Big Lie

Alfred McCoy: The Future of the American Empire

"Alfred McCoy was a young rebel academic who waded into the war zone in Southeast Asia to investigate the relationship between the CIA, crime syndicates, and local drug lords. The result, which the Agency tried unsuccessfully to suppress, was his classic The Politics of Heroin: CIA Complicity in the Global Drug Trade. In the 45 years since, McCoy has consistently probed the underside of American global power, analyzing how the United States uses covert interventions, local proxies, torture, and worldwide surveillance to maintain its global empire."

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Congress poised to jam through reauthorization of mass surveillance

"The current authorization for Section 702 expires on December 31, and it’s the first time Congress has faced this reauthorization since Edward Snowden’s earth-shattering disclosures about the National Security Agency’s mass surveillance apparatus. Committees in the Senate and House have competing proposals to reauthorize the program. But with the clock running out, Congress once again appears to be poised to jam through reauthorization."

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Ron Paul: Why Designate North Korea a ‘State Sponsor of Terrorism’?

"As bad as the North Korean government is, it is does not go abroad looking for countries to invade. The designation is a political one, allowing Washington to ramp up more aggression against North Korea. What is terrorism? Maybe we should ask a Yemeni child constantly wondering when the next Saudi bomb overhead might kill his family. Or perhaps we might even ask a Pakistani, Somali, Iraqi, Syrian, or other child who is terrified that the next US bomb will do the same to his family. Perhaps we need to look at whether US foreign policy actually reflects the American values we claim to be exporting before we point out the flaws in others."

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Pentagon to Admit to 2,000 Ground Troops in Syria

"US officials said on Friday that the Pentagon is expected to confirm concern that there are 'about 2,000' US ground troops in Syria, a major increase from the roughly 500 that they officially claim is the case. The US has overtly lied about troop levels in Syria consistently throughout their deployment. President Trump has made a point of troop levels needing to be kept secret from 'the enemy,' but consistent lies from the Pentagon about their deployments have made the figures less a closely guarded secret than a mockery of transparency."

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Paul Craig Roberts: Who Gets to Push the Nuclear Button?

"The purpose of diplomacy is to prevent war. However, ever since the Clinton regime attacked Serbia, US diplomacy has been used to cause wars. During the 16-years of George W. Bush and Obama the US destroyed in whole or part seven countries, killing and maiming millions of peoples and producing millions of refugees. Not a single one of these wars was justified. Everyone of these wars was based in lies. Before launching each of these acts of unprovoked aggression, Washington demonized the leader of the country. To get rid of one person, Washington did not flinch at murdering large numbers of people and destroying the infrastructure of the country. This tells you that Washington has no morality. None. Zilch. Therefore, Washington is capable of launching a preemptive nuclear strike."

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The Black Swan In Plain Sight—Debt Out The Wazoo

"Washington has suspended it way into a $5.7 trillion increase in the public debt in just six years since October 2011. That is, during a period which supposedly constitutes the third longest business expansion in US history. At the end of the day, you can't borrow your way to prosperity. That's the oldest rule in the book of sound money and sustainable finance. And it's about ready to be learned all over again."

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The Ponzi scheme that’s more than 100x the size of Bernie Madoff

"Credit-rating agency Moody’s estimates state, federal and local government pensions are $7 trillion short in funding. And corporate pension funds are underfunded by $375 billion. One of the big drivers behind this is that investment returns are way too low. Today with government bonds yielding 3% or less (and in some cases bond yields are NEGATIVE), they aren’t achieving their targets. One or two years with sub-optimal investment returns is not catastrophic. But it’s been like this now for a decade. And that’s just problem #1. Problem #2 is that the ratio between workers and retirees is moving in the wrong direction."

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Is Government Really The Price Of Civilization?

"The infrastructure-building, law-codifying, biopolitical states of antiquity are not the starting points of universal history for Scott, as they were for both Marx and liberal historians. They are instead a kind of usurpation of a longer and quite possibly richer human practice of mobility and freedom."

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