theduran--2020-01-18--Russian-Indian Produced BrahMos Missiles to Give the Philippines More Independence

Submitted by InfoBrics , authored by Paul Antonopoulos , Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies… The BrahMos Russian-Indian joint venture , established in 1998 and named after the rivers Brahmaputra and Moskva in India and Russia respectively , has produced powerful cruise missiles of the same name , as well as launchers , control systems , storage facilities , and is responsible for training personnel in operating , repairing , and upgrading missiles .
BrahMos missiles have a speed of 2.5 to 2.8 times the speed of sound and can be launched from submarines , surface ships , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from aircraft .
The first contract for the export of the BrahMos missiles to a third country could be signed in the spring of this year , as stated by Pravin Pathak , the company ’ s Chief Information Technology Officer .
Relations with Russia and India , as has happened in history , is very warm and mutually beneficial , with Moscow successfully balancing its relations with Pakistan .
India is pleased with the cooperation on military technology and production joint venture organization , which has brought worry to Washington .
The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , a Cold War era ally , to India , as they believe it is a country in the region that can balance China ’ s rise .
Despite U.S. intentions , India has shown that they do not only want to create new weapons with Russia , but to also to explore space together .
All this characterizes the prospects for cooperation of the two countries .
It should be noted that India began to develop new weapons in the context of China , Russia and the U.S. conducting testing of different @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Currently , BrahMos is actively marketing this powerful missile in Southeast Asia and the Middle East , to a total of 14 countries .
With the help of Russia , India has deployed a family of supersonic cruise missiles to destroy ground and sea targets .
The layout options for the fleet are based on the design of Russia ’ s “ Onyx ” missile .
With the support of Russia , India has produced such missiles and has created variants of missiles for the Ground and Air Force .
India has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ which will be an important step into turning the South Asian country from major arms importer to an important military industrial center and exporter .
Southeast Asia and the Middle East are priority areas in New Delhi ’ s political and economic policy , areas that India has had thousands of years of connections and influence with .
These are areas where India has a significant influence , so they were chosen as the main direction to promote this type of missile .
There have long been discussions about the possibility of supplying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hanoi decided to buy Russia ’ s “ Bastion ” coastal protection complexes with the export version of the missile , the Onyx .
Judging by the recently published articles , the first country to buy BrahMos may be the Philippines .
In December 2019 , Philippine Defense Secretary Dolphin Lorenzana announced his country was interested in buying two sets of BrahMos missiles and assumed that the contract could be signed in the first half of 2020 .
The purchase of this powerful anti-cruise missile by the Philippines is a natural step for @ @ @ @ @ @ @ million people that needs to protect key areas of the adjacent sea .
Despite the normalization of Philippine-China relations under the leadership of Philippine President Duterte , this has not changed this pressing need .
The BrahMos may not necessarily tilt the balance of the region ’ s power in the Philippines favor , but more importantly , the Philippines can ensure its defensive capabilities without having to rely on the United States and its allies .
The contract envisages significant Russian participation , though indirect , but that would certainly upset the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cooperation came after Narendra Modi took office as Prime Minister in New Delhi .
In November 2017 , Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the Philippines .
The foreign policy of the Philippines is naturally based on a balance between the U.S. and China , and no other country can be compared to their influence on the Philippines ’ economy and politics .
However , the ability of the Philippines to buy Russian-Indian missiles shows that another large and important country , albeit slowly but surely , is transforming from @ @ @ @ @ @ @ player that is independent in its decision making , and that is also important to the interests of Russia and China .
Therefore , by acquiring the Russian-Indian produced missiles , the Philippines can continue its path of complete independent and sovereignty from U.S. domination , a former colonizing power of the archipelago .
