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The Middle Class Disappears, Rise of the Praetorian Class


Steven Gaal

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I don’t think you understood what you read the guy is an arch-neoliberal proposing virtual elimination of the public sector he even lives in (or at least own property in) an Ayn Rand inspired compound in Argentina. Nothing in his brief bio suggests he has any relevant expertise and didn’t cite any evidence. I have no idea how this is connected to Darpa other than the author's reasonable complaints about defense spending

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I don’t think you understood what you read the guy is an arch-neoliberal proposing virtual elimination of the public sector he even lives in (or at least own property in) an Ayn Rand inspired compound in Argentina. Nothing in his brief bio suggests he has any relevant expertise and didn’t cite any evidence. I have no idea how this is connected to Darpa other than the author's reasonable complaints about defense spending

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I don’t think you understood what you read (first stone?)

didn’t cite any evidence (thought I saw a chart ?)

I have no idea how this is connected to Darpa (DARPA=WAR=militarism(spreading to schools)

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from blogger blessings2you

at http://www.christianblog.com/

The natural man has a huge problem

For those of us who are born again and filled with the Holy Spirit, spiritual matters can be understood. Through instruction, study and application, the ways of God make sense and represent what is right, just and loving. With the help of the Holy Spirit to guide us, we can indeed know God.

For those who are not born again and thus not filled with the Holy Spirit, spiritual matters are either a mystery or pure foolishness. Without the Holy Spirit to guide them into an understanding, there is no way to fully appreciate or grasp what the words in the Word of God mean.

As the Apostle Paul attempted to instruct the Corinthian believers on these matters, he laid out a very important truth in 1 Corinthians 2:14:

"But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him: neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned ."

To discern spiritual matters, one must have the Spirit of God within. The "natural man" (not born again and filled with the Spirit of God) cannot receive the things relating to the Spirit of God for they are spiritually discerned and he does not have the Spirit.

Jesus said that those who hunger and thirst after righteousness shall be filled. Thus, if a natural man is hungry to know the truth and understand the things of God, it is available for him to be filled. Once a person is saved and filled with the Holy Spirit, then they can begin to understand who God is, what He has done for us in Jesus Christ and what is available to us as children of God.

As believers, we look at situations through the eyes of Christ within us. We see things as God sees them. The unbeliever cannot do this and sees things only through the eyes of the five senses. This sense knowledge cannot see the hand of God at work or what the spiritual causes or effects really are.

We must always remember that those who are not saved cannot have the same attitude toward spiritual matters as we do. We must always remember that it is not possible for the natural man to understand the things of God and thus they are foolishness unto him. What seems so simple to understand to us is pure fantasy to a person who does not have the Spirit of God to guide him.

The natural man makes fun of God's righteousness, master plan of redemption and love. The natural man looks at what is in the Bible as lies, myths and fabrications of truth. The natural man laughs at spiritual warnings and refuses to believe there is anything wrong with his thinking or lifestyle.

Thank God we have the ability to understand spiritual matters because we have the Spirit of God within us. We are not to judge the natural man but rather reach out to him with God's love.

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Militarism up ====== middle class down ==== military in schools

http://www.shadowstats.com/ "middle class down"

========================================================

http://www.propublica.org/article/drive-by-scanning-officials-expand-use-and-dose-of-radiation-for-security-s "absurd security measures=militarism"

---------------------------------------------------------oooovvvvoooo---------------------------------------------------------------------

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalition_Against_Militarism_in_Our_Schools "militarism in schools,like DARPA"

United States Militarism

John Roberts

11/24/03 (ICH) Unlike British, American militarism only dates back a couple of centuries. But as in other revolutionary regimes, there was, from its inception, an assumption that violence would be successful in the birth of the state.

Since that was allied to the practical and continuing subjection of a slave population, the hierarchical nature of US society was emphasised from the outset and the conquest of the indigenous native population over the next century merely confirmed the importance of the military in controlling and dominating the formative years of the republic.

The lesson of the civil war was that the republic could be very militaristic. After all, it achieved the first modern war, with railway transport as the key to final success and casualties on a truly industrial scale. Even if successful generals might take care to retire, as Washington had done in an example praised and highly regarded, the military traditions were reborn and in the army and navy were treasured and eulogised. The republic kept an honoured place for its office class, already an elite that would wax through successive

campaigns. By the time that overseas imperial expansion began in 1898 this was already clear.

However, the dynamic of democracy during years of peace was adequate to reduce the military to a subordinate position for the first two centuries.

