Politapocalypse (U.S. Politics Megathread)

The end of Iran’s near-total economic isolation could drive more modernization and open the country to moderating outside influences.

Pardon the disturbance Escopeta
But there was some serious talk going on behind the scenes since most everyone was convinced that you were LEB, and had once again duped us all, and had infected our sweet ST with her vile persona

I didn't think you were LEB, since she wasn't a libertarian, so I looked at your past posting and dug up some old climbing posts of yours and saved your ass,

She disguises herself with weird esoteric names and as a trad climber from Red States, so you can see the similarity.
She wouldn't know that Black Flag was a band, and instead think Jesus was asking about the insecticide.

please carry on

With Constantinople as its capital and control of lands around the Mediterranean basin, the Ottoman Empire was at the centre of interactions between the Eastern and Western worlds for six centuries. Following a long period of military setbacks against European powers, the Ottoman Empire gradually declined into the late nineteenth century. The empire allied with Germany in the early 20th century, with the imperial ambition of recovering its lost territories, joining in World War I to achieve this ambition on the side of Germany and the Central Powers. While the Empire was able to largely hold its own during the conflict, it was struggling with internal dissent, especially with the Arab Revolt in its Arabian holdings. Starting before the war, but growing increasingly common and violent during it, major atrocities were committed by the Ottoman government against the Armenians, Assyrians and Pontic Greeks.[16] The Empire's defeat and the occupation of part of its territory by the Allied Powers in the aftermath of the conflict resulted in the emergence of a new state, Turkey, in the Ottoman Anatolian heartland following the Independence war, as well as the founding of modern Balkan and Middle Eastern states.

For all their atrocious interventions in the Arab world in the past, I think at this point western countries would love to see more stability in the Arab world.

I'm genuinely interested to hear why you think that the arab nations, with all their animosities and competing interests would have any interest in forming a federation.

Sultan Erdogan: Turkey's Rebranding Into the New, Old Ottoman Empire
In the eyes of secularists, the Europe-facing, Western-dressing, cocktail-toasting modern nation-state is being replaced by a religiously conservative one, headscarf by headscarf.

The cities might not seem similar today, but one thing Tripoli and Thessaloniki, Basra and Beirut, Sarajevo and Sana'a all once had in common is that just a little over a century ago they were all part of the Ottoman Empire. A second thing they all have in common is that until just a few years ago they harbored a certain disdain for Turkey ... due in large part to the aforementioned empire.

Yet former rivals to the south, east, north and even west now attend Turkish business summits, watch Turkish shows, and purchase Turkish groceries. Interestingly and perhaps contrary to common sense, this recent shift seems to come not as a product of "time healing old wounds" but rather at a period when Turkey has embraced its Ottoman heritage to an unheard-of level.

The most popular television show, Magnificent Century, is essentially a soap opera set in the court of Suleiman the Magnificent, a bit like the Tudors but with even more imposing facial hair.

But beyond foreign policy there lies a much more significant domestic transformation, one that is also driven by history. In that same speech, the foreign minister spoke of the need for a "great restoration" where "we need to embrace fully the ancient values we have lost." Praising the historic bonds that connected the peoples of Turkey over the "new identities that were thrust upon us in the modern era," Davutoglu maintained that the road to Turkey's progress lies in its past - an assertion that has terrified the government's detractors

The 21st Century: An Era Of Fraud — Paul Craig Roberts
January 18, 2016

In the last years of the 20th century fraud entered US foreign policy in a new way. On false pretenses Washington dismantled Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to advance an undeclared agenda. In the 21st century this fraud multiplied many times. Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, and Libya were destroyed, and Iran and Syria would also have been destroyed if the President of Russia had not prevented it. Washington is also behind the current destruction of Yemen, and Washington has enabled and financed the Israeli destruction of Palestine. Additionally, Washington operated militarily within Pakistan without declaring war, murdering many women, children, and village elders under the guise of “combating terrorism.” Washington’s war crimes rival those of any country in history.

I have documented these crimes in my columns and books (Clarity Press).
Anyone who still believes in the purity of Washington’s foreign policy is a lost soul.

