62 Comments

"A think tank is an institution..."

Groucho's evaluation of politics, also applies to think tanks, in spades:

Politics (Tank Thinking) is the art of looking for trouble, finding it everywhere, diagnosing it incorrectly and applying the wrong remedies.

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I can't help thinking about something that few folks -- and no neolibs -- will admit to. It's simply that the behavior of almost every US administration -- definitely those since GW Bush -- has behaved like Hitler in 1944-45. As testified by Albert Speer at the Nuremberg trials, Hitler desired to destroy Germany's infrastructure as the Allies closed-in. Excuse me, but doesn't Hitler's outrageous behavior toward his own citizens parallel what our war-mongering leaders are doing through neglect, investing wealth into weapons and wars rather than into their citizens' domestic needs, including infrastructure?

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You always hit the nail on the head, Catelin. You are an international treasure!

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You wrote "Underlying all the smaller news stories about conflicts with nations like Russia, China and Iran, there's one continuous story about the US power alliance trying to secure planetary domination by relentlessly working to subvert any nation which refuses to *align* with it..." (emphasis mine)

The word "align" is a misnomer, in that "alignment" implies a commonality of interest and mutual benefit.

In fact, what the United States demands is not alignment but vassalship. They may offer benefits, but only when, if and to the extent that the Imperial Power chooses to do so. Slavish obedience, however, is demanded at all times, even to the point of being suicidal.

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Jun 30, 2022·edited Jun 30, 2022

I deposited the following on WaPo’s doorstep this am. It echoes what you are saying about the US Empire, in response to their caterwauling about the ascendancy of China.

“It’d be good for you. You’ve had a good run of ruthless, amoral and malicious exploitation, murder, invasion, theft, lying , cheating and stealing. And you can be content knowing everyone sees you’ve pissed it away by succumbing to all the worst features of human nature. The biggest being fraudulence? Why, you’re the neo 4-H club. Hubris, hypocrisy, humbuggery and HS.

Besides , they’ve achieved what they have honestly, more or less, and in record time. Despite you trying to thwart them. One of the lesser well-known is the way you addicted them to cigarettes, just like the devil-incarnate British did with opium in the 19th c.

The American Tobacco Company targeted them, kept promoting, decades after they knew it was poisonous, accounting for what? 150 million deaths? It dwarfs your other successes, like your Native American genocide, easily 50 million there, , and your massacre in your slave trades, ten million maybe?. The 3.5 million you killed in Vietnam to “protect them from communism” and the measly 2.5 million in Iraq to punish their women and children for having imaginary WMDs, are just baby potatoes to you, right?

You’re the worst thing that ever happened to the planet in other important ways. Notably by having been its biggest polluter for a hundred years. The energy pigs of the world, so to speak.

The New York Times asked Climate Interactive to calculate when Americans would have run out of fossil fuel if the nation’s population had somehow, at the beginning of the industrial era, been allocated a share equal to those of the rest of the world’s people. The calculation was premised on limiting emissions enough to meet international climate goals.

The answer: Americans would have used up their quota in 1944, the year the Allied armies stormed the beaches of Normandy.

But you did give the world Motown. I’ll grant you that.” But at least the Visigoths weren’t sanctimonious.

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This comment is not a criticism of Caitlin, who is spot on with this essay.

Caitlin writes, "Pompeo is serving as a 'Distinguished Fellow' at the Hudson Institute while he waits for the revolving door of the DC swamp to rotate him back into a federal government position." Indeed, if Trump is re-elected I fully expect the "revolving door" to sweep Pompeo into a renewed position of power.

As I've said before, Trump is an imperialist. The only disagreement between him and the Democrats dominating the permanent bureaucracy is who will control the Empire, Globalism vs US hegemony. For many in the MAGA crowd, this is significant. They fail to see that empire, regardless of who controls it, inevitably leads to totalitarianism. For us left-libertarians on the far, anti-totalitarian left, it is a fundamental reason why we support neither Trump, nor the Democrats, nor establishment Republicans. The MAGA empire is preferable to a globalist empire because it is weaker than a global empire. For that and other reasons, we tend to be more vocal in our criticism of globalists than we are of MAGA. This is misinterpreted as support for MAGA. It is not. I did not vote for Trump in 2016 or 2020 nor will I in 2024. We will not find our way out of this maze until we start supporting 3rd party candidates.

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What a skill you have, Caitlin, to bring all the scattered conflicts into one brightly lit focus. Your analogy of a think tank as an artificial enclosures for slimy creatures is an image that will stay with me!

