The fix is in … Hillary will win … vote for Jill Stein!

 

I've finally emerged from my naive stupor and faced the facts.

Hillary Clinton will be installed as the next POTUS, regardless of how many people do or do not vote for her.

To the extent that I see the insulting choice between the Queen of Chaos and the King of the Racist Rant as somehow pivotal, I have been subconsciously mulling this diabolical verity for some time now. 

What finally cracked the edifice of my willful denial was a highly insightful interview of Julian Assange by the award-winning Australian journalist and film maker, John Pilger.  Please take the time to watch this.

Assange discusses the incriminating emails he has dumped into the public sphere, denies that Russia had anything to do with providing them, highlights Hillary Clinton's criminal use of the Clinton Foundation for influence peddling and her demented plan to establish herself as the go-to candidate for the presidency by destroying Libya and attacking Syria, Wikileaks' role in exposing systemic corruption wherever it occurs, the U.S. defying the UN and ignoring international law, rendering him a fugitive in the Ecuadoran Embassy.

Assange as always is brilliant.  He claims Hillary's victory is predetermined, a foregone conclusion.  History and the facts are on his side.  Think George W. Bush in 2000. 

What will happen after Clinton's coronation in January is anyone's guess.  All informed predictions portend the worst.

The world is heading for war.  No one I know seems to have any clue how that decision is made and who makes it.  But the writing is on the wall.  The military build-ups in Europe and Asia, the constant vilification of Russia and intimidation of China, the hysterical and thoroughly unfounded clamoring about the necessity to stop the aggressive actions of Putin -- though no evidence is presented because no real evidence is available -- all paint the same hideous portrait of apocalyptic violence and unprecedented carnage.

World War III.

Why?  Why must it again come to this?  Because . . .

It's time.

And Hillary Clinton is the perfect minion to inflict this upon the world.

The preparations are being made as I write this, while the mesmerized masses either can't wait to get to the polls because they've already made their decision, or ponder the weighty choice between a sociopathic narcissist and a criminally insane warmonger.

As if it made a difference.

So . . .

Vote for Jill Stein.

You have nothing to lose.
It won't change the results of the election.

As I've said, the fix is in.  The power brokers, the investment banks, Wall Street, the media, the transnational corporations, the security agencies (except for some rebels in the FBI), the .01%, the oligarchs, have made their choice.  The polls have been fixed around that choice, as will be the final results of the election.

Why Jill Stein?

If the programming of the voting machines hasn't completely removed any possibility of her getting sufficient voter support, and the Green Party manages 5% of the popular vote, it will qualify for federal matching funds in the next election.

If there is a next election.

Am I being pessimistic?

Of course not.  There is hope!  The Loch Ness Monster might come out of hiding, and lead humankind to a new spiritual rebirth.  Or in an unexpected turn of events, Sasquatch will win the presidency on a write-in ballot, then require all armaments to be melted down and turned into snow shoes.  An extinction-threatening meteor could glide in from outer space and make a soft landing at Dulles Int'l Airport, Jesus Christ, Ghandi, Buddha and Nelson Mandela could emerge healthy and invigorated, take a limo into DC and talk some sense into the lunatics running our country.

Or . . . or . . .



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



The fix is in … Hillary will win … vote for Jill Stein!

Why Donald Trump is not as horrible as Hillary Clinton . . . and why you should vote for Jill Stein.

I could have named this article "Damage Control" -- because it essentially is about that, related to the lobotomizing dilemma of "lesser evil voting".

But let me be clear at the outset.  I have already voted for Jill Stein.  I had no other choice.  I am firm in my conviction that to vote for sociopathic, narcissistic, self-serving, ruthless, guileful corporatists is an unconscionable act and a major crime against my country, irrespective of the convoluted rationalization which might attempt to justify it.

Now let me offer reasoning that goes beyond my "morally pure" posturing.

The accepted wisdom is that a vote for Jill Stein is a vote for Donald Trump.  This analysis purports that anyone voting for Stein would likely be a former Clinton supporter, and such a vote would subtract from Clinton's total.

Even though Hillary's elitist, warmongering, anti-democratic, demonstrably criminal world view is diametrically the opposite of Jill Stein's, and I can't imagine anyone who's moved by the Green Party's agenda for the briefest moment being fooled by Clinton's phony populism, for argument's sake I'll accept this proposition.

While I consider both Trump and Clinton to be equally unfit for office, I do not for a moment believe they would be equally ineffective.

Hillary has for good reason become the choice of the oligarchs, the MIC, the bankers, the media, the people who actually run the country.  She will serve them well.  She knows her way around the system -- she's been gaming it most of her adult life -- and has all the right connections.  Which is why even many prominent Republicans have joined the feeding frenzy and flocked to her like vultures over fresh kill.

Hillary will continue her faux-populist bloviating to keep the stinky masses in line, while her closest allies, the rich and powerful, continue to loot the Treasury, hollow out what's left of the U.S. economy, and bankrupt the middle and lower classes.

