Democracy Or Idiocracy?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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Have you ever wondered how the United States of America has managed to accumulate debt of $18 trillion and rising?

Part of the answer is pretty easy really.

The country is being run by people who can’t count. By people who do not realize that you cannot indefinitely live beyond your means.

Try doing what the government does at home and see how far you get? You can’t print money (legally) as a short-stop measure so the effect on you will be immediate. You’ll go broke!

The government and has been printing billions and billions of dollars, but all this has done is to postpone the inevitable and pass on the problem to future generations.

But not being able to count is just one part of what’s wrong. It’s a big part, but it does not tell the whole story.

What is also wrong is the amount of money that the government and their stupid minions waste.

A small, but good, example of this was accidentally uncovered during the 2014 investigation into the handling of interrogations of terrorists by American intelligence agencies.

Here we discovered that $81 million of taxpayer money had been paid to a pair of so-called ‘psychologists’ who were at the head of these interrogations.

Not only that, but it turned out that neither of these two people had any prior knowledge of al-Qaeda, no experience in interrogation techniques and no background in counter terrorism.

That’s zero experience on all three counts!

To add insult to injury, they were also promised an additional $5 million in indemnity costs to cover all legal expenses for any potential criminal investigation and prosecution through 2021 as well as paid more than $1 million individually.

This sort of idiocy permeates all sections of government. The waste is colossal. So colossal that the tax paying public very seldom, if ever, gets to hear about it. And if and when they do it is invariably too late to do anything about it. The money is gone. Wasted!

That’s part of the reason the United States imposes the world’s highest corporate tax rates and why it is one of the few countries in the world to impose a “worldwide tax” on domestic firms and on its citizens.

America likes to try to impose ‘democracy’ on other nations in the world, especially the ones that don’t understand it and don’t want it.

But with ‘democracy’ should come ‘accountability’.

Clearly is does not.

Therefore the system we really have is an ‘idiocracy’, not a ‘democracy’.

Let’s start and call it what it is. It’s a much more appropriate name for what is going on!

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Anyone Feel A Chill?

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

I know the summer is coming to a close, but the chill I’m talking about in this post is the one coming from the Cold War.

You remember it?

The thing that we though we had got rid of in 1992 when Daddy Bush said, “A world once divided into two armed camps now recognizes one, sole and pre-eminent power, the United States of America.”

That ended the Cold War and everyone was happy. America had won.

So why did it start again? And why did our politicians not have the gumption to avoid it?

Two pretty good questions, I think.

I suppose the answer is that it all started again because America desperately needs a bogey man – a global one, not some terrorist organization like Al Qaeda or ISIS.

It gives them a reason to keep the war machine going which is good for the economy.

It gives them the chance to tell the world that the choice they have to make is between America and Russia (in other words, between ‘good’ and ‘bad’).

And indeed it used to be that way, when the Russian regime was hell bent on imposing their failed communist philosophy on the free world.

The problem is that America wasn’t content with winning. For some reason it felt it needed to win again.

This time it is trying to do so by bribing and coercing former Soviet satellite states into joining an economic and military (EU/NATO) alliance against Russia.

That has, understandably and predictably, provoked the Russians into once again flexing their muscles, the result of which we are starting to see in the Ukraine.

And so the Cold War begins again.

But it won’t be the same as the last one. Some things are very different.

This time America is bankrupt, not Russia, which on the contrary has massive wealth at its disposal. This time America is being perceived by the rest of the world as dithering and incompetent.

And, thanks to the arrogance of organizations like the NSA, this time it is America, not Russia, who is perceived by the rest of the world as untrustworthy and untrusting of its allies. That’s quite the reversal of the old Cold War when it was the Russians who were notorious for listening in on conversations, bugging hotel rooms and the like.

In addition Russia is not currently bound to an outdated and failed communist dogma.

Despite all the bogus posturing of President Obama, who it seems can’t make up his mind to do anything, Russia will not allow NATO to set up shop in its backyard.

America has made a huge tactical mistake interfering so close to Russia. They are leaving Putin with little alternative but to do his own bit of posturing. The only difference is he means it.

When a bear is sleeping, poking it with a stick is never a wise move. Neither is trying to force it into a corner.

This time it may well bring consequences that none of us will like.

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Lies, Deceit And Incompetence

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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I was sounding off a bit in last week’s Sunday Sermon about the state of things in Iraq, a mess created by blundering American and British intervention in a situation they did not, and still do not understand.

Last week I concentrated on the fact that ISIS, the al Qaeda splinter group – big name, ‘Islamic State of Iraq and Syria’ – has now seized large parts of northern Iraq, with consequent freeing of prisoners, fleeing of frightened former residents of that area and even unconfirmed reports of ‘mass beheadings’. Other reports of mass executions of official Iraqi army personnel seem to have been confirmed.

Presumably there will be worse to come.

All in the name of an Islamic State?

Well, hold on, maybe not just that.