Just how U.S. President Donald Trump will respond to this remains to be seen , as on one hand he is actively trying to discourage states from acquiring these missiles , while at the same time is attempting to @ @ @ @ @

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Submitted by InfoBrics, authored by Paul Antonopoulos, Research Fellow at the Center for Syncretic Studies…
The BrahMos Russian-Indian joint venture, established in 1998 and named after the rivers Brahmaputra and Moskva in India and Russia respectively, has produced powerful cruise missiles of the same name, as well as launchers, control systems, storage facilities, and is responsible for training personnel in operating, repairing, and upgrading missiles. BrahMos missiles have a speed of 2.5 to 2.8 times the speed of sound and can be launched from submarines, surface ships, from the coast, as well as from aircraft. The first contract for the export of the BrahMos missiles to a third country could be signed in the spring of this year, as stated by Pravin Pathak, the company’s Chief Information Technology Officer.
Relations with Russia and India, as has happened in history, is very warm and mutually beneficial, with Moscow successfully balancing its relations with Pakistan. India is pleased with the cooperation on military technology and production joint venture organization, which has brought worry to Washington. The U.S. is gradually shifting cooperation from Pakistan, a Cold War era ally, to India, as they believe it is a country in the region that can balance China’s rise. Despite U.S. intentions, India has shown that they do not only want to create new weapons with Russia, but to also to explore space together. All this characterizes the prospects for cooperation of the two countries.
It should be noted that India began to develop new weapons in the context of China, Russia and the U.S. conducting testing of different weapons to enhance strategic nuclear deterrence power.
Currently, BrahMos is actively marketing this powerful missile in Southeast Asia and the Middle East, to a total of 14 countries. With the help of Russia, India has deployed a family of supersonic cruise missiles to destroy ground and sea targets. The layout options for the fleet are based on the design of Russia’s “Onyx” missile. With the support of Russia, India has produced such missiles and has created variants of missiles for the Ground and Air Force.
India has long tried to export BrahMos missiles, which will be an important step into turning the South Asian country from major arms importer to an important military industrial center and exporter. Southeast Asia and the Middle East are priority areas in New Delhi’s political and economic policy, areas that India has had thousands of years of connections and influence with. These are areas where India has a significant influence, so they were chosen as the main direction to promote this type of missile.
There have long been discussions about the possibility of supplying BrahMos missiles to Vietnam, but then Hanoi decided to buy Russia’s “Bastion” coastal protection complexes with the export version of the missile, the Onyx. Judging by the recently published articles, the first country to buy BrahMos may be the Philippines. In December 2019, Philippine Defense Secretary Dolphin Lorenzana announced his country was interested in buying two sets of BrahMos missiles and assumed that the contract could be signed in the first half of 2020.
The purchase of this powerful anti-cruise missile by the Philippines is a natural step for the island country of more than 100 million people that needs to protect key areas of the adjacent sea. Despite the normalization of Philippine-China relations under the leadership of Philippine President Duterte, this has not changed this pressing need. The BrahMos may not necessarily tilt the balance of the region’s power in the Philippines favor, but more importantly, the Philippines can ensure its defensive capabilities without having to rely on the United States and its allies. The contract envisages significant Russian participation, though indirect, but that would certainly upset the U.S.
The process of promoting India-Philippines cooperation came after Narendra Modi took office as Prime Minister in New Delhi. In November 2017, Modi became the first Indian Prime Minister to visit the Philippines. The foreign policy of the Philippines is naturally based on a balance between the U.S. and China, and no other country can be compared to their influence on the Philippines’ economy and politics. However, the ability of the Philippines to buy Russian-Indian missiles shows that another large and important country, albeit slowly but surely, is transforming from a junior US ally to a political player that is independent in its decision making, and that is also important to the interests of Russia and China.
Therefore, by acquiring the Russian-Indian produced missiles, the Philippines can continue its path of complete independent and sovereignty from U.S. domination, a former colonizing power of the archipelago. Just how U.S. President Donald Trump will respond to this remains to be seen, as on one hand he is actively trying to discourage states from acquiring these missiles, while at the same time is attempting to warm relations with India.
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theduran--2020-01-18--Putin Updates Russian Constitution as Western Media Tries to Catch Up

Submitted by InfoBrics , authored by Johanna Ross , journalist based in Edinburgh , Scotland… Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his annual inauguration speech on Wednesday , announcing a welfare package for women and children which would put the average western democracy to shame .
