Welcome to Saturday's Potluck - 1-22-22

“Learn the rules like a pro, so you can break them like an artist.”
Pablo Picasso

Keeping our eyes on the bouncing ball is easier if we are aware of patterns. Relooking at similar historical events far enough in the past new documents have been released and secrecy pacts have expired. A review of Hidden History: the Secret Origins of the First World War by Gerry Docherty & Jim Macgregor’s Book shows Germany being tricked into war. Some of the same techniques are probably in play today with Russia and China.

Change some of the terms such as Military Industrial Complex for British Imperialists. Russia or China could play the role of Germany. It will be the United States Congress instead of British Parliament being manipulated to provide political cover to access funds and mobilize troops.

In demolishing the many shibboleths surrounding the origins of the ‘Great War’ (including ‘German responsibility’, ‘British peace efforts‘, ‘Belgian neutrality’ and the ‘inevitability’ of the war), Docherty and Macgregor point the finger at what they argue is the real source of the conflict: a more or less secret cabal of British imperialists whose entire political existence for a decade and a half was dedicated to the fashioning of a European war in aid of destroying the British Empire’s newly emerging commercial, industrial and military competitor, Germany.

In short, far from “sleepwalking into a global tragedy, the unsuspecting world”, Docherty and Macgregor contend, “was ambushed by a secret cabal of warmongers” originating not in Berlin, but “in London”.
...
The core alliance was now complete, i.e. Britain, Russia, France and Belgium, and all that was needed was to secure the fealty and obeisance of the British colonies. In aid of the latter Milner convoked The Imperial Press Conference of 1909 which brought together some 60 newspaper owners, journalists and writers from across the Empire who hobnobbed with another 600 or so British journalists, politicians and military figures in a grand orgy of war-mongering propaganda. The martial message was then duly delivered to the unwitting colonial multitudes. The success of the Conference could be seen most visibly in Canada where, despite the extreme divisiveness of the issue, the nation would eventually send more than 640,000 of its soldiers to the killing fields of Europe, this all on behalf of a tiny handful of British imperialists
....
What strikes one again and again whilst reading ‘Hidden History’ is the ring of truth that resonates from every page, from every revelation. That such a tiny, elite group of individuals, completely beyond democratic control, could determine the fate – and deaths – of millions should shock us. It should, but it doesn’t really. It doesn’t because we see the same phenomenon occurring now, repeatedly, before our very eyes. Indeed, the current state of ‘permanent war’ is, more or less, the unconscious condition of modernity itself.

________

Japan is sill being used as a counter balance.
Abe’s Indo-Pacific vision is finally coming to life

China has been rising for decades. While that created concern, there wasn’t concerted action to balance against it until Xi Jinping took power. He inherited a powerhouse economy and a modernizing military and married them to ambition and vision – a Belt and Road Initiative that girdled the globe – to pursue the China dream.

His ascension and his muscular foreign policy unnerved governments worldwide. If the dream belonged to the nation, it is Xi who acted to make it real:
...
While the idea of an Indo-Pacific strategic space had been employed by US Pacific Command combatant commanders from the late 1980s, Abe elevated that idea to a guiding principle in his 2007 speech to the Indian Parliament in which he spoke of “the confluence of two seas.”

Obama’s “rebalance” incorporated the concept, but it didn’t assume prominence until the Trump administration adopted the framework in 2017.

________

What is on your mind today? (Responses to Covid questions and dialog to be conducted at The Dose diary)

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Lookout's picture

can destroy the world in many ways and on many levels. Your WWI story is an excellent example. It is so sad our nation is constantly promoting war, destruction, and aggression for personal profit and at the expense of our own and other nations' citizens.

MSM is all over aggressive Russia, totalitarian China, and freedom loving Ukrainians (who are actually fascists). What a load of BS, and how easily Americans are deceived time after time again.

Thanks for the OT! I skipped Trade Day it's mid 20's here.

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“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”

That Docherty and Macgregor book looks good. Thanks for the book review link.
It puts me in mind of this M. Python sketch;

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@randtntx ...but it is not Monty Python.

Not even a single Python is there; I see Fry and Laurie, and have no idea who any of the others are.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat , you're right. I don't know those actors other than Stephen Fry. Looks like Hugh Laurie could be one of them.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@randtntx He's the ember-stoking French delegate (who hates Ferrero Rochers, of all things!).

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2 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

studentofearth's picture

@randtntx agreed who owned what in the world. Thanks for the clip.

Treaty of Tordesillas of 1494 CE by the Pope dividing the world between Portugal and Spain was no longer enforceable. The European Thirty Year War between Protestants and Catholics ended in 1648 CE with the Treaty of Westphalia.

The war was largely fought on German soil and reduced the country to desolation as hordes of mercenaries, left unpaid by their masters, lived off the land. Rapine, pillage and famine stalked the countryside as armies marched about, plundering towns, villages and farms as they went. ‘We live like animals, eating bark and grass,’ says a pitiful entry in a family Bible from a Swabian village. ‘No one could have imagined that anything like this would happen to us. Many people say that there is no God...’ Wenceslas Hollar recorded devastation in the war zone in engravings of the 1630s and starvation reached such a point in the Rhineland that there were cases of cannibalism. The horror became a way of life and when the war finally ended, the mercenaries and their womenfolk complained that their livelihood was gone.