Much to the delight of the neocon-infested Department of State, Department of Defense, security agencies, MIC, and media, Hillary will "get tough" with Russia and China, press the war on Syria and the rest of the Middle East, promote and spread more chaos, death, and destruction across the globe in pursuit of military conquest, ultimately world empire.  It'll be good for business and pumping up the already inflated egos of the exceptionalists.

On the other hand, Trump will fall flat on his face.  His trademark bull-in-a-china-shop approach to making deals has no chance of success in Washington DC.  He has no support -- his own party has all but disowned him -- no connections, at least not the political ones necessary for promoting his agenda.  Yes, the politicos drank his champagne and ate the food at his extravagant bashes.  Who wouldn't?  But they don't owe him anything.  Nada! Trump's much heralded talents for making great deals would confront hostile Democrats, contemptuous Republicans -- a perhaps long-overdue bipartisanship -- closing ranks to isolate and defeat the outrageous and vulgar outsider who thought he could buy and muscle his way into political power.

 

He'll try to build his wall.  When Congress gets done with it, it'll be a 200-foot white picket fence in Calexico.  He'll attempt rapprochement with Russia.  That will be sabotaged with a false flag attack, maybe dressing some disgruntled maquiladora workers as Russian infantry men and mounting an invasion on the U.S. -- probably in Calexico -- or by John McCain threatening to fall on a grenade or blow his brains out in the Senate chambers if America doesn't immediately nuke Moscow.

Despite his self-proclaimed success in the business world, Trump simply does not know the rules of the game in Washington DC.  Unless he "fires" everyone -- declaring martial law and sending all members of the legislature to a FEMA labor camp in Montana -- he will either be the most ineffective president in history or be impeached.  Maybe both!

In a phrase, Donald Trump as president will do 'less damage'.

Anyone who has read my blogs knows that my greatest concern about a Hillary Clinton presidency is her truculent foreign policy.  A decade ago, I might have believed that she was misguided.  Now I realize -- as quite a number of others do -- that she is completely insane.  She's become drunk on power, poisoned by surrounding herself with neocons and warmongering humanitarians, possessed by visions of herself as the Warrior Queen. 

Or as many other writers have been saying . . .

A vote for Hillary Clinton is a vote for World War III.

So . . .

Vote for Jill Stein!

We'll have our first female president, a great president at that! 

One we can all be truly proud of.  The world will breathe a sigh of relief!
At the same time, if voting for Jill Stein ends up electing Donald Trump . . .

So be it.

At least we'll come out of it alive.  And . . .

We'll have four more years to figure out how America got so screwed up.

Hillary can go back to taking bribes and looting impoverished countries.

Hard choices . . . so many helpless victims, so little time.




[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Why Donald Trump is not as horrible as Hillary Clinton . . . and why you should vote for Jill Stein.

I didn’t throw my vote away!

 

It's that time of year.  I got my absentee ballot.

I'm proud to say I didn't throw my vote away.

Here were the choices for president . . .

1. A lying psychopath who takes special delight in murdering heads of state and innocent civilians, will start World War III, if that's what it takes to get her name writ large in the history books.
2. A lying sociopath with ADD and a penchant for locker room talk, who takes special delight in making racist threats against anyone who's not white, and moreover who can't put together a coherent sentence containing more than six words.
3. A clueless empty suit who apparently has modeled himself after Alfred E. Neuman, who thinks Aleppo is a blood disease which causes diarrhea in house pets, and the name of the leader of North Korea is Kim Buk Too.
4. An articulate medical doctor, peace and environmental activist, who has an inspiring and detailed plan for reducing poverty and wealth inequality, ending the unnecessary and destructive wars, addressing the mounting crisis of climate change, and restoring representative democracy and integrity to government.

Seriously?  There's a choice?

It reminds me of the time I was asked to appear on a TV game show.

"Welcome, ladies and gentlemen, to Choose Well or Die, America's new giveaway fun fest, where some lucky guy gets a chance to go home with a new lease on life, or meet the Grim Reaper.  Tonight's first guest is John Rachel, itinerant blogger and novelist originally from Detroit, Michigan.  Welcome, John.  How are you feeling tonight?"

"Better than an Eskimo with a bikini wax."

"Sounds terrific, John.  So here are your choices.  Now take your time and think this over.  Would you rather . . ."

1. Have your eyes gouged out with red hot tire irons while the lower half of your body is immersed in a vat of pure hydrochloric acid?
2. Be anally raped by a buffalo while five rabid pit bulls rip your face apart?
3. Be skinned alive, then trampled to death by a stampeding herd of elephants?
4. Win $1 billion tax free, and be shuttled all over the world from your private tropical island in the South Pacific, in a luxurious 360-foot yacht with 24 of your closest friends and admirers?

"Hmm.  This is tougher than I thought.  Is that yacht eco-friendly?"

You get the idea.

 

Anyway, after thinking about it for less time than it takes Bruce Willis to comb his hair, here's how I marked my ballot. 

Did I throw my vote away?  I guess that depends on how you define "throw away".

I decided to vote on principle.  Somebody has to, because . . . eventually everyone must. 

It should never come down to what we are faced with this election, deciding between psychopathic Hillary or sociopathic Donald.  But it has.  I'm not sure which of them is worse.  It's too close to call.