But it wasn ’ t the social reform which caused shockwaves across global media .
Instead it was the changes to the constitution aimed at giving more power to parliament and less to the President , as Putin sets the scene for Russia ’ s democratic future once he leaves his post ( as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 2024 .
Putin ’ s speech yesterday was followed by the resignation of Prime Minister Medvedev and his government , a procedure which , although took many by surprise , was a natural follow-on from the announcements .
Western media however was aghast .
‘ What is Putin up to ?
’ read the headlines as Russia watchers frantically tried to work out what was going on .
There must be something more to this , the narrative was spun .
‘ The details are murky ’ professed The Economist , as it @ @ @ @ @ @ @ all meant .
The Twittersphere was completely unprepared and perplexed by the government ’ s resignation .
Many commentators couldn ’ t work out whether it was a good or bad thing .
The general line was ‘ we ’ re not quite sure what ’ s happening ; more details to follow.
’ This then evolved quickly into the line that the constitutional reforms were all part of Putin ’ s strategy to stay in power indefinitely .
‘ Vladimir Putin proposed sweeping reforms that could extend his decades-long grip on power @ @ @ @ @ @ @ boasted CNN .
This particular article even went as far as to misrepresent what the Russian President had actually said , by taking it completely out of context .
Although Putin said regarding the resignation of the government : “ I want to express satisfaction with the results that have been achieved .
Of course not everything worked out , but nothing ever works out in full ” , the CNN piece quoted him as saying ‘ not everything worked out ’ which by itself gives a completely different meaning , implying Putin @ @ @ @ @ @ @ work .
The Economist followed suit , taking up its usual antagonistic stance towards Russia with the headline “ How Vladimir Putin is preparing to rule forever.
” Furthermore on Twitter it alleged ‘ Vladimir Putin ’ s regime has killed too many people to make it plausible that he would voluntarily give up power ’ , to which journalist Mary Dejevsky rightfully responded : ‘ why would a president who , according to you interpretation , is intent on staying in power , be preparing a transition ?
’ .
Wednesday ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for the western commentariat .
For what in essence was clearly an attempt by Putin to further democratise Russia : reducing the number of terms a President can run to two , and ensuring the parliament appoints the Prime Minister as opposed to the President ; was perversely portrayed as a sign of authoritarianism , in a desperate attempt to fit the narrative .
Absent from most analysis was the fact that Putin wants to put his proposals to a public vote : if that ’ s not democracy then I don ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ also been largely ignored by the western media was the implications of certain constitutional reforms on the future government and President .
For arguably most significant of all was Putin ’ s proposal that any future President ought to have lived in Russia continuously for a period of 25 years and that civil servants should be barred from holding foreign citizenship .
So what should be regarded as a positive attempt to consolidate democracy in Russia , is being unfortunately , and rather predictably , interpreted as the opposite .
But even if @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in Russia ’ s future , with record approval ratings I don ’ t see many people having a problem with that .
This is the man who restored Russia as a world power to be reckoned with after the collapse of the USSR and the ensuing deep economic crisis during the 1990s .
Russians won ’ t forget that .

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Submitted by InfoBrics, authored by Johanna Ross, journalist based in Edinburgh, Scotland…
Russian President Vladimir Putin gave his annual inauguration speech on Wednesday, announcing a welfare package for women and children which would put the average western democracy to shame. But it wasn’t the social reform which caused shockwaves across global media. Instead it was the changes to the constitution aimed at giving more power to parliament and less to the President, as Putin sets the scene for Russia’s democratic future once he leaves his post (as it is widely believed he will) in 2024. Putin’s speech yesterday was followed by the resignation of Prime Minister Medvedev and his government, a procedure which, although took many by surprise, was a natural follow-on from the announcements.
Western media however was aghast. ‘What is Putin up to?’ read the headlines as Russia watchers frantically tried to work out what was going on. There must be something more to this, the narrative was spun. ‘The details are murky’ professed The Economist, as it bought time to figure out what it all meant. The Twittersphere was completely unprepared and perplexed by the government’s resignation. Many commentators couldn’t work out whether it was a good or bad thing. The general line was ‘we’re not quite sure what’s happening; more details to follow.’