The peace conference to end the war opened in Münster and Osnabrück in December 1644. It involved no fewer than 194 states, from the biggest to the smallest, represented by 179 plenipotentiaries. There were thousands of ancillary diplomats and support staff, who had to be given housing, fed and watered, and they did themselves well for close to four years, despite famine in the country around. Presiding over the conference were the Papal Nuncio, Fabio Chigi (the future Pope Alexander VII), and the Venetian ambassador.

The first six months were spent arguing about who was to sit where and who was to go into a room ahead of whom. The principal French and Spanish envoys never managed to meet at all because the correct protocol could not be agreed.

.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Thanks SoE, you have a clever way of invoking thoughtful reflection.
I know not what to say as to why mankind promotes war and destruction.
I do not think it is ingrained in our social mind. More so as being dictated by
whichever regime is in charge of the various aggressors. Unfortunately the
US is the biggest instigator in this game of Russian roulette. China, Iran, Venezuela,
and many other 'democracies' no longer want to play on the US domination field.
It us as citizens of the most aggressive nation who will eventually suffer IMO.

Light flurries here, cold as an ice cube. Got a fire going and 3 heaters in the work shop.
Hope to put together the snow blower today.

Cheers!

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zed2's picture

Do you know about the so called "Round Table" organization and their publication, "The Round Table" its associated with the Milner Group, and others associated with Cecil Rhodes' alleged "secret society". You can find copies of "The Round Table" online, if you look.

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zed2's picture

Only a few disturbed "bad apples" do, which is why they always try to do their deeds behind the scenes. Nobody would vote for it, for example. Its insanity.

They realize that they would lose so try to go under the radar as they are now.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

What is it, exactly?

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

Lily O Lady's picture

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@Lily O Lady I have the following rules vis-a-vis Wikipedia:

1: It's not an encyclopedia, it's an aggregator site; a page is (at best) only as good as its bibliography.

2: The integrity of an article is inversely-proportional to its perceived degree of relevance to current events and interest to mainstream discussion.

3: Never trust it for politically-sensitive things, especially not in American eyes.

4: Never trust it for any topic that is YOUNGER THAN THE WEBSITE ITSELF.

This would violate at least 2/4, if not 3/4.

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In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat

the belt and road is an expansive initiative by the Chinese
to establish an exchange of marketable goods thru-out the world.
I'm surprised you do not already know this. Rather than taking a
commenter to task for the link provided, perhaps you could figure it out
for yourself?

This is one of the things the American empire is fighting against.
It is the old competition versus cooperation cycle.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@QMS I didn't see the harm in asking; I am perpetually exhausted and my life for the past several years has felt almost like hospice-care. I spent YEARS battling crippling mental illness to earn a degree in poli-sci and related fields, and it's almost as if the moment I got it, the newly-blossomed SocMed Ministry of Truth just yanked it out of my hand, wiped its collective ass with it, and demanded I submit to total re-education.

I am exhausted and bitter and almost-totally alienated, and I cannot take anymore.

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3 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat

I'm sorry to hear of your travails. It is not dissimilar to my experience. Jimmy Buffet closely described it within a song .. my occupational hazard is that my occupation is no longer around .. or something similar. It is distressful to work a long lifetime towards something only to have the rules change, pulling the rug out from under ones feats. I wish you peace in any manner available.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@QMS ADMITTEDLY, my lifelong career aspirations ARE facing a variety of threats, but regarding my education, it's simply more a matter of seeing Big SocMed pretending to be educating EVERYONE in the exact areas you studied for years...and what they're "teaching" is all deadass-backwards. The NewTruth Narrative wouldn't even have got off the ground if only the things I learned in my first 3 semesters of college alone (to say nothing of a lifetime of natural, independent thinking before I'd even gotten that far) had been common knowledge.

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3 users have voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat and wish I could be of some help.
I hope you can just hang in there for the adventure of living and learning.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@on the cusp Perhaps one of these days I'll get back to you on that wish.

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1 user has voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!

@The Liberal Moonbat I graduated from college and went to work for years, hoping I could bank my law school cost. Had to borrow most of it, and it took me 10 years to pay off the student loan. I went to a very pricey private law school.
So, instead of going right out of college, I waited a decade to so to enroll in law school.
I had "little girl" features. Got carded to buy beer when I was 38 years old. I think it all worked out. Nobody would have taken me seriously until I was showing some age.
Any time you wish to dive into some legal matter, send me a pm. I can steer you to someone in your state.
In the meantime, take good care of you.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

Lily O Lady's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat

what I had encountered in my reading, so I figured it was an OK intro. You can do a search to find a source you are comfortable with.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

studentofearth's picture

@Lily O Lady Maybe the length of material on the page was a little daunting. A short quote or series sometimes intriguing enough to prompt a full reading. It is difficult to find the time to spoonfeed information on every subjects covered here at C99.