I do know one thing.  If we play this game again this time . . . it'll be the same next time.  Maybe even worse, though that's hard to imagine.

What's the principle which defines my choice?

A vote is an endorsement.  Therefore . . .

I will not cast my vote for corruption; lying; wars; rampant corporatism; totalitarian rule by an oligarchy; wealth inequality; government by Wall Street, the too-big-to-fail banks, and transnationals; the destruction of democracy.  Both Clinton and Trump are all of that and more.  More of the slow, steady evisceration of what I once believed America stood for.

A vote is too precious to waste on criminals and narcissists.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


I didn’t throw my vote away!

VIDEO BLOG: Open up the debates!

I want to throw out a challenge to the participants in the coming presidential debates.

Of course, the fair and democratic thing to do would be to open the debates to Jill Stein and Gary Johnson.

But certainly the Democratic and Republican parties, and the puppets administering the debates, couldn’t care less about fairness or democracy.  They’re in the game for power and it’s winner take all.  Screw the founding fathers, the intent of the Constitution, and all that fancy high-sounding theoretical fluff.  They want to win.  There’s lots of money to be made for their corporate and Wall Street friends.

So I’m not going to talk about values, and none of what I have to say is directed at either the Republican or Democratic leadership, and certainly not the Commission on Presidential Debates, which is just a shill organization, a smokescreen for that same leadership.
I
 am making my appeal first to the candidates, and second to the TV network in charge, CNN.
Donald Trump thinks Jill Stein is a beer mug you can buy at Jillian’s Curios in Topeka, Kansas.  Trump knows what a Johnson is but hasn’t a clue about this Gary guy, or why he should worry about this Gary guy’s peepee.  Besides, Trump shouldn’t care who’s onstage. What is he going to do?  Fine tune the septic swill that spews out of his pie hole?

So I say to you, Donald.  Let’s go for it.  The more the merrier!

Clinton is the problem.  I don’t think she relishes having someone like Jill Stein on that debate stage.  Jill is more intelligent, better informed, has integrity, knows what America really needs, speaks for the priorities and values of the vast majority, and is honest.  Whew!  That could be a real problem.
See, Hillary and the Donald are bullshitters of the highest order.  Hillary is in her comfort zone in a pile of shit.  She figures she can hold her own against even the tsunami of the stinky stuff Trump will barrage her with.

But Jill Stein?  Big problem there.

So my challenge is to you, Hillary.  You claim to be the Iron Lady of America, with all the right stuff to be the first female prez in our history.  Show us you’re not afraid of some real competition.  Do you have the brass cajones, the bulked up ovaries, to go head-to-head with someone who actually has something to say?  Who has a real program for rescuing America from the likes of hypocrites like you?  Are you up for it?

I think not.  But Hillary, this is your chance to prove me wrong.  Let’s see some courage.  Show some guts.  You can still laugh that hyena laugh, even faint, have convulsions, or cough your way through the performance.  Jill Stein won’t crimp your style.  She’ll just put some substance on the table.
Like I said, I doubt if Hillary is up to it.  I expect her to refuse to allow Stein and Johnson in the debates.  While Johnson poses no threat, Hillary is DEATHLY AFRAID OF JILL STEIN!

Alright!  NOW it’s time for you folks over at CNN to listen up.  Come on, guys.  Let’s put on your thinking caps.

I’m not talking public duty, responsible broadcasting, patriotism, or anything of the like here.

I’m talking money!

Big clue . . . Hillary turns down debating Jill Stein.  Why?  Because it’ll be a bloodbath.  Stein will chop up Clinton like those table chefs at Benihana.  Then she’ll turn to Trump and vaporize the moronic egomaniac.  Trump won’t know it because he’s oblivious to everything except his own self-aggrandizing blasts of noxious self-adulation.  But the audience will know!

Do you see what’s at stake here?  You guys want a cage fight and you’re counting on a real battle of the bloviators from Clinton and Trump.  But what about the midget who comes out of the audience and pile drives both of them into a mat soaked with the blood of their disgusting egos.  THIS IS WHAT YOU’RE REALLY LOOKING FOR!

You’ll make good money on that first debate.  But after Stein turns Hillary and Donald into hog sausage, the next debate will be the windfall of windfalls!  The second debate will get so many viewers, it’ll make the Superbowl look like a 4 am public service announcement.

So wake up, CNN!  When Hillary refuses, get all righteous on her.  Start talking about inclusiveness and the right of the voting public to have real choice.  Tell Hillary that public duty requires you to put both Jill Stein and Gary Johnson in the debates.

Then send me a fat check for putting you on to the greatest cash cow in the history of politics.  Call the second debate . . . 

“The Fiercest Bloodiest No-Holds-Barred Death Match Presidential Debate in History”

Blood and guts!  It’s what sells.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

VIDEO BLOG: Open up the debates!

A Look At Some Other Numbers

 

On July 20th, I created The “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” Pledge Campaign.  This included setting up petitions at four reputable petition campaign sites to keep track of the number of participants.  Off to an encouraging start, I got signatures on the very first day.

