qatar. But now comes word China has sold $3.4 billion of high-tech missiles to Turkey — a member of the NATO alliance along with the United States and much of Europe.
Other longtime U.S. allies are also feeling the tug eastward. “I personally have close friendly relations with various Chinese leaders, current and former,” Jordan’s King Abdullah told Chinese media in September. “China plays a vital role in promoting world peace and stability and has an influential role in regional issues.”
It’s not just the leaders who feel this way. A Pew poll in July found China viewed more favorably than the U.S. in every Mideast nation except Israel.
The Main Theater: “A Vital National Interest”?
But make no mistake: Asia is the main theater of the brewing U.S.-China war. The “security guarantees” aren’t only for Japan.
In October, Secretary of State John Kerry met with Philippine Foreign Minister Albert del Rosario. “I want to emphasize the strength of our relationship,” said Kerry, “and the bilateral ties that we have that are literally unbreakable.” Like Japan, the Philippines are locked in a dispute with China over a handful of islands.
Washington insiders, reading between the lines of Kerry’s remarks, saw the implication that “the U.S. has a direct interest in resisting Chinese territorial claims in the South China Sea” — as the words of the Washington Assessment and Analysis Service phrased it.
“It is not premature,” the briefing adds, “to detect a hardening of U.S. resolve not to accept Chinese assertiveness in the region without a challenge.”
Put it another way: Washington is bound and determined to intervene in a messy dispute over islands in the South China Sea. The spaghetti-looking lines on the map nearby represent the competing territorial claims of not only China and the Philippines, but three more nations as well. The long U-shaped line is China’s claimed domain.
It’s as if the United States were arguing with Mexico, Cuba, Jamaica and the Bahamas over some islands in the Gulf of Mexico… and China asserted a “vital national interest” in the dispute, backing up that assertion with the presence of warships.
As we said above, the empire has a logic all its own. “America,” writes Independent Institute foreign policy scholar Ivan Eland, “is now borrowing money from China to subsidize the defense of rich East Asian allies in their quest to militarily counter… well… China.”
Peace, love and happiness...until next time...
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