Might find the first video I posted up in the thread interesting. The other two have appeared on C99 before by other members.

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

Lily O Lady's picture

@studentofearth

can help find more info without having to read the whole thing. But you have other sources, too.

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"The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now do you begin to understand me?" ~Orwell, "1984"

studentofearth's picture

@The Liberal Moonbat information before launching into specific lines of facts and opinions. In the ancient days of education my Instructors generally required reading at least 2 encyclopedia sources and two different annual editions for one of them. Their gentle teaching to learn expert sources rarely agree with each other 100% or over time has served me well. Reviewed Wikipedia page covers the main point and controversial opinions.

One expert following the Belt and Road from a World Game perspective is author Pepe Escobar. In this video (46.42 min) from 2015 he present material in the manner of giving a pitch proposal to Hollywood for The Next War. It might be the best place to start.

[video:https://youtu.be/hRhbs_m463A]

The Strategic Culture Foundation and Asia Timeshave many published works available. having some knowledge will assist in selecting article to review.

A couple of recent video interviews with The GrayZone would catch one up with some current events.

(1 hour 50 min) Jan 14, 2022
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bfhs3_aKwTY]

(2 hr 5 min) August 19, 2021
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QiF3TQZSxhs]

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Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

@studentofearth I will watch those tomorrow.

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"We'll know our disinformation program is complete when everything the American public believes is false." ---- William Casey, CIA Director, 1981

enhydra lutris's picture

good idea to review and re-review periodically as new info escapes or is discovered. Assuming that it will upon expiry of official classification period may be, all the same, to quote Eddie Izzard, "a bit naive". If operation SNAFU's classification period expires next month there is no reason somebody can't shred some, reclassify some under a new pretext, or decide that national security requires a current propaganda operation regarding significant facts and actions involved in the original. The classification of said current propaganda campaign will perforce include all those facts and actions from original, and possibly the whole operation if the exclusion of those facts from the release would raise questions that could cripple the current propaganda campaign.

Generally, history has shown us that in the US, classification and secrets act invocations have as often as not been invoked to protect the US or some of its agencies or actors from liability, civil and/or criminal, for their actions or negligent failures to act. National sekurity is only sometimes even remotely involved. The perps, having committed the original acts, and then committed the crime of improperly classifying them, seemingly would not be beyond the further crime of withholding or destroying critical bits of information or evidence.

For example, as their continuous and continuing behavior clearly shows, the Feebs never shut down COINTELPRO in any meaningful sense. They may no longer refer to it by that name, but the acts, actions, behavior and targets have never changed except that the target list keeps growing with the times, as do the techniques and tricks, witness their campaign against so-called "Black Identity Extremists" or the completely baffling campaign against the Juggalos, probably because their makeup blows up all their so-called facial recognition tech. There are no doubt many things from the original program which will never come to light because of their rampant criminality and the fact that everybody who was ever informed thereof and/orr had access to the information and helped conceal it, or knew anybody who did, became thereby an accessory.

Likewise we will not only never know all of the crimes against humanity and war crimes committed during the Vietnam war, (likewise the war in Iraq), but all the motives, goals and purposes will never come to light either. True, little bits might slip out now and then, occasioning review, deathbed confessions and leaks, etc., but the totality is forever buried.

be well and have a good one

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That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --

studentofearth's picture

@enhydra lutris is to start discussion with various historical events and viewpoints over time at the beginning. Build consensus while moving forward to contemporary design and trial implementation.

Interesting listening to 2015 video for the changes and consistency in the past few years of the Belt and Road progress.

Compare to the promises and projections of US politicians, business leaders, government officials and opinion writers of 2015 and today's situation.

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3 users have voted.

Still yourself, deep water can absorb many disturbances with minimal reaction.
--When the opening appears release yourself.

we have minimal power to have the rulers show transparency.
national security seems to be the blanket that is used to cover
the criminal activity and deception which we are not allowed to know.

I could list examples, but failure to understand the scope of the perps
intentions would probably not do justice to this conversation.

thanks for helping to expose the blinders

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zed2's picture

bed in US "history books" It's a lot like the reasons we in the US cant have affordable healthcare according to the DNC, The New Your Times, and so called "Healthcare experts" 100% fake bullshit.

So, maybe 1 million poor sick people then got to die.

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The Liberal Moonbat's picture

@zed2 ...was that European imperial powers, sick of having to look over their shoulders at all the others after what they'd all done to most of the rest of the world, all started making military pacts with each other as though treaties were to that decade what "collectibles" were to the 1990s...then, fittingly, the "bubble" burst when an unexpected event - some hinterlander prole killing the heir to an empire!!! - caused basically every alliance in Europe to be called in. All. At. Once.

A pre-Atomic "Doomsday Device", if you will.

In other words, one could say that World War I was what happened when governments actually DID keep their promises.

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1 user has voted.

In the Land of the Blind, the One-Eyed Man is declared mentally ill for describing colors.

Yes Virginia, there is a Global Banking Conspiracy!