This then evolved quickly into the line that the constitutional reforms were all part of Putin’s strategy to stay in power indefinitely. ‘Vladimir Putin proposed sweeping reforms that could extend his decades-long grip on power beyond the end of his presidency.” boasted CNN. This particular article even went as far as to misrepresent what the Russian President had actually said, by taking it completely out of context. Although Putin said regarding the resignation of the government: “I want to express satisfaction with the results that have been achieved. Of course not everything worked out, but nothing ever works out in full”, the CNN piece quoted him as saying ‘not everything worked out’ which by itself gives a completely different meaning, implying Putin was dissatisfied with the government’s work.
The Economist followed suit, taking up its usual antagonistic stance towards Russia with the headline “How Vladimir Putin is preparing to rule forever.” Furthermore on Twitter it alleged ‘Vladimir Putin’s regime has killed too many people to make it plausible that he would voluntarily give up power’, to which journalist Mary Dejevsky rightfully responded: ‘why would a president who, according to you interpretation, is intent on staying in power, be preparing a transition?’.
Wednesday’s events in Russia really proved problematic for the western commentariat. For what in essence was clearly an attempt by Putin to further democratise Russia: reducing the number of terms a President can run to two, and ensuring the parliament appoints the Prime Minister as opposed to the President; was perversely portrayed as a sign of authoritarianism, in a desperate attempt to fit the narrative. Absent from most analysis was the fact that Putin wants to put his proposals to a public vote: if that’s not democracy then I don’t know what is.
What has also been largely ignored by the western media was the implications of certain constitutional reforms on the future government and President. For arguably most significant of all was Putin’s proposal that any future President ought to have lived in Russia continuously for a period of 25 years and that civil servants should be barred from holding foreign citizenship.
So what should be regarded as a positive attempt to consolidate democracy in Russia, is being unfortunately, and rather predictably, interpreted as the opposite. But even if Vladimir Putin does continue a central role in Russia’s future, with record approval ratings I don’t see many people having a problem with that. This is the man who restored Russia as a world power to be reckoned with after the collapse of the USSR and the ensuing deep economic crisis during the 1990s. Russians won’t forget that.
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theduran--2020-01-19--George Washington’s Advice to Us Now

George Washington’s Advice to Us Now

U.S. President George Washington ’ s final words to his fellow Americans , upon leaving office , are now even more timely than when he spoke them , but have been ignored in practise for many decades ; and the most recently published popular book about that speech ignores the most enduringly important part , so this part of Washington ’ s Farewell Address will be quoted from here , and will be placed into its historical context , so as to make clear what the central meaning in that speech is for our times , and for all times @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Rudolf Giuliani , and before that , schooled at Milton Academy and then Yale ) was frecently the Editor-in-Chief of the rabidly anti-Russian — or “ neoconservative ” — ‘ news ’ ( or propaganda ) site “ The Daily Beast.
” He issued on 10 January 2017 , right before the neoconservative Donald Trump became President , Washington ’ s Farewell : The Founding Father ’ s Warning to Future Generations , which book is an extended essay on President George Washington ’ s famous Farewell Address .
That work wins 4.5 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ but I am not linking to it , because that book ignores what will be discussed in this brief article , which is the core of the speech that Avlon devotes 368 pages to butchering .
Here , then , is the key passage from Washington ’ s Farewell Address , in which our first ( and — along with Lincoln and FDR , one of our three greatest ) President actually had warned us against the neoconservative path , which our nation has been on ever since 24 February 1990 and the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and its Warsaw Pact military alliance .
That ’ s the path of wars ( such as in Iraq , Libya , Syria , and Ukraine ) ( which some wags call “ perpetual war for perpetual peace ” ) to conquer , first , all of Russia ’ s allies , and then finally ( once Russia is thus thoroughly isolated ) , to conquer Russia itself — in other words , George Washington , when retiring from public life , warned us against Mr. Avlon ’ s own neoconservative foreign-affairs obsession @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Washington warned us , instead , to avoid eternal enmity against any nation , including Russia , as is indicated in this passage , which Avlon ’ s trashy book ignores ) : Nothing is more essential than that permanent , inveterate antipathies against particular nations , and passionate attachments for others , should be excluded ; and that , in place of them , just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated .
The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ its animosity or to its affection , either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest .
Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury , to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage , and to be haughty and intractable , when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur .
Hence , frequent collisions , obstinate , envenomed , and bloody contests .
The nation , prompted by ill-will and resentment , sometimes impels to war the government , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The government sometimes participates in the national propensity , and adopts through passion what reason would reject ; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride , ambition , and other sinister and pernicious motives .
The peace often , sometimes perhaps the liberty , of nations , has been the victim .
So likewise , a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils .
Sympathy for the favorite nation , facilitating the illusion of an imaginary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ common interest exists , and infusing into one the enmities of the other , betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification .
It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions ; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained , and by exciting jealousy , ill-will , and a disposition to retaliate , in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld @ @ @ @ @ @ @ corrupted , or deluded citizens ( who devote themselves to the favorite nation ) , facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country , without odium , sometimes even with popularity ; gilding , with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation , a commendable deference for public opinion , or a laudable zeal for public good , the base or foolish compliances of ambition , corruption , or infatuation .
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways , such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened @ @ @ @ @ @ @ do they afford to tamper with domestic factions , to practice the arts of seduction , to mislead public opinion , to influence or awe the public councils .
Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter .
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence ( I conjure you to believe me , fellow-citizens ) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake , since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ government .
But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial ; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided , instead of a defense against it .
Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side , and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other .
Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious , while its tools and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the people , to surrender their interests .
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations , to have with them as little political connection as possible .
So far as we have already formed engagements , let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith .
Here let us stop .
Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none ; or a very remote relation .
Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies , the causes of which @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Hence , therefore , it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics , or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities .
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course .
If we remain one people under an efficient government .
the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance ; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; when belligerent nations , under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us , will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation ; when we may choose peace or war , as our interest , guided by justice , shall counsel .
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation ?
Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground ?
Why , by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe , entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition , rivalship , interest , humor @ @ @ @ @ @ @ policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world ; so far , I mean , as we are now at liberty to do it ; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements .
I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs , that honesty is always the best policy .
I repeat it , therefore , let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense .
But , in my opinion , it is unnecessary @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture , we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies .
Such “ temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies ” includes The Allies ( England , Soviet Union and U.S. ) during World War II , but certainly nothing after the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact ended in 1991 .
The entire ‘ Western Alliance ’ — basically NATO plus Japan — is anti-American policies by the American aristocracy ( controlling the U.S. Government ) @ @ @ @ @ @ @ terminate , and U.S. armed forces be withdrawn from all foreign countries , in accord with the will and intention of America ’ s democratic Founders including President Washington .
Using the U.S. Defense Department , and the U.S. Treasury Department , as ( which neoconservatives do ) a vast welfare program for the super-wealthy owners of U.S. weapons-manufacturers and for U.S. and other mercenaries , is unauthorized by America ’ s Founders , and was explicitly condemned by George Washington .
If any U.S.-based international corporations need those foreign U.S. military bases @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the government ’ s tab to pay for them , because that kind of ‘ capitalism ’ is mere imperialism , which is nothing that any of our Founding Fathers advocated — it ’ s un-American , in terms of the U.S. Constitution , and the men who wrote it .
As Alexander Hamilton wrote on 9 January 1796 , in defending the new Constitution , and especially its Treaty Clause : “ I aver , that it was understood by all to be the intent of the provision [ the Treaty @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the most ample latitude to render it competent to all the stipulations , which the exigencies of National Affairs might require—competent to the making of Treaties of Alliance , Treaties of Commerce , Treaties of Peace and every other species of Convention usual among nations and competent in the course of its exercise to controul & bind the legislative power of Congress .