This whole effort addresses what I consider to be the primary obstacle to Jill Stein getting elected.  That is, it offers a mechanism to work around the predictable fears that most voters have that if they vote third-party, they will "throw their vote away" and even worse, end up electing one of the major party candidates who they abhor.  Those who voted for Ralph Nader -- I was one of them -- were wrongly accused of throwing the election to George W. Bush.  Though this is easily established as false, the idea of the "spoiler vote" continues to persist and serve the agenda of the two-party monopoly, preventing any real challenge from either the progressive left, the libertarian right, or any party for that matter functioning outside the narrow, tightly choreographed corporate mainstream.

The success of my campaign to unite potential Jill Stein voters into a bloc, essentially by "pre-polling" the voting public, was predicated on ascertaining in advance that there were sufficient voters to elect her.  Ascertaining that meant voters could comfortably vote for her without fear of wasting their votes, perhaps inadvertently electing Donald or Hillary, whichever might be judged worse -- though in my book it's a toss-up. 

The target was 50 million or more voter signatures, which I determined would be enough, if distributed appropriately in important swing states, to put her in the White House.

The key to getting that many signatures was the power of an exponential multiplier, or as I euphemistically dubbed it, the power of numbers.  If each person who signed the petition -- and in doing so agreed to participate in the program -- told only two others, instructing them to each likewise tell two others, in less than 30 days we could have over 67 million people signed up, more than enough to eradicate all anxiety about voting for Jill Stein.

So how did we do?

On September 9th, we finally hit 5,000 signatures across all four petition sites.

That is, we managed to get 5,000 well-meaning folks -- and judging from the comments very passionate supporters of Jill Stein -- to jump on board, and it only took 52 days.

Mind you, I didn't just sit back and twiddle my thumbs.  In fact from the day I started the campaign till now, I've sent out over a thousand tweets, posted it on over ninety Facebook pages, posted it as comments on some fifty plus political media sites, posted it on Google+, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Tumblr, Stumbleupon, Reddit, Blogger, Delicious, and Live Journal.

Which suggests that assuming I don't suffer from dwindling returns for my effort -- highly doubtful since the "low fruit" gets used up quickly -- to get to 50 million signature, I would only need to keep doing what I've been doing for the next 1,424 years. 

What do you think?  Should I keep going?

Alright . . . what happened?

That is perhaps the easiest question in the world.

People didn't recruit anyone else.  Despite their personal enthusiasm for Jill Stein, despite many of them -- judging from the enthusiastic praise I got for the idea -- thinking it was a highly ingenious way to make her a viable candidate in the eyes of a fearful voting public, despite them making a firm pledge when they signed the petition which committed them to the action which was the critical core of the strategy . . .

"I will now contact two other people who I respect and trust, let them know there is a real alternative to the Clinton vs. Trump political spectacle, explain that if we frustrated voters join together, we don’t have to throw our votes away, we can elect a great president, America’s first female president no less."

. . . they just couldn't bring themselves to talk to and convince others that this was a necessary and worthwhile project.

Am I surprised?  Of course not.  Disappointed but not surprised.

As citizens we have become paralyzed by our own timidity and fear of failure, intimidated and rendered dysfunctional by the dysfunction all around us.  We've become disengaged and numb from the constant trumpeting of counter-productive memes, false narratives, the insultingly banal media coverage of politics, the disinformation and propaganda that bombards us 24/7/365.  We have been made cynical and immersed in despair by endless violations of the public trust by our leaders, by the condescending and cavalier lies we are constantly told by our politicians and other puppet-masters in the pulpits of power.  Most tragically, we have become afraid, afraid of the police, afraid of the government, afraid of one another, afraid to act.  We're just too afraid to turn to a couple other people and say:  "Hey, look at this.  I think it's a great idea!"

But here is the problem . . .

No matter how hopeless and difficult it seems, we must act.  We must get involved.  Time is running out on democracy.  There still remains some small hope that we as citizens can make a difference.  

But that hope is shrinking fast.

What probably the majority of citizens apparently fail to understand -- or if possible avoid thinking about -- is that in our current social and political environment, under the "rules of the game", we have no choice but to participate.  Just being a citizen means you are intrinsically a functional "activist" in a system which determines everything that is happening now and will happen in the future.

There is widespread reluctance to recognize and embrace a simple fact:  The future is still ours for the taking.

The numbers are with us across the board -- on many key issues, on outrage and contempt for Congress, on collective revulsion for the choice we are being waterboarded with via the two major party presidential candidates.

What is lacking?

Courage.  The courage to just reach out to others and say:

"I've had it!  I'm not playing this game anymore."

Yes, many are saying this but only to themselves.  Until the American public hears a loud roar and a thunderous chant, and each and all realize they are not alone, they individually will again buckle to their fear, and be afraid of a simple act like reaching out to just two others -- even two others of like mind and thinking -- and talking, just being open and honest about issues that confront all of us but from which we retreat like cowards.

Recognize this . . .

Being paralyzed by fear and hopelessness is a form of "citizen participation".

As is surrender or any other form of capitulation or acknowledging defeat.

It's self-sabotaging but participation no less.

To not act is counter-intuitively an act.

Because to not act is a choice.

And all choices have their consequences.

We will live or die by what those consequences look like.


