June 1914 or June 2014?

In a few months it will be the summer of 2014.  As such it is difficult for me not to project infinite possibilities reduced to a singular historical event - the start of World War I in 1914.  See, up to the actual start of the First World War, folk were completely oblivious to how dramatic a pace things would change, and it makes me wonder if the same type of reticent ease evinced by most Americans will be abruptly ended this summer given the tensions between the EU, USA and Russia.

Now I am not saying all is exactly the same, true, different times and different events, but some of the parallels are notably similar.  Now albeit in this age of sound bites, in which the TV pundits tend to accept that the cause of WW1 was singularly due to the assassination of the presumed Austro-Hungarian heir, Archduke Franz Ferdinand by a group of Bosnian Serbs from the revolutionary movement called Mlada Bosna (‘Young Bosnia’) while he and his wife were visiting Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, personally, I consider several other factors that were responsible for the war that just happened to culminate in the aforementioned event. In fact, I would even venture to say that this was just an excuse for the Austria-Hungary alliance to declare war on its neighbor in an attempt to eliminate what they perceived and completely contrived to be a ‘Serbian threat.”

Now these other events, remind me strangely of what is occurring in the Ukraine in concert with the EU, Russia and the U.S. First, there was the Franco-Prussia war of 1870 to 1871 which saw France take a beat down leading to them having to pay Germany a lot of loot as a consequence which assisted in the creation of a powerful German Empire with a military and industrial complex to match which Europe understood would severely disrupt the balance of power on the continent. Similar in the manner in which the so-called actions of Russia have caused within the contextual arrangements via the Crimea and Ukraine. Notwithstanding the same locution present suggesting the predisposition of NATO towards Russia emergence after the demise of the U.S.S.R., that borders more on emotive perspectives than rational reality - the type of responses that frequently lead to, instead of squashing, motives directed toward civil and even worse, international wars.

In addition, two other events, TheMoroccan Crises (inclusive of both the Tangler Crisis of 1905-1906 and the Agadir Crisis of 1911) and the formation of the Balkan League (a military alliance against the Ottoman Empire in 1912, between Serbia, Greece, Montenegro and Bulgaria) were just as responsible.  With respect to the first, what is on the historical record is that the events in Morocco almost brought the European heavy weights to war because they were orchestrated by the Germans to drive a wedge between France and Britain, but instead  enhanced British hostility towards Germany. Likewise the manner in which the EU and President Obama has accepted the legitimacy of the government in Kiev (which was funded by Western Governments), as being legitimate without elections, supporting one popular rebellion but not recognizing similar popular rebellions in Crimea and in the Eastern Ukraine. 

The second, was implemented by the Austria-Hungary alliance and resulted in removing the possessions of the Ottoman Empire in the Balkans and divided these territory among them, resulting in Bulgaria turning against Serbia and Greece - their former allies.  Eventually the Bulgarians were defeated and forced to give up their claims in Macedonia, shocking the European heavy weights (inclusive of Russian allies of France and Great Britain), but in particular the Austria-Hungary Alliance that vehemently was against a strong Serbian state. This, in the same manner in which the west is against a more powerful growing Russian expansion in Eurasia proper today.

Just like the US and EU sees Russia today, Vienna saw Serbia both as a rival in the Balkans and as a direct threat because it feared that its Balkan neighbors may become the core of a future South-Slavic state (wasn’t happening but this is the fear promulgated by the west today concerning the Balkans). The Balkan Wars made Austro-Hungarian neo-cons even more determined to take concrete action to prevent further strengthening of Serbia.

I say this because what is clear is the fact that the Ukraine is not a member of NATO, has been a thorn in the side of both U.S. and EU developing objectives that would authorize the concerns of the Eastern Ukraine’s and others that lean toward Russia in the Ukraine, for NATO to respond militarily to these recent events albeit not warranted. I wrote about this a few weeks ago but since then, Obama is adding gas t the fire. Then there is the empty token of "I mean business by sending 150 troops to Poland, and getting the Romanian Army to move it's troops t the Russian border and the Ukrainian Army surrounding a city of 300,000 in the east.