And it was emphatically for this reason that it was so carefully guarded ; the cooperation of two thirds of the Senate with the President being required to make a @ @ @ @ @ @ @ confidence.
” He went further : “ It will not be disputed that the words ‘ Treaties and alliances ’ are of equivalent import and of no greater force than the single word Treaties .
An alliance is only a species of Treaty , a particular of a general .
And the power of ‘ entering into Treaties , ’ which terms confer the authority under which the former Government acted , will not be pretended to be stronger than the power ‘ to make Treaties , ’ which are the terms constituting @ @ @ @ @ @ @ acts.
” So : there can be no doubt that the term “ treaty ” refers to any and all types of international agreements .
This was the Founders ’ clear and unequivocal intent .
No court under this Constitution possesses any power to change that , because they can ’ t change history .
Furthermore , the third President Thomas Jefferson said in his likewise-famous Inaugural Address , that there should be “ Peace , commerce , and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.
” Jefferson ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to yet another major concern that the Founders had regarding treaties — that by discriminating in favor of the treaty-partners , they also discriminate against non-partner nations , and so endanger “ peace , commerce , and honest friendship with all nations , ” which was the Founders ’ chief goal in their foreign policies .
But , the Founders ’ chief concern was the mere recognition that treaties tend to be far more “ permanent ” and “ entangling ” than any purely national laws .
This was the main reason why @ @ @ @ @ @ @ difficult to become laws , and so the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement for passing-into-law any treaty was instituted as the Treaty-Clause , Article 2 , Section 2 , Clause 2 .
Though this thinking — avoidance of favoritism in America ’ s foreign policies — was pervasive amongst the creators of America ’ s democracy ( or people ’ s republic ) , America ’ s newly developed aristocracy subsequently in the 20th Century targeted elimination of the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement , because it ’ s an impediment toward their re-establishing the aristocracy that the American @ @ @ @ @ @ @ this people ’ s republic .
And , the big chance for the aristocracy to restore its position via an imperial President , and so to extend their empire beyond our own shores , came almost two hundred years after America ’ s founding ; it came in 1974 , which was when a law finally became passed by Congress allowing some treaties to emerge as U.S. law with only the normal 50 % +1 majority in the Senate ( unConstitutional though that is ) .
Without that Nixonian law , George Herbert @ @ @ @ @ @ @ t have been able to become law under Bill Clinton in 1993 , and Barack Obama ’ s TPP with Asia and TTIP with Europe wouldn ’ t have stood even a chance of becoming law in 2016 .
Both of Obama ’ s proposed mega-treaties were designed to isolate and weaken both Russia and China in international trade , but all that Obama ended up with , before his leaving office , was economic sanctions against Russia for its having accepted the desire of the vast majority of Crimeans to rejoin with @ @ @ @ @ @ @ overthrew the democratically elected President of next-door Ukraine , who had received 75 % of the vote within Crimea .
Avlon ’ s website , as a mainstream neoconservative ‘ news ’ site , opposed Donald Trump as being insufficiently against Russia .
They actually urged punishing Russia for Trump ’ s election !
What would George Washington think about having a person ( Avlon ) so partisan against George Washington ’ s vision for our country as that , becoming the popular modern ‘ interpreter ’ of his famous Farewell Address ?
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ George Washington , and America ’ s other early Presidents , think of a country which advances such a person as that , to be a commentator and host at CNN , Editor-in-Chief at The Daily Beast , and a favorably received ‘ historian ’ of the United States ?
This is certainly not the nation that they founded .
This ship — now become the wrecker of nations and aspiring global dictator — abandoned its home port in 1945 , and hasn ’ t returned ever since .
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of They ’ re Not Even Close : The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records , 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST ’ S VENTRILOQUISTS : The Event that Created Christianity .

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Eric Zuesse, originally posted at strategic-culture.org
U.S. President George Washington’s final words to his fellow Americans, upon leaving office, are now even more timely than when he spoke them, but have been ignored in practise for many decades; and the most recently published popular book about that speech ignores the most enduringly important part, so this part of Washington’s Farewell Address will be quoted from here, and will be placed into its historical context, so as to make clear what the central meaning in that speech is for our times, and for all times.