[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



A Look At Some Other Numbers

Deep-State Doppelgängers

As an outsider -- I'm an American expat living in Japan -- I've had to seek out my own unique set of "insiders", individuals who have special access to the inner workings of the U.S.  My most fruitful source of insider information has turned out to be an Latvian taxi driver based in Youngstown, Ohio who has a network of informers deep within the bowels of our opaque government machinery.  His expert psychic talent plus the natural ability to see through both lead paint and building insulation, combine with his disarming knack for making light of any situation -- he has a sideline business as a stand-up comic at local area funerals -- to penetrate the most secure firewalls of secrecy put in place by the plutocrats and power brokers nestled in the Washington DC bubble.  I've never met him in person but we talk regularly on Citizens Band radio (channel 7).

What he told me yesterday was shocking and left me nearly speechless.  But speaking I am right now to share with you what I learned.

It doesn't matter who we vote for in the coming election for president!

This is not because as is commonly thought the electoral system is completely rigged.  Rather, it's because whoever is elected will immediately be disappeared by the Deep State security agencies and replaced with a robot which you and I will not be able to detect is a fake.  Then this deep-state controlled doppelgänger will do and say what it is programmed to say and do.  You and I will never be the wiser.

The NSA in conjunction with DARPA have been perfecting the science of anthro-robotics for this very purpose.  The results are astonishing.

The Donald Trump prototype is already being street tested.



On the other hand, the Hillary Clinton robo-doppelgänger has had some snags.  The finest researchers at the facility are having trouble capturing some of the tics, outlandish facial expressions and seizures which have recently become her trademarks.  After all, they've spent millions of dollars trying to emulate normal behavior, not that of a crazy person.  Look at this video and you'll see what they're up against.

They've still managed to come up with an "early version" of what they are confident will be a very convincing President Clinton II simulation.



No one gives Jill Stein a chance in hell of winning the election.  But the ever-cautious deep state robotics experts are taking no chances.  This early mock-up appears to need a little fine tuning but I'm confident they'll get it right by inauguration day.



DARPA and the NSA have decided they can replace Gary Johnson with a washing machine jacked up with some artificial intelligence and nobody will know the difference.  They are, however, having a little trouble keeping the feisty anthro-bot on message.



There you have it.  Voting is a complete waste of time!  Don't bother.

The good news is that the 23rd season of Dancing With The Stars will be showcasing such amazing talents as Amber Rose, Ryan Lochte, and Laurie Hernandez.  It would appear that November 8th will be a good day to just stay home and watch TV.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



Deep-State Doppelgängers

Russian Roulette

 

Since everyone seems so easily distracted these days, I'm going to make this short and sweet, extremely straightforward.

People question my choice for president in the coming election.  Here's my reply.

There's a revolver on the table and six bullets.  You are going to play Russian roulette.  You have no choice in the matter.  You will play!

Voting for Hillary Clinton means they will load six bullets, filling the cylinder.

Voting for Donald Trump means they will insert five bullets, leaving one chamber open.

Voting for Jill Stein means there will be no bullets in the gun.

Why Russian roulette? 

Because Hillary is surrounding herself with warmongering neocon lunatics -- she is a warmongering neocon lunatic herself.  She'll start a major war with Russia.  Lacking any diplomatic sense or understanding of history, she has equated President Vladimir Putin with Adolph Hitler.  Since Obama already has pushed America and Russia to the brink of war, and Hillary just keeps escalating her facile anti-Russian rhetoric, we have no reason to expect otherwise.  World War III, here we come.

Trump talks of rapprochement and working with Russia.  But he's crazy and changes his mind daily.  Who knows?  He's almost as scary as Hillary.

Jill Stein wants peace and cooperation in the world.

If the U.S. ends up in a major war with Russia, it will go nuclear and that will be that.
All other issues -- immigration, Muslims, wealth inequality, jobs, equal rights, a living wage, etc. -- will be off the table because there will be no table, no room, and no building.  The city, the nation, and everyone in it will be turned into radioactive corpses and rubble.

Pick up the gun.  Choose your game.

I made my choice.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Russian Roulette

Just Making A Buck

 

It seems that every time I look at a news media site, there's yet another announcement of a giant arms deal between the U.S. and some foreign country.

Maybe I should feel all aflutter that at least some things are still being manufactured in the U.S., instead of China or Bangladesh.

America is the main supplier of arms to the world.  I don't mean prosthetic arms.
Guns, bombs, bombers, fighter jets, ammunition, artillery, tanks, attack helicopters, attack and reconnaissance drones, rockets -- you name it -- just about every killing device and deadly combat technology, except nuclear weapons, is in the catalog.  Last year our foreign sales of military equipment reached a record high of $46.6 billion!

Recognizing that making money and bolstering the economy are main drivers for most of our foreign policy decisions, I still can't help but wonder why two obvious questions never get asked:

1. As an allegedly Judeo-Christian nation, is this really the best way to honor those values we claim are the core of our beliefs?  "Do unto others ..." and "Thou shalt not kill ..." are a couple phrases that immediately come to mind.
2. Is flooding the world with weapons which may, given the apparent volatility of political loyalties, be ultimately pointed right back at us, really a very smart thing to do?