It seems that it doesn’t require a degree in History to see that the same way Germany wanted a preventive war against Russia and France years before WW1, The EU and the US desires a war (preventative or not) for similar reasons, mainly economic. 

With all of these bailouts of European nations over and over again, adding more and more debt to national coffers, if history is any indication, war is and obvious consequence. First because it is the best way for a government to take people’s attention from horrendous economic conditions they are mired in and two, war is always the outcome when there is no global economic recovery. And right now, the world is smack dab in the middle of a global currency war: one in which everyone from Brazil to China is devaluing their currencies in an attempt boost exports and GDP. And again, the last time we saw this happened, the result was WW 2. Why, because our Federal Government and plutocratic elite need wars to take some of the pressure off from our growing debt and exorbitant federal spending.

Currency wars lead to trade wars, which lead to rising inflation and global economic uncertainty and it is a well-known fact that the U.S. government considers economic threats as a basis for going to war. This is why Gaddafi was murdered, because he was planning an all-African currency for conducting trade. The same thing happened to Saddam because he was moving away from the U.S. dominated petro dollar. And as we speak, bilateral currency swaps are on the increase in and no less than 23 nations are moving away from the dollar to Renminbi: what is in the work is that nations are trying to move the dollar completely out, and use Yuan mainly oil and gold trading. This is a no-no from the U.S. perspective and supports the contention that for us, wars have been able to do one thing from the West’s perspective - bring all countries under the umbrella of Western Central Banking.

Supposedly, the Geneva accord between Russia, Ukraine, the US and EU was supposed to make ALL groups to surrender weapons and leave official buildings. But this did not happen. As it stands, tensions in the Donetsk region, are ramping up, especially in the city of Sloviansk – where the entire city (300,000) is occupied by pro-Russian separatist.  They say that as the People's Republic of Donetsk, they are just reacting to military operations launched by the Ukrainian army on Slavyansk. Then there is the small little something-something that the Ukraine energy firm Naftogaz has been asked to pay Russia Gazprom $11 billion for gas already used but unpaid for.

Bush, as Obama today, are just as war-like as Wilhelm II was in Germany when he ascended to the throne in 1888. Likewise, they are just as protective of U.S. banking interest and as such, the way I figure, there are a lot of similarities historically, albeit different names and places, between the past 100 years. Regardless, whether via incompetence or intentionally, the Obama Administration is escalating tensions in the Ukraine and surrounding region as well as with Russia. Fact is that Washington aided in the overthrow of the elected Ukrainian leader regardless of his character and presently is encouraging the new leaders in Kiev to all they can to keep the flames going, even violence

What The Government Could Do With That Location and Meta-Data

Wifing Politicians: I don’t love these politicians (plutocrats)

I am writing to satisfy one issue, and that is why do folk take up for these political plutocrats regardless of political affiliation? It is as if folk cannot see they are all in the same gang of scratch my back crony-capitalist crooks. And for those unaware, crony capitalism refers to the intercourse between the state and corporate power. These cats have two sets of laws, one for us common folk and one for the elite folk. This manifested by two kinds of economic models of capitalism which breaks down to the over-regulated capitalism we have to abide by and the protected and unregulated variety for corporations, cartels and said participants.

Personally, as a libertarian, I unlike conservatives or liberals or progressives believe that part of the price of freedom is allowing others to have their freedom equally. Moreover, I believe whether I agree or like or dislike something, if it is peaceful and voluntary and harms no one, I can tolerate such. Unfortunately, this is not the game played by the ruling political elite regardless of party affiliation.

And even with all of the empirical evidence we observe, we allow these folk to play us like a fiddle, telling us things that do not even make sense yet many of us accept without question because we love our politicians. Love them so much we will let them lead us to poverty and a penal existence. So enthralled with them that we allow them, the federal government to give billions tax free in the form of TARP and even more via Quantitative Easing and all that so they can make loot in the markets at the cost of money that in theory should have gone to pay salaries of average employees. 