Not until the Second World War did the tendency to rely upon military models and heroes as a guide to political choice become fully significant. The election of a pacific general - Eisenhower - as president was a sign of the changing times but the dismissal of another commanding general - MacArthur - by a civilian president had already quelled fears of a militaristic take-over. And of course, the popular self-deception that imperialism was something for other nations and could only be abhorred by Americans, permitted the military to bask in democratic approval as being other than militaristic.

Bur the pattern of economic and military domination was laid down too clear to ignore or avoid. By 1951 the US had built up a nuclear weapon stock capable of destroying all civilisation several times over and with a hundred military bases in dozens of countries, the influence of the military grew year by year. The military-industrial-scientific-bureaucratic complex became steadily more important and the role of democratic politicians was correspondingly reduced and corrupted. This occurred inexorably and was commented upon, but since its deep-rooted causes were being fed continuously by the expansion of American commerce and industry nothing could seriously challenge it.

The changes went hand in hand with the shift in social attitudes, from a democratic spirit that had been kept alive by the individualism of small communities and social groups to an acceptance of large-scale and hierarchical business and politics. The susceptibility of the American public to the appeal of wealth and power became steadily more apparent. The old-style small-town model was replaced by the propaganda of giant corporations. Vast urban sprawls ensured also millionaire leaders (soon to be billionaires), chosen from a ruling class that either required great wealth to get on the ladder to the top, or who could enrich themselves on the way. This changed pattern fitted much better with a hierarchical society that suited militaristic attitudes.

At the same time, the growing proportion of public wealth devoted to the military also ensured that the armaments industry, wrapped up with the nuclear and airplane corporations would become increasingly important. The influence and overwhelming power of these groups ensured that they would play a greater and greater part in political life, perhaps culminating in the corrupt presidential election of 2000, when the

oil industry and its Republican allies effected a take-over which led directly to a war both entered into mendaciously and illegal with a delusory "war on terrorism" that will be an excuse and a struggle that can last for decades.

Huey Long was reported as saying that fascism could come in the United States, but it ''will have to be called anti-Fascism' and the current militarism has be disguised as a drive to protect freedom, which is precisely what the present administration is about with its Patriot and other Acts. The assault on Iraq to take over its oil-fields, slenderly disgused as an attack on the dictator who was a favoured purchaser of American equipment until he failed to observe all the US requirement, may be in trouble, but it is part of the American corporations' drive to take over more of the world.That will require an intensificaiton of the militarisation of American society. The future of American democracy will be in as much peril as was the Iraqi dictator.

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The New American Militarism: How Americans Are Seduced by War

As Andrew Bacevich notes in the introductory section of The New American Militarism, most critics of militarism's influence on U.S. foreign and defense policy have their roots in the progressive or center-left portions of the ideological spectrum. Bacevich's roots clearly are in the traditional conservative to libertarian end of that spectrum. A graduate of West Point, he earned a Ph.D. at Princeton University. After a military career, he became a professor at Boston University. This background reinforces his credibility in critiquing how and why militarism became a major factor shaping U.S. policy. The author also of a previous, well-received book, American Empire: The Realities and Consequences of U.S. Diplomacy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2002), Bacevich has become an established critic of U.S. policy. His excellent analysis of American militarism reinforces that stature.

The essence of his views is encapsulated by statements at the beginning and end of the book: "Today as never before in their history Americans are enthralled with military power" (p. 1); and "America will surely share the fate of all those who in ages past have looked to war and military power to fulfill their destiny. We will rob future generations of their rightful inheritance. We will wreak havoc abroad. We will endanger our security at home. We will risk the forfeiture of all that we prize" (p. 225). After referring to "America's marriage of a militaristic cast of mind with utopian ends," Bacevich declares that his goal is to examine "the origins and implications of this union and [to propose] its annulment" (p. 3). As a devout Roman Catholic, he avoids the term divorce, but in this case an annulment would be a de facto divorce. For conservatives who might be uneasy about this objective, Bacevich sets the tone for the book by quoting James Madison: "Of all the enemies of public liberty, war is perhaps the most to be dreaded.... No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare." He then states, "The purpose of this book is to invite Americans to consider the relevance of Madison's warning to our own time and circumstances" (p. 7). Thus, Bacevich seeks to refocus Americans' attention on how the United States has gone astray from its founders' principles.