 

I realize that these are secondary and tertiary considerations -- if they ever come up at all -- in the boardrooms of military companies and their mirrored think tanks, and the decision making forums of our government, where profit and raw power are more important than people's lives, reducing and eliminating human suffering, or even embracing basic human decency.

But how can we claim to be advocates for a peaceful world if any Tom, Dick, or Abdul can arm their countries to the teeth by simply buying the ingenuity and efficacy of American killing machines, instruments of war, technological marvels that erase human life?  Or do we even bother worrying about such inconsistencies anymore?  Frankly, it doesn't seem that in the raucous din of saber-rattling and incessant beating of war drums we now must endure 24/7/365, peace ever gets even passing mention by our congressional leaders or White House spokespersons.

It's quite obvious to anyone not under the ideological spell of neocon lunacy . . .

The aggressive promotion of our war industries and pursuit of profit through arms deals is mind-bogglingly self-sabotaging, whatever the pecuniary rewards.  It's like pulling up with a truck full of assault weapons in downtown Cambden, NJ and selling them to anyone who forks over the bucks, hoping that all these folks will use good judgment and not cause any undue harm.  It is an understatement to say this approach is patently stupid and suicidal!

President Obama himself, a man who was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize based purely on the rhetoric of his presidential campaign and speeches made in the first few months of his presidency, most notably his A New Beginning address to Muslim nations June 4, 2009 in Cairo, has outpaced George W. Bush with accelerated approvals of lethal weapons sales to foreign buyers, and has significantly relaxed or done away with altogether the regulatory framework intended to safeguard against those weapons getting into the wrong hands.

 

To put this in perspective, President Obama has sold more armaments than any president since World War II, and thus we are daily treated to scenes in the media of all sides of a conflict blasting away at one another with high-end U.S. manufactured equipment.  Much of it initially goes to legitimate, approved buyers but then gets stolen, captured, even intentionally passed along, so that terrorists groups who represent our worst nightmares, who are anti-American to the core and willing to do anything to destroy the "Great Satan" and supreme infidels we are judged by them to be, then are in a position to mount astonishingly successful military campaigns, conquer and control huge swaths of territory, forcing millions of refugees to flee to Europe and other areas of the globe, creating the worst such crisis in seven decades.

Many political analysts on the left -- ones I happen to agree with -- say this is all actually entirely preplanned and deliberate, that the U.S. has mutated into the Empire of Chaos, one maintaining its supremacy as the world's only remaining superpower by seeding and feeding disarray and destruction.  This is entirely consistent with the Wolfowitz Doctrine, a landmark policy embedded in Defense Planning Guidance recommendations issued in 1992.  This paradigm-shifting proposal in short order established the tone and substance for America's application of power over the subsequent two-and-a-half decades:

Our first objective is to prevent the re-emergence of a new rival, either on the territory of the former Soviet Union or elsewhere, that poses a threat on the order of that posed formerly by the Soviet Union.  This is a dominant consideration underlying the new regional defense strategy and requires that we endeavor to prevent any hostile power from dominating a region whose resources would, under consolidated control, be sufficient to generate global power.

So America is to reign supreme and anyone who appears to threaten that arrangement will have to be dealt with accordingly.  Even the slightest challenge can trigger overwhelming opposition by the U.S.  The list of countries bombed into submission, functionally erased as nations, or whose leadership has been replaced by regime change if formidable and still growing. 

Except for its confrontation with the Soviet Union during the five decades of the Cold War, the U.S. has typically limited itself to smaller, more easily bullied countries -- Afghanistan, Iraq, Vietnam, Libya.  Despite its abysmal record of both military and diplomatic failure in almost all of its interventions, America's recklessness and hubris continues to escalate, as this cycle's presidential candidates, divorced from the realities on the ground, competed in bluster and bombast, promising bigger and badder explosions and wars.  No country, large or small, is to be given a pass. For example, Russia and China just recently were identified as major national security threats.  They are now prime targets for either military action or chaos and crippling by whatever means the U.S. chooses to enlist.  Of course, neither has attacked nor shown any intention of attacking America.  BUT they are both growing more powerful and have proven unwilling to play a submissive vassal state role, determined to meet their own needs and national priorities.  And even more horrifying in the view of the hegemonic America-first neocons, Russia and China are now cooperating on many fronts and appear to be entering into a full-on military and economic alliance, inviting countries from the rest of the world who are fed up with Washington's imperialism and truculence.   

Not only Russia and China are in the cross hairs.  It seems on a more perspicuous analysis that the Wolfowitz Doctrine applies not just to hostile powers, but any power, as the U.S. manipulates and bullies even its allies to exclusively serve American interests.  Recently, we've seen aggressive interference by the U.S. to prevent any pursuit of independence by EU/NATO countries.  Japan, of course, has been under America's thumb for seventy years, and despite some grumbling from Japanese citizenry, has remained a good lapdog for the Empire.  With Obama's "pivot to Asia", which is built on intensified deployment of military assets in the region, while stirring up longstanding rivalries among the Asian countries, divide-and-conquer is alive and well.  Though the Chinese have a longstanding history of non-aggression and have made it clear they would rather work out any disputes at a conference table rather than on the battlefield, it is now the primary boogeyman.