It turns out that as Iraq descends into what will probably be a bloody civil war, the ISIS-al Qaeda forces have taken time to raid Mosul’s central bank and relieve it of some 500 billion Iraqi dinars, worth approximately $425 million.

Mosul is not only the largest city in northern Iraq, it is an oil hub at the vital intersection of Syria, Iraq and Turkey, thus providing rich pickings for the terrorists.

They also reportedly stole additional $ millions from a number of other banks across Mosul and what has only been quantified as a “large quantity of gold bullion.”

Others towns and cities, like Saddam Hussein’s old home town Tikrit, have suffered a similar fate.

As a result of all this George Bush / Tony Bliar created disaster, the ISIS/al Qaeda chief, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, a previously relatively unknown figure, is now the leader of perhaps the ‘world’s richest terror force’.

(Quick side note to President Obama – I’m sure he reads this blog 🙂

– Hi Barrack, you can stop using American taxpayers’ money

to fund these ISIS terrorists in Syria, they have enough money now.)

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In fact, to put the latest cash haul in perspective, at the time of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the US, Al-Qaeda had been working with an operating budget of around $30 million (source ‘Council on Foreign Relations’), so even allowing for inflation they are substantially richer today, and by definition have it in their power to do much more damage not just in the Middle East region, but worldwide.

As regional analyst Brown Moses succinctly put it on Twitter, this recent haul of ill gotten gains will “buy a whole lot of Jihad……For example, with $425 million, ISIS could pay 60,000 fighters around $600 a month for a year.”

It might even do a lot more. ISIS has already attracted 12,000 militants from abroad, 3,000 of whom are from the West. With bought mercenaries on board things can only get worse.

When Bush and Blair used Words of Mass Deception about Saddam Hussein having Weapons of Mass destruction as a bogus excuse to attack Iraq there were no terrorists and no terrorist threat from that country. Thanks to their lies, deceit and incompetence, there are now.

If this is an ‘improvement’ I can’t see it  –  can you?

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Black Hawk Seems To Be Up Again!

“Fight Against Stupidity And Bureaucracy”

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The Sunday Sermon

You may remember, more because of the movie than anything else probably, an incident in 1993 called ‘Black Hawk Down’ which caused American troops to leave Somalia.

At that time they had been stationed there as part of a United Nations ‘stabilization’ operation – whatever that is.

President Clinton abandoned that effort after the ‘Battle of Mogadishu’ in which nearly 20 American soldiers were killed and horrific images of their bodies being dragged through the streets by Somalia militiamen had been seen all over the world on television.

Since then American military and intelligence efforts have been in the form of funding the Somalia military and using remotely controlled drones to keep an eye on what is happening on the ground and perhaps more.

Or so we thought. After all, the last thing we want to do is get bogged down again on the ground in such an inhospitable place.

Cue the Obama administration and guess what? Yep, the US Army has once again secretly stationed a group of regular troops in Somalia. Since October last year a “military coordination cell” has been established in Somalia that, to quote the officer in charge, “is now fully operational”.

I’m not sure even Obama knows what they are there to do. There isn’t an American embassy to protect and they would hardly be there to draw unwanted attention to the people from charlie india alpha, would they?

Official sources say the army unit has been tasked with “advising and coordinating” operations by African troops against al-Shabaab, the al-Qaeda-linked group that controls large parts of Somalia.

Okay, so let’s say US forces have been deployed in Africa as part of the war against terror.

So perhaps that establishes what US Foreign Policy strategy is, i.e. to fight the war against terror.

Doesn’t it?

Well, no.

Let’s move a bit further north-east. To Syria in fact.

For the past while the US has been covertly backing the anti-Assad forces in the Syrian conflict. Seemed to make sense since Assad is friends with the likes of Iran and Russia. Except for the fact that the anti-Assad forces were in fact made up of the same type of al-Qaeda-linked groups that the US is against in Somalia.

Confused? You should be.

If there was any principle involved they would have been better not backing either side. But of course principle and politics rarely mix.

And just to add to the confusion it was confirmed last week that secret meetings have been held between ‘Western intelligence officials’ and senior members of the Syrian government, aimed at “combating radical Islamist groups” in Syria.

But wait!

Maybe it IS all beginning to make sense. At least we can detect a consistent pattern emerging, and it seems to be this:

• ignore the long term dangers, and fund and supply terrorist groups just because they happen to be at odds with people you don’t like; and then when you realize what a mess you’ve made, send in American troops to correct the mistake, never mind that they are going to get killed and maimed by weapons paid for by America.

American foreign policy has been a shambles for decades. It doesn’t get better by repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

America has the strength and the military power to police the world, of that there is no doubt. But does that mean it really has to? Especially when the policy to direct such a strategy is made by incompetent politicians who clearly do not understand the world they are trying to police.

Confusion and failure has been and will be the result. That and the needless sacrifice of the brave souls whose job it is to clear up the mess.

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