The real concern is that in order to do this, we have to be complicit in our own death. To accomplish this, they make up stuff; I mean artificially contrive stuff as well as the proof to support the stuff they made up in an effort to communicate impending doom. Take Global warming for example (ironically newspeaked into climate change) or any environmental cause. This the strategy used by plutocratic political elite and it is grounded in their sense of “moral absolutism” that makes them feel that since they have money, money shouldn’t be an issue to you thus your value as being regular folk, only exist to make them believe “WE” need them to tell us what to do.

We can also look at the civil rights and black power movements as examples. What did these folks do then? Well we were it before global warming and the environment. First, they focus on inequality amongst various societal sub groups like African Americans and encourage us to act against these certain political targets. It was just a few weeks ago the democratic held an all-nightclimathon talking about global warming.  This was 28 democratic senators all because some rich cat said he wanted to put $100 million behind politicians dealing with global warming. And we all know, including the money behind them, the politicians and the masses, that 60 percent in America think the economy is the most important issue to address and climate change next to the bottom, especially us black folk. Why, because climate change makes them wealthier.

In the early 1970s, Aaron Wildavsky, the former Dean of the Graduate School of Public Affairs at California Berkeley described their play book as being designed to “have middle class civil servants, hire upper class whites, to use lower class blacks” to stack the front line to complain against the political institution or policy (or lack of) at hand. And this minus-sum game as Wildavsky describes, often leaves African Americans worse off than we were before.

Take the recent election of Barack Obama. The change and hope mantra had folks wanting to tear the club up. But in 2014, what do we see? We see home sales going up for those with a price tag of $10 million plus, but not regular folk, especially if they are African Americans. Black Americans, Obama's most loyal supporters, are among the hardest hit by this uneven recovery.


The average price for a kilowatt-hour (KWH) of electricity hit a record of 13.5 cents in March based on data released by the Bureau of Labor Statistics: meaning it was up about 5.5 percent from 12.8 cents per KWH in March 2013. In March, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics also shows that shrimp prices jumped 61 percent from a year earlier. Cost for pork items, especially bacon are also dramatically on the increase.  Ironically the story line is due to a disease. The increases of cost in agricultural and beef products have been conveniently blamed on a drought (disease and drought equally environment). 

All to make you think there are more things (the environment) which are more important than feeding your family, earning a living and maintaining a roof over your head (humans). Think about it PETA will tell you not to eat meat and that slaughtering cows is inhuman but they get their lot from VISA, who owns Omaha Steaks and got big loot in the Kentucky Derby (can’t make this ish up). 

You might be a progressive, but you are not a progressive elite and you, if defined as such are not seeking the same goal as they are.  The recession officially ended in June 2009, but we still are down 6 million jobs from pre-recession levels and now these cats got us believing that Obamacare and the economy are separate issues. But fact is that the new trend is not giving part-time workers company health coverage like Target, who will no longer offer health insurance to part time workers. Meaning, class, African Americans will be the hardest hit by this.

The disparity between rich and poor has blossomed since 2009 and the job participation rate is way worse, not to mention the average person has less money to spend and is taxed much more - all when our nation's debt is our greatest concern because WE paying the debt. And you know how I know we paying the debt? Because, more than 23 million American households rely on food stamps. Households operationally defined let us say as being four per household which equals 92 million Americans. And although more whites on welfare than blacks, we rely on it disproportionately more than whites.

This one reason why neither democrats nor republicans will ever simplify the tax code because this is the plutocratic politician’ main source of revenue (taking huge contributions (bribes) in exchange for tax breaks for the super-wealthy. They want inflation because the math proves that inflation (when prices go up) raises GDP subsequently making federal debt cheaper to service every year. But where we live and everywhere else, median household income is down 7% since 2000. And don’t forget if we removed the top 1% households from this equation, the decline for the bottom 99% would be more than closer to 30% (my math). Thus via the tax code and quantitative easing, the purchasing power we have is slowly being siphoned and swindled and given on purpose by our government to super rich folk, who in turn get to borrow money from the Fed at an interest rate of zero.