Despite the title's emphasis on "new American militarism," most of the book deals with how and why "present-day American militarism has deep roots in the American past" (p. 5) by assessing that history and its policy implications then and now. The successive chapters provide provocatively conveyed insights into various aspects of that long-term evolution. Bacevich sets the stage with a critique of Wilsonian interventionism and its legacy to date. This analysis is balanced in its criticism of various administrations. At the core of its salience for militarism are observations about "the demise of the ancient American tradition of the citizen-soldier" (p. 26) and the claim that "the outsourcing of defense to a professional military elite, the erosion of civilian control—distorts if it does not altogether nullify important elements of the American birthright" (p. 32). Against that background, Bacevich carefully analyzes how the cultivation of military professionalism, an inadvertent by-product of Wilsonianism, assumed self-regenerating momentum. This discussion contains many insights drawn from Bacevich's background in both military and policy analysis. Readers who lack any military background should benefit from it, but some may find it arcane if they fail to grasp its nuances.

The chapter titled "Left, Right, Left" will have much broader appeal to all but the neoconservatives whom it thoroughly evaluates and whose flawed conservative credentials it closely examines. Bacevich contends that neoconservatives "laid the intellectual foundation of the new American militarism" (p. 72), and he analyzes the elements of that foundation and how they evolved from the views of dissenting leftists to those of supposed conservatives. In assessing these pseudoconservative issues, he skillfully critiques the roles of the Weekly Standard, many of its prominent writers, "the fellow-traveling American Enterprise Institute," and "the agitprop of the Project for the New American Century" (p. 89).

Genuine conservatives will enjoy the following two chapters less. One chapter deals with the legacy of Ronald Reagan's role in "conjuring up the myths that nurtured and sustain present-day American militarism" (p. 99) and how that legacy helped shape successive administrations. As controversial as that analysis will be in some circles, the other chapter's focus on the religious right's alleged roles in reinforcing the values behind militarism will be even more provocative. Bacevich maintains that "militant evangelicals imparted religious sanction to the militarization of U.S. policy and helped imbue the resulting military activism with an aura of moral legitimacy" (p. 124). The content and title of this chapter, "Onward" (as in "onward Christian soldiers"), is likely to make it the most controversial in the book among today's Republican base.

The chapter titled "War Club" is much less likely than "Onward" to provoke controversy, but it does deal with a sensitive issue: the institutionalization of the doctrines that foster militarism in the current Bush administration. Bacevich examines the analysts in academe and think tanks, especially RAND, who contributed to what became a quest for a perpetual "revolution in military affairs" (RMA) designed to keep the United States poised for deterrence in ways that eventually led to the Bush doctrine's focus on military preemption. At the core of this development was an evolving "national-security elite" that Bacevich labels a "priesthood." (p. 151). Although the purposes behind the RMA concept can have merit, it proved to have troubling implications. As Bacevich states, "although the Revolution in Military Affairs offered a way of reconceptualizing warfare, its importance extended well beyond that sphere. In fact, the RMA was one expression of a larger effort to formulate a new vision of the world itself and of America's proper place in (and astride) that world" (p. 170). In short, he concludes, "the priesthood had turned out to be a war club" (p. 174).

Bacevich explores how U.S. policies toward the Middle East over several decades have been shaped and distorted by oil and by radical Muslim reactions, including terrorism, in response to those policies. In this context, he refers to the Cold War as "what it really was: World War III" and to the post–9/11 war on terrorism as "World War IV" (p. 175). Although many readers will disagree with that analytical categorization because of its reliance on a neocon perspective, Bacevich uses that paradigm to provide insights into where and how presidents from Jimmy Carter to George W. Bush have used interventionist policies to impose American objectives on the Middle East, based on U.S. dependency on petroleum stability and U.S. ties with Israel, in order to transform countries that were not in harmony with U.S. interests. In one of his blunter assessments, Bacevich states: "Bush and members of his inner circle conceived of this [aggressive interventionism] as a great crusade" (p. 202) in part because "they had drunk deeply of the waters that sustained the new American militarism" (p. 203).

In concluding, Bacevich expounds on ten principles that can reduce U.S. tendencies toward militarism: pay attention to the nation's founders, bolster the separation of powers, treat the use of armed force solely as a last resort, strengthen U.S. self-sufficiency, emphasize national defense, control defense spending, use more soft power, emphasize citizen-soldiers, use the National Guard and reserves properly, and improve U.S. civil-military relations. Were the United States to pursue these goals, including greater reliance on civilian education for U.S. military officers, Americans would benefit from the demilitarization of U.S. policy and the U.S. role in world affairs. These recommendations are sound. If implemented, they would reduce militarism sharply within U.S. society and in U.S. policymaking and help to stop the policy shift toward the maintenance of a de facto empire.

As I noted earlier, a number of liberal-progressive analysts have criticized militarism in the United States. However, Bacevich's criticism and recommendations, voiced by a conservative with military credentials, are important for people across the entire U.S. spectrum to read and heed. Liberals may be pleasantly surprised. Although some conservatives may be taken aback, they too will benefit, as will anyone in the civilian or military departments of the U.S. government regardless of his ideological inclinations.

