It is difficult to struggle against Babylon. It is especially difficult to not participate in her wars. The following video is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's anti-war poem "The Man He Killed." It is a fitting introduction to part 4 of Pam Dewey's series on Big Brother. Those who did not want to fight in the especially useless war WWI were rounded up with no regard for law. Big Brother, or Babylon as the Bible calls it, is not a modern phenomenon. It goes back millennia.
Here is the full poem if you want to contemplate it more, it deserves contemplation.
The Man He Killed Thomas Hardy Had he and I but met By some old ancient inn, We should have set us down to wet Right many a nipperkin! But ranged as infantry, And staring face to face, I shot at him as he at me, And killed him in his place. I shot him dead because— Because he was my foe, Just so: my foe of course he was; That's clear enough; although He thought he'd 'list, perhaps, Off-hand like—just as I— Was out of work—had sold his traps— No other reason why. Yes; quaint and curious war is! You shoot a fellow down You'd treat, if met where any bar is, Or help to half a crown.
The US cannot afford the military it now has. If the US military is exempt from any cuts, then the rest of the budget must be cut so substantially that it would be catastrophic. Back in the time when the US actually had an enemy, the man who was president, Dwight Eisenhower, actually knew more about the military than any president we ever had. What did he do? David Stockman in his new book The Great Deformation tells us:
The nearly one-third reduction in real defense spending during the Eisenhower period was thus achieved by sharp changes in priorities and force structure. These included shrinking the army by nearly 40 percent, large cuts in naval forces, and an overall reduction in military personnel from about 3.5 million in early 1953 to 2.5 million by December 1960.
As a conservative I am supposed to worship at the altar of Ronald Reagan. But Stockman actually worked for him. Here is his description of military spending under Reagan:
As indicated, constant-dollar spending in Reagan’s fiscal 1989 budget was 30 percent, more than Eisenhower’s last budget, but even the subsequent official end of the Cold War resulted in only a modest rollback. Clinton’s final budget was a tad smaller in inflation-adjusted dollars than Eisenhower’s, even though by the year 2000 the United States had no industrial state enemy left on the planet.
Well, at last we can be happy that Obama is president and the insanity will stop. No, not so much. Stockman explains:
In fact, inflation-adjusted defense spending in fiscal 2011 of $670 billion was a new record, eclipsing even George W. Bush’s final war budget. It was thus abundantly evident that even an out-and-out “peace” president is no match for the modern warfare state and the crony capitalist lobbies which safeguard its budgetary requisites. Indeed, Barack Obama pushed the frontiers of the warfare state further than ever before. Beating his mandate for plowshares into an even mightier sword, the peace president pushed defense spending to a level 80 percent greater in real terms than General Eisenhower.
All these quotes are from pages 215 to 218 of The Great Deformation.
I suppose that neither liberals nor conservatives should read The Great Deformation, at least not unless they are taking their blood pressure meds.
While I am only guardedly pessimistic, and Stockman is totally pessimistic, the crisis that is coming will not be a happy time. I hope I am wrong.
Here is a part of the most ignored speech ever made.
Henry Kissinger once said that "being a US ally is often more dangerous than being its enemy." This is obviously true.
Qadhafi no doubt felt that way as he lay in a ditch in Tripoli dying. He had given up his anti-US stance and became an "ally." Do you think I am wrong on this? Look at this mini article from 2009 about John McCain's trip to Libya.
Sen. John McCain, visiting Libya this past week, praised Muammar Gaddafi for his peacemaking efforts in Africa. In addition, McCain called for the U.S. Congress to expand ties with Gaddafi's government, according to Libya's state news agency.
McCain had a face-to-face meeting with Gaddafi, which he detailed on his Twitter page with the following message:
Late evening with Col. Qadhafi at his "ranch" in Libya -- interesting meeting with an interesting man.
After once being designated a state sponsor of terrorism in the wake of the Pan Am bombing over Lockerbie, Scotland, Libya has seen its diplomatic ties fully restored under the Bush Administration in return for dismantling its nascent nuclear program. Since then, Libya has been instrumental in securing peace deals between warring factions in Africa.