Russia and China now have a strategic alliance that is too strong for Washington. Russia and China will prevent Washington from further encroachments on their security and national interests. Those countries important to Russia and China will be protected by the alliance. As the world wakes up and sees the evil that the West represents, more countries will seek the protection of Russia and China.

America is also failing on the economic front. My columns and my book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism, which has been published in English, Chinese, Korean, Czech, and German, have shown how Washington has stood aside, indeed cheering it on, while the short-term profit interests of management, shareholders, and Wall Street eviscerated the American economy, sending manufacturing jobs, business know-how, and technology, along with professional tradeable skill jobs, to China, India, and other countries, leaving America with such a hollowed out economy that the median family income has been falling for years. Today 50% of 25 year-old Americans are living with their parents or grandparents because they cannot find employment sufficient to sustain an independent existance. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-10-27/why-are-half-all-25-year-olds-still-living-their-parents-federal-reserve-answers This brutal fact is covered up by the presstitute US media, a source of fantasy stories of America’s economic recovery.

The facts of our existence are so different from what is reported that I am astonished. As a former professor of economics, Wall Street Journal editor and Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, I am astonished at the corruption that rules in the financial sector, the Treasury, the financial regulatory agencies, and the Federal Reserve. In my day, there would have been indictments and prison sentences of bankers and high government officials.

In America today there are no free financial markets. All the markets are rigged by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury. The regulatory agencies, controlled by those the agencies are supposed to regulate, turn a blind eye, and even if they did not, they are helpless to enforce any law, because private interests are more powerful than the law.

Even the government’s statistical agencies have been corrupted. Inflation measures have been concocted in order to understate inflation. This lie not only saves Washington from paying Social Security cost-of-living adjustments and frees the money for more wars, but also by understating inflation, the government can create real GDP growth by counting inflation as real growth, just as the government creates 5% unemployment by not counting any discouraged workers who have looked for jobs until they can no longer afford the cost of looking and give up. The official unemployment rate is 5%, but no one can find a job. How can the unemployment rate be 5% when half of 25-year olds are living with relatives because they cannot afford an independent existence? As John Williams (shadowfacts) reports, the unemployment rate that includes those Americans who have given up looking for a job because there are no jobs to be found is 23%.

The Federal Reserve, a tool of a small handful of banks, has succeeded in creating the illusion of an economic recovery since June, 2009, by printing trillions of dollars that found their way not into the economy but into the prices of financial assets. Artificially booming stock and bond markets are the presstitute financial media’s “proof” of a booming economy.

The handful of learned people that America has left, and it is only a small handful, understand that there has been no recovery from the previous recession and that a new downturn is upon us. John Williams has pointed out that US industrial production, when properly adjusted for inflation, has never recovered its 2008 level, much less its 2000 peak, and has again turned down.

The American consumer is exhausted, overwhelmed by debt and lack of income growth. The entire economic policy of America is focused on saving a handful of NY banks, not on saving the American economy.

Economists and other Wall Street shills will dismiss the decline in industrial production as America is now a service economy. Economists pretend that these are high-tech services of the New Economy, but in fact waitresses, bartenders, part time retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services have replaced manufacturing and engineering jobs at a fraction of the pay, thus collapsing effective aggregate demand in the US. On occasions when neoliberal economists recognize problems, they blame them on China.

It is unclear that the US economy can be revived. To revive the US economy would require the re-regulation of the financial system and the recall of the jobs and US GDP that offshoring gave to foreign countries. It would require, as Michael Hudson demonstrates in his new book, Killing the Host, a revolution in tax policy that would prevent the financial sector from extracting economic surplus and capitalizing it in debt obligations paying interest to the financial sector.

The US government, controlled as it is by corrupt economic interests, would never permit policies that impinged on executive bonuses and Wall Street profits. Today US capitalism makes its money by selling out the American economy and the people dependent upon it.

In “freedom and democracy” America, the government and the economy serve interests totally removed from the interests of the American people. The sellout of the American people is protected by a huge canopy of propaganda provided by free market economists and financial presstitutes paid to lie for their living.

When America fails, so will Washington’s vassal states in Europe, Canada, Australia, and Japan. Unless Washington destroys the world in nuclear war, the world will be remade, and the corrupt and dissolute West will be an insignificant part of the new world.