For our "friends" often much of this meddling and manipulation comes down to money.  It's such a win-win situation -- unless, of course, you happen to be an American citizen.  The U.S. guarantees the security of other nations against both real and imagined threats, and foots the bill for much of the military equipment and deployment of U.S. troops.  The countries are effectively subsidized for being an American protectorate, quite generously so.  Pax Americana gets to be king of the mountain.  You and I foot the bill.  The defense industries pocket the profits.

All I can say is this:  What a colossal waste!

What a waste of our tax money.  What a waste of our leadership role in the world.  What a waste of our generosity.  What a waste of our resources.  What a waste of the energy that once went into building a great nation and maintaining a functioning society.

Environmentalist Bill McKibben, activist Naomi Klein, Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein, and countless others have proposed that America immediately take the lead in creating a green energy world.  We can still make a buck — billions and billions of them, far more than we make on weapons of war — manufacturing and selling the necessary equipment and technology, and providing training and infrastructure for a global green energy revolution. 

Is it so far-fetched to imagine a world covered with wind turbines and solar panels, instead of missile launchers and tanks?  Is it so extreme or quixotic to want to transform the surface of the planet into a vast sustainable community instead of a killing field?

Where would you have America invest its vast economic resources and wealth?  Creating a harmonious future and habitable planet, or promoting chaos, death, destruction, and the inevitable collapse of civilization?





[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]

Just Making A Buck

A Look At The Numbers

 

This references my previous article, The "I'll vote for Jill if you will" Pledge Campaign, which to my pleasant surprise has resulted in quite a bit of positive support.

Several commenters asked me how I came up with the numbers, and how realistic was it to think that we could get 50,000,000 folks to sign the pledge to vote for Jill Stein, the target for "activating" the promise to vote for her.  Meaning, if 50,000,000 voters took the pledge, they could all vote for her, secure in the knowledge that they would not be throwing their vote away -- a vote of conscience resulting in a victory by whichever major-party candidate they happened to despise.

I said that 50,000,000 would "guarantee" a plurality win?  How did I arrive at that figure?

Well, there are no "guarantees" in a system using unverifiable electronic voting machines, so we can just give this our best estimate:  There are 146,311,000 registered voters in the U.S.  In the 2012 election, 126,144,000 voted.  If we assume a very formidable turnout of 130,000,000 for 2016, 50,000,000 represents a 38% plurality. This would allow as much as a 12% spread between Trump and Clinton, e.g. 25% Trump and 37% Clinton.  Actually, some predict that it might go the other way, meaning as much as 37% for Trump and 25% for Clinton, on the expectation that Stein would be pulling the "progressive" vote away from Clinton.

I also said that 50,000,000 was realistic -- it was an achievable target -- and showed how the power of an exponential multiplier provides us plenty of time to get this organized and done.  At the same time, we should recognize that the arithmetic alone begs the question of whether there are people out there who are even receptive to a third-party option, who are sufficiently disgusted with the way this election is shaping up to jump off the major-party bandwagons.

Again, we can only speculate.  But a few factors are encouraging.

As cited in a Salon article, Gallup polls for the fifth year in a row indicate that over 40% of voters identify themselves as "independents", so disenchanted are they with the two-party system which has defined electoral politics for much of recent history.

More specifically, deep dissatisfaction with the major-party choice of Trump vs. Clinton is evidenced by historic levels of unfavorability ratings.  Clinton is at 55% and rising, Trump is at 70% and could go either way.  But just taking them at these current levels means that there is a minimum 25% of voters who strongly disapprove of both.  This 25% translates to more than 36,000,000 registered voters -- a huge number of voters who apparently prefer to vote for neither.  If they can be directed Jill Stein's way, this is a big head start toward our goal of 50,000,000!

Lastly, Jill Stein has taken a bold and powerful stand on an issue which garnered much favor and enthusiasm in the Bernie revolution, that of free college education.  Currently, some 42,000,000 college graduates are saddled with onerous debts, just trying to obtain skills and credentials which will give them a fighting chance for a decent job in our highly competitive and compromised job market.  Jill Stein has committed to a full forgiveness of student loan debt if she becomes president.  Talk about reaching out to young people and appealing to them to vote in their own interests!

I don't have to tell you that I think the "I'll vote for Jill if you will" pledge idea could be a real game-changer.  It risks nothing, demands little of voters other than a few minutes of their time and a commitment to attentive, fearless voting, should the campaign succeed, yet offers the possibility of a paradigm shift in electoral politics.  Finally, the stranglehold of the two major parties will be broken, and a new broad range of potential solutions will be brought center-stage to the national conversation.
But good ideas are not automatic.  Good ideas only get traction if people take the time to understand them, then actively share their understanding with others.  The language of the pledge makes this necessity clear:

"I will now contact two other people who I respect and trust, let them know there is a real alternative to the Clinton vs. Trump political spectacle, explain that if we frustrated voters join together, we will not be throwing our votes away, we can elect a great president, America’s first female president no less."