McCain is the poster boy for the military industrial complex. Third World politicians would have to be brain dead not to get the picture.
Hosni Mubarak, former president of Egypt, according to former VP DIck Cheney, was a good friend of the US. He is in prison right now, held by the US' new best buddy, the Moslem Brotherhood. Vice President Biden called him a good friend as well.
These two examples have to give a moment’s pause to leaders who might support the US in its fight against terrorism.
US support of terrorists in Syria is another example. While Syria and the US are not best buddies, Syrian support in the war on terror was well known. Here is an example of this I talked about before. Except for Lebanon, this was the Syrian government policy, no doubt based on the old philosophy that the enemy of my enemy was my friend. Why would anyone ever help the US again?
Al Qaida in Syria, the rebels the US supports, recently used chemical weapons. The idea was to frame the Assad government and force US intervention. I am not sure if the US government’s repetition of this is stupidity or just another lie. The US has used this type of operation before in the Spanish American War. I blogged about it before. BTW this is my second most popular blog post.
But ultimately it does not matter. Just as the bread (food stamps), circuses (TV), and the legions of Rome (Or the huge US Navy) led to its downfall, so the same will happen to the US.
Yes, the crisis I see coming in 3 to 7 years will not be pretty. But I still am guardedly pessimistic, and I think that the US empire will continue for decades as the US, as bad a shape as it is in, has the cleanest dirty shirt around—even China may be in worse shape.
All empires fall. All. The American Empire will be no exception. That does not mean it will fall in 1975, 1988, 2000, 2012, 2013. Each of these dates has been advocated by one person/group or another as The End.
There is an interesting false assumption built into these dates. It is the assumption that the current malaise (still a great word even if President Carter never said it) needs to be associated with The End. This faulty Americocentric outlook is that the obvious crisis that is coming to the US means Jesus must return soon.
I am sure that the end of British domination after the 19th century led many British patriots to predict the return of Jesus. Maybe Spanish mystics felt the same way when their empire ended after a 200 year domination of the world. But the world survived the end of Rome, the end of Madrid, and the end of London. (Note that each of these cities still exists today.) The world will survive the end of Washington, thank you very much.
I am mulling over these things because of a promotion video. The promoters hope that you will attend Freedomfest in Las Vegas in July. I have no plans to attend, nor do I know anything about it and for that reason cannot recommend it.
We are like dwarfs sitting on the shoulders of giants. We see more, and things that are more distant, than they did, not because our sight is superior or because we are taller than they, but because they raise us up, and by their great stature add to ours.
While this thought is attributed to Isaac Newton, it was not original to him. It goes back at least to John of Salisbury in the 12th century. It has a lot of truth in it. I often think of a book I read as good if it adds one useful idea to my thinking. Most books do not even do this.
While I have been thinking I do stand on the shoulders of giants, another thought occurred to me as well, I am also standing on the graves of people whose death contributed to my well-being.
A Great Documentary available on YouTubeYou might think I feel guilty, a typical liberal. No, that would be a laugh to my regular readers and those who know me personally. I am just pointing out the way the system works naturally engenders murder and theft. What passes for capitalism in the modern world is a different animal entirely, I would call it Corporate Mercantilism.
Is my point that we stand on the corpses of those who went before exaggerated?
If you think so I suggest you read the blog series on the Cherokee nation written by Pam Dewey, the beloved editor of the Prophecy Podcast.
Even though I have a degree in history, Pam's series provided many details, especially personal details of the people involved. It contains many new ideas and thoughts.
But whatever you do, do not click on this link to the first in this series of the Trail of Tears unless you want your illusions you were taught in American history to be exposed as untrue. It is up to you.
Thursday, May 23, 2013 at 3:00AM 
It is difficult to struggle against Babylon. It is especially difficult to not participate in her wars. The following video is an adaptation of Thomas Hardy's anti-war poem "The Man He Killed." It is a fitting introduction to part 4 of Pam Dewey's series on Big Brother. Those who did not want to fight in the especially useless war WWI were rounded up with no regard for law. Big Brother, or Babylon as the Bible calls it, is not a modern phenomenon. It goes back millennia. 