American politics is completely, owned, run and operated by the most powerful economic elite that politics and corporate America can proffer, which leaves out the democracy this republic was created on for the rest of us.  Yawl, especially black progressives, needs to stop wifing these politicians.  I mean if black folk regardless of political orientation put as much into protect, defending and believing in self and our communities as much as we wife these politicians, we wouldn’t have am problems. But we don’t, and now a majority of us believe and trust the government. When did we start to believe in and trust the government I ask again? Of all folk, African and Native Americans should never trust the government, especially the federal government. But that is just me, and unlike most, I don’t love these politicians.

The government is coming after you…even if you did nothing wrong

It seems each day I am reminded of how poorly informed the average American is.  This is especially true for the average African American, who speaks of politics through the jaundiced lens of faux progressivism and protecting our president and his political party no matter what they do. But for some reason, I think this is because as a community, things have changed.  When I was growing up in Memphis during the city sanitation strikes, African Americans never trusted the government or politicians, even if they were black.  I mean when someone like Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. goes out of his way to threatened to accuse Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bayard Rustin of having a homosexual relationship, just to protect white racist democrats, unless the protest they had planned in 1960 at the Democratic Convention was cancelled, it is easy to see why such was the case and why the majority of us, traditionally never trusted democrats or republicans regardless of race.

Today, African Americans actually believe in and trust the government to do what is best albeit facts suggest otherwise. The stark reality is that things will only continue to get worse and we with our heads in the sand, will accept anything our political puppet masters tell us. Unfortunately, by the time we wake up, it may be too late and like everybody else, we will find out that the government is coming after us…even if we did nothing wrong.

Some may say this is an overstatement, but for the folk that do assert such, I suggest you read the Bill of Rights and the history of the French Revolution, as well as observe the parallels for themselves. The problem is that having a Mulatto President got black folk thinking it is all good.  Just the presence and appearance of our swarthy-skinned President makes people think it is alright, making them accept without question, or even more problematic, not pay attention to the real world around them.

But if we would just look around, we would see that the gap between what the poorest make and what the wealthiest bring home has reached levels not seen since the Great Depression. According to the current administration, we are in year five of the “economic recovery” yet we have no job creation in concert with many companies cutting their payrolls. Add to this the observation that U.S. food prices are up nearly 20 percent so far this year and steadily rising. To believe the words of any politician, in particular this administration about the economy is getting better borders on psychosis.

What did we get by awarding the current administration with 93 percent of the African American vote in 2012 and 95 percent among that group in 2008? Economically we are worse than we were in 2009 and our participation in the labor market has been steadily falling farther since that same year. Simple truth is that since his election, economic improvements have occurred for all other ethnic groups in America with the exception of blacks.

Now the next step is domination by police and military enforcement.  Now "the most transparent administration in history" has just ordered U.S. Army to seize every Apache helicopter in use by the National Guard and prior to this, the U.S.Postal Service, EPA, IRS, NOAA, the Department of Education & 90 agencies, have been and are purchasing and storing BILLIONs of round of hollow point ammo and thousands of military rifles for domestic use only. Not to mention that recently, the administration convinced their plutocratic buddies in the cell phone market to agree to add a phone kill switch beginning in July 2015 which they say is about the rash of cell phone thefts but is really about is about disabling cell phone cameras to keep the free people from posting and sharing government abuse and violence to other via the internet. Maybe even worse is that the FBI just announced that they plan to have 52 million photos in its NGI Face Recognition Database by next year (everybody, not just criminals).

And if you want to see two examples of this, that have nothing to do with race, all we have to do is look at what happened with Miriam Carey and more recently with Nevada rancher Clive Bundy. The Carey story tells us one thing: that if you are a black woman, you cannot get scared with men in swat regalia in mass pull guns out on you when you are with your child.  Doing so gets you murdered legally and the Whitehouse will cover for this murder, call all the news media and tell the world you was shooting at police, trying to attack the Capitol, was crazy and on major medication when in fact she had no gun, and the autopsy report, made public six months after she was shot dead revealed that the 34-year-old woman had no drugs in her system and was struck by five bullets from behind, two of which were in the head.