John Avlon (former speechwriter for Rudolf Giuliani, and before that, schooled at Milton Academy and then Yale) was recently the Editor-in-Chief of the rabidly anti-Russian — or “neoconservative” — ‘news’ (or propaganda) site “The Daily Beast.” He issued on 10 January 2017, right before the neoconservative Donald Trump became President, Washington’s Farewell: The Founding Father’s Warning to Future Generations, which book is an extended essay on President George Washington’s famous Farewell Address. That work wins 4.5 out of 5 stars at Amazon, but I am not linking to it, because that book ignores what will be discussed in this brief article, which is the core of the speech that Avlon devotes 368 pages to butchering.
Here, then, is the key passage from Washington’s Farewell Address, in which our first (and — along with Lincoln and FDR, one of our three greatest) President actually had warned us against the neoconservative path, which our nation has been on ever since 24 February 1990 and the end of the USSR and its communism and its Warsaw Pact military alliance. That’s the path of wars (such as in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Ukraine) (which some wags call “perpetual war for perpetual peace”) to conquer, first, all of Russia’s allies, and then finally (once Russia is thus thoroughly isolated), to conquer Russia itself — in other words, George Washington, when retiring from public life, warned us against Mr. Avlon’s own neoconservative foreign-affairs obsession: eternal enmity against Russia (President Washington warned us, instead, to avoid eternal enmity against any nation, including Russia, as is indicated in this passage, which Avlon’s trashy book ignores):
—
Nothing is more essential than that permanent, inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded; and that, in place of them, just and amicable feelings towards all should be cultivated. The nation which indulges towards another a habitual hatred or a habitual fondness is in some degree a slave. It is a slave to its animosity or to its affection, either of which is sufficient to lead it astray from its duty and its interest. Antipathy in one nation against another disposes each more readily to offer insult and injury, to lay hold of slight causes of umbrage, and to be haughty and intractable, when accidental or trifling occasions of dispute occur. Hence, frequent collisions, obstinate, envenomed, and bloody contests. The nation, prompted by ill-will and resentment, sometimes impels to war the government, contrary to the best calculations of policy. The government sometimes participates in the national propensity, and adopts through passion what reason would reject; at other times it makes the animosity of the nation subservient to projects of hostility instigated by pride, ambition, and other sinister and pernicious motives. The peace often, sometimes perhaps the liberty, of nations, has been the victim.
So likewise, a passionate attachment of one nation for another produces a variety of evils. Sympathy for the favorite nation, facilitating the illusion of an imaginary common interest in cases where no real common interest exists, and infusing into one the enmities of the other, betrays the former into a participation in the quarrels and wars of the latter without adequate inducement or justification. It leads also to concessions to the favorite nation of privileges denied to others which is apt doubly to injure the nation making the concessions; by unnecessarily parting with what ought to have been retained, and by exciting jealousy, ill-will, and a disposition to retaliate, in the parties from whom equal privileges are withheld. And it gives to ambitious, corrupted, or deluded citizens (who devote themselves to the favorite nation), facility to betray or sacrifice the interests of their own country, without odium, sometimes even with popularity; gilding, with the appearances of a virtuous sense of obligation, a commendable deference for public opinion, or a laudable zeal for public good, the base or foolish compliances of ambition, corruption, or infatuation.
As avenues to foreign influence in innumerable ways, such attachments are particularly alarming to the truly enlightened and independent patriot. How many opportunities do they afford to tamper with domestic factions, to practice the arts of seduction, to mislead public opinion, to influence or awe the public councils. Such an attachment of a small or weak towards a great and powerful nation dooms the former to be the satellite of the latter.
Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence (I conjure you to believe me, fellow-citizens) the jealousy of a free people ought to be constantly awake, since history and experience prove that foreign influence is one of the most baneful foes of republican government. But that jealousy to be useful must be impartial; else it becomes the instrument of the very influence to be avoided, instead of a defense