The corporate-controlled main stream media did everything it could to marginalize and destroy the Bernie Sanders campaign.  It has also been completely successful at keeping Jill Sanders an invisibility on the political stage.

Therefore, it's up to us:  Each person tells two others, who each tell two others, who . . . 

It's the power of numbers.

It's the power of people over plutocracy, the voice of individual citizens shouting down the mind-numbing mantras of the 1%, mouthed by their brain-dead talking heads and political puppets.
There are 61,450,000 "independents" out there somewhere.  There are 36,578,000 voters who think neither Clinton nor Trump should be president.  There are 42,000,000 students struggling to pay for their college education.

We have work to do!

[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



A Look At The Numbers

The “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” Pledge Campaign

Vast numbers of voters are frustrated and angry!  It’s come down to Hillary Clinton vs. Donald Trump?  Can this be happening?  These are the two most unpopular candidates in the history of presidential elections!

Of course . . . there is an excellent alternative.  But understandably voters are afraid of “throwing their vote away”.

Here’s the solution:  We join together in a person-to-person pledge campaign, the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” initiative, supporting the presidential bid of Dr. Jill Stein.  And together we’ll elect the first female President of the United States, one who will do a phenomenal job of putting America back on track.  Here’s how . . .



Step 1:   After you take the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” personal pledge, just let us know by officially signing the petition at one of the sites listed below.  (The petition reads exactly as the pledge does.  We are "petitioning" every registered voter in America to join with us in rejecting the anti-democratic charade the two-party system has become.)

Step 2:   You find two other people who you respect and trust -- friend, neighbor, relative -- let them know about Jill Stein if they don’t already, get them to take the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” pledge, and make sure they let us know, just as you did, by going to one of the listed sites below to sign the petition.

Step 3:   These two people likewise will each solicit two others to take the pledge and add their names to the growing list of pledge takers.  The new ones will each find two more.

Step 4:   When and only when we reach our target of 50 million pledges, we will vote for Jill Stein.  

Why 50 million?  Because 50 million voters will guarantee a victory by plurality for Jill, thus we will all know with absolute certainty we’re not throwing our votes away, that indeed our votes will go toward electing a great president!

50 million may seem like an impossible goal.  But it’s all in the math.  If one person tells two about this tomorrow, then the following day those two each tell two more, and so on and so on, how many days does it take to get to 50 million?

The answer might surprise you.  2 x 2 x 2 x 2 x 2 . . . believe it or not, in ONLY 27 DAYS, we'll have 67,108,864 pledges!  (Go here for a full explanation.)

It’s the power of numbers!

It’s the power of people!

It’s the power of joining together and declaring:  NO MORE LESSER EVIL VOTING!

Remember, there’s nothing at risk here.  We honor the “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” pledge only if we get to our goal.

On the other hand, there’s an awful lot at stake . . . a better America for ourselves and our children!

It’s up to you.

Take the pledge.  Let us know by signing at one of the petition sites.  Then have two others take the pledge.  Make sure they go to the petition sites as well.  Here are the sites:

Sign at . . . MoveOn.org
Sign at . . . Change.org
Sign at . . . RootsAction.org
Or sign at . . . iPetitions.com

Sorry, Hillary and Donald.  The people will have spoken.

We intend to celebrate Dr. Jill Stein as the 45th President of the United States!



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]



The “I’ll vote for Jill if you will” Pledge Campaign

Throwing My Vote Away?

The presidential election of 2016 -- if you only consider the presumptive nominees of the two major political parties -- is like choosing between being brutally beaten to death by a street gang and mercilessly Tasered to death by the police.

It's a masochists game.  But I've never viewed voting as a game, no matter how minor the stakes or ridiculous the choices.

Maybe in the past, having a lower tolerance for deception and corruption, I've mirrored Ralph Nader's decades-long warnings about and battle against the corporatization of our society and the tyranny of an oligarchic elite which would inevitably result.

Perhaps until now, this appeared to be driven by a heady, theoretical, ivory-tower world view, an approach distanced from day-to-day realities.

Perhaps such abstractions seemed frivolous or self-indulgent, even dangerous.  Need we revisit the spurious judgment that voting for Nader threw the election and set the stage for eight years of George W. Bush?

Perhaps all of my histrionics about the disappearance of democracy, the corruption of our Congress, the takeover of our government apparatus by self-appointed autocrats, the need for replacing at bare minimum 450 senators and congressmen, my railing at the duplicity of Obama, my warnings about the subversion of his allegedly "progressive" leadership, yes all of this may have been dismissed as hyperventilation and raving lunacy.

But with the treachery and abysmal hypocrisy of Bernie Sanders' endorsement of Hillary Clinton for president this past week, it couldn't be clearer where things stand.

Nor could it be more evident how broken our two-party political system is or what a trap lesser-evil voting has been all along.

Don't anyone dare tell me that by not voting for presumptive nominee Hillary Clinton or presumptive nominee Donald Trump, I am throwing my vote away!

Voting for either of these privileged-class monsters is the definition of throwing away my vote, of surrendering my right of choice, of rendering voting a meaningless exercise.



[ This originated at the author's personal website . . . http://jdrachel.com ]


Throwing My Vote Away?