Clive Bundy and the Bureau of Land Management, whose Director was Sen. Harry Reid’s (D-Nev.) former senior adviser and son (RoryReid), is being forced by the government to give up his land, or have his cattle killed until he does: land which his family has worked over 140 years. Why, because Reid’s sons represents a large Chinese energy company that wants to build on the land. Some say well both are wrong. I just disagree, if the government can say any land is federal, then they can even claim your land and home by asserting such, like they did this man here.

Fact remains, no matter where we look, we see the military training in public streets and preparing for martial law right in broad daylight,  and we don’t say anything. Likewise we see Nationwide,Police assaulting and murdering innocent people with zero consequences, even when they are handcuffed in the back of cars .Why? Because we are silient, don’t want to rock the boat and say nothing about the administration of our current President even if it is true. They way things are today, policing in USA is roping in as many people as you can, see how many have guns or warrants, and then basically throw back the innocent ones. The problem is that they end up sweeping up a lot of innocent people and charging them with pointless crimes, fueled by a war on drugs that only results in the mass incarceration only the poor and people of color and more prisions. And each year, Obama’s Budget show federal prisons (not Education) is here he sallocates most of our tax dollars. For example, Obama’s FY 2014 Budget requests a total of $8.5 billion for federal prisons a 3.5 percent increase over the FY 2012 appropriated level.

We as a people and a nation need to be honest with ourselves. As it currently stand, we are immaterial and disposable. The United States is no democracy, but actually an oligarchy run by plutocrats, inclusive of our present President. Ours now, due to our own ignorance, is a government dominated by the political influence of the elite and wealthy Americans for their benefit alone over what is best for ordinary citizens. Don’t sleep, what they did to Miriam Carey and are doing to Clive Bundy, has nothing to do with race and they will do it to you and I also.

It is Starting To Get As Real - Land Grabs, AGenda21, Eminent Domain

Books Read Thus Far 2014

• Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War by Pepe Escobar
• Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge by Pepe Escobar
• Obama does Globalistan by Pepe Escobar
• How the Economy Was Lost: The War of the Worlds by Paul Craig Roberts
• The New Color Line: How Quotas and Privilege Destroy Democracy by Paul Craig Roberts
• The Problem of Slavery in the Age of Emancipation by David Brion Davis
•  No Exit from Pakistan: America’s Tortured Relationship with Islamabad by Daniel S. Markey
• The Way of the Knife: The CIA, a Secret Army, and a War at the Ends of the Earth by Mark Mazzetti
• Magnificent Delusions: Pakistan, the United States, and an Epic History of Misunderstanding by Husain Haqqani
• The China-Pakistan Axis: Asia’s New Geopolitics by Andrew Small
• Becoming Dickens: The Invention of a Novelist by Robert Douglas-Fairhurst
• German Colonialism: A Short History by Sebastian Conrad
• The Generalissimo: Chiang Kai-shek and the Struggle for Modern China by Jay Taylor
• The Negro In Illinois:The WPA Papers edited by Brian Dolinar
• The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi
• Lawrence in Arabia: War, Deceit, Imperial Folly and the Making of the Modern Middle East  by Scott Anderson
• The War That Ended Peace: The Road to 1914 by Margaret MacMillan
• The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind – and Changed the History of Free Speech in  America by Thomas Healy
• All the Presidents' Bankers: The Hidden Alliances that Drive American Power by Nomi Prins
• Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt by Michael Lewis
• The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap by Matt Taibbi
• Seventeen Contradictions and the End of Capitalism by David Harvey
• Utopia or Bust: A Guide to the Present Crisis (Jacobin) by Benjamin Kunkel
• To Catch A Thief by David Dodge
• Death and Taxes by David Dodge
• Bullets For The Bridegroom by David Dodge
• Capital in the Twenty-First Century by Thomas Piketty
• The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor by William Easterly

RED READING CURRENTLY