Edward A. Olsen

Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, California

Edited by Steven Gaal
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Steve, did you write the bit about natural man?

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I don’t think you understood what you read the guy is an arch-neoliberal proposing virtual elimination of the public sector he even lives in (or at least own property in) an Ayn Rand inspired compound in Argentina. Nothing in his brief bio suggests he has any relevant expertise and didn’t cite any evidence. I have no idea how this is connected to Darpa other than the author's reasonable complaints about defense spending

?????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????????

I don’t think you understood what you read (first stone?)

You think being told you probably misunderstood something an insult? Bizarre!

didn’t cite any evidence (thought I saw a chart ?)

But we were never told what the source of the chart or data in it came from. Even if we count the chart it was a long essay and nothing else was supported.

I have no idea how this is connected to Darpa (DARPA=WAR=militarism(spreading to schools)

My full quote: "I have no idea how this is connected to Darpa other than the author's reasonable complaints about defense spending"

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Thanks Steve. It puts it well, imo.

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  • 2 months later...
Guest Tom Scully

I wonder if the author even realizes that the "unfettered, free market" he yearns for, has more in common with the political scenario he condemns than it has differences. Both share a predatory, survival of the fittest, core characteristic.

The credit crisis in the fall of 2008, kept from completing its course of the destruction of crony capitalism as we knew it, only through the intervention of the "political system" should be a catalyst for a sincere attempt to investigate the fatal flaws in the economic system. Wasn't the collapse of credit epitomized by the suddenly vanished faith of the creditworthiness of nearly all counter parties, resulting in a death spiral ameliorated only through a stick save effected through smoke and mirrors of the U.S. Treasury and Federal Reserve, a consequence of the most unfettered financial markets since 1934?

Isn't it at least reasonable to explore whether unfettered economic activity, or its outgrowths, crony capitalism/corporatism is desirable, sustainable, or compatible with a stable, advanced society?

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  • 4 months later...
  • 3 months later...

Moulding Young Minds: American Schools Preaching the Virtues of a War On Iran

What exactly are we teaching your children?

By Patrick Henningsen

Global Research, December 18, 2012

21st Century Wire

I remember my history lessons in school. Among many things, I can recall Patton’s march through France and the Battle of the Bulge, and how we learned about the millions of deaths on, as well as off, the fields of battle throughout history.

All in all, it was a tale of battles won and lost, and as was rightly put by my junior high school teacher - a tale of caution for future generations. But as young students, we were never taught to idiosyncrasiesof ‘war-gaming’ a conflict in the future.

Nor can I recall getting lessons in school about using various aspects of asymmetrical warfare to encircle an enemy, or how admirable and clever it is to deploy terrorist units to bomb a country in order to ‘soften it up’ from within.

Unbeknownst to many people, there are school teachers who are delivering pro-war propaganda, indoctrinating young children with violent globalist military stratagem selling the concept of an inevitable war on the people of Iran as well as anyone else deemed as ‘Axis’ powers in relation to western central planning.

Interestingly, and quite horrific in fact, when challenged by his young (and extremely bright) female student over the idea of western pre-emptive intervention against Iran, the teacher addressing these students laid down a nonnegotiable maxim stating:

“… one of the rules (in this discussion) – you can’t do nothing”.

The female student followed his NLP intellectual diversion by rightly pointing out to him:

“But we (the US) are the only country in the world that’s ever used nuclear weapons”.

To which the teacher replies sharply:

“That’s irrelevant.”

It appears also towards the end of the video, that the class was being monitored by the principal’s office, who then summoned the student in question to the office. Orwellian – in the extreme.

This is the generation of children who may be asked – or drafted in to fight a coming war with Iran and others – so is this part of the indoctrination of future soldiers? Maybe.

Certainly here, it’s safe to say that teachers are grooming the next generation of compliant consumer spectators.

Watch the classroom exchange recorded by the student:

Immediately, the first thing that’s come to mind here is remembering what Cosby Stills and Nash tried to tell us – all those decades ag…

….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx4AATLY7L8&feature=player_embedded

Edited by Steven Gaal
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This entry was posted on December 18, 2012 at 12:14 pm and is filed under 2012, America, EDUCATION, False Flag, International News, Iran, Propaganda, Uncategorized, United Nations, US Politics, WORLD NEWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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This entry was posted on December 18, 2012 at 12:14 pm and is filed under 2012, America, EDUCATION, False Flag, International News, Iran, Propaganda, Uncategorized, United Nations, US Politics, WORLD NEWS. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

How does the above counter the unverified nature of the video?

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