And I thought Benjamin Norton's observation that they're out to destroy "any country that proposes a state-led, people-centered economic model" was very astute. Since economics is my jam, I just did an in-depth analysis of Putin's domestic economic policy from his St. Petersburg address (from Kanekoa's Substack)

I suspect that Putin's policies are informed by his economic advisor Sergei Glazyev because they're very well thought out with practical, measurable progress and clearly defined goals that are the opposite of the oligarch cabal. He eliminates the petty harassment and routine audits that were used by the corrupt to shake down small business owners.

He specifically talks about the 13% decrease in the birth rate and makes it the highest priority of governments at all levels to create an environment for families to thrive by looking at healthcare and education, along with the existing state support for every woman from the first months of pregnancy until her child is 17. It surprised me and might surprise you too:

https://thirdparadigm.substack.com/p/russia-a-wrench-in-the-reset-gears

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Trump elevated numerous idiots into policy making. Pompeo clearly doesn’t understand economics. The invasion of Ukraine didn’t divide Russia from China it United them. Russia exports oil China imports. Now China gets Russian oil at a discount to world prices while Europe pays a premium. Should Russia & China find a way to move oil from Siberia via pipeline to China then a new chapter would open up in their close economic relationship. Siberia has vast mineral and oil deposits. Just like Magnitogorsk which everyone knew about with its mountain of iron ore, no one in the private sector would risk capital on building the infrastructure to mine it. Magnitogorsk didn’t produce steel until the 1930s. By comparison in the US remote locations in Alaska were being exploited in the 19th Century with railroads built to them across difficult terrain even visited by a US President.

Siberia has two transcontinental railroad lines. The last completed under Brezhnev.

So Pompeii advocating more war in Ukraine more sanctions on Russia is ignoring the ability of Chinese capital to seek out these Siberian deposits for raw materials. If they do that successfully it is game over for the Kissinger based strategy.

This is another reason why I say that our US ruling class is incompetent. Capitalism here is at the same stage here as monarchism was in Czarist Russia.

Perhaps your readers in Australia will remember what Churchill did to Australian troops in WW1 at Gallipoli and not fall for confrontation with China in Southeast Asia.

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Jun 30, 2022·edited Jun 30, 2022

The printed word does not smell. But there is no better avatar for a turd sandwich on your plate than the words “think tank”. Your essay is an exception, redolent of the sweet smell of truth. Btw you could have mentioned how stink tanks are a tax dodge too.

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I could not stand to listen to that bloviating End Times warmonger for more than 30 seconds before feeling the blood start to curdle in my veins.

FWIW, I would bet that Pompeo’s dramatic weight loss is the result of bariatric surgery.

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I get a kick out of Q-tards when they hold up Pompeo as one of them. "Take him you morons. He's just another uni-party, globalist, hack."

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Genius perspective, as always.

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The Belt and Road project is...a "form of imperialism"? ...in the opinion of a dyed in the wool imperialist with a "history of violence"? JHC. Is there no end to the sick irony?

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I get a kick out of Q-tards when they hold up Pompeo as one of them. "Take him you morons. He's just another uni-party, globalist, hack."

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(Banned)Jun 30, 2022·edited Jun 30, 2022

How is Roe v Wade related to Russia and Ukraine? This is how. Here's Pompeo's statement on the recent SCOTUS ruling.

***I applaud the SCOTUS decision to overturn Roe v. Wade today. This is not the end of the fight to save the lives of the unborn. We owe it to them to joyously defend this most fundamental right -- the right to life.****

Pompeo, Abbott and DeSantis are competent autocrats who will lead the world to nuclear war if and when they are elected POTUS. The winner of the 2024 presidential election will be a Christian fascist and it will be either of the above three or Trump, and Putin will have aided and abetted his own horrific demise. His Machiavellian machinations are going to come back to bite him in his botox-infused ass. He's going to reap his meddling whirlwind and the rest of the world will be his collateral damage.

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(Banned)Jun 30, 2022·edited Jun 30, 2022

Correct me if I'm wrong, but Pompeo was Trump's Secretary of State, was he not? And yet Trump was not mentioned once in this piece.

What happens if Trump is elected POTUS in 2024? Does he reverse all the NATO momentum? Surely all these European countries reinvigorating NATO must realize that if Trump is elected again in 2024, there goes NATO or America's contribution to it. If they are going to make this kind of investment, I would think they would have to prevent at all costs Trump ever getting reelected up to and including killing him. We'll see if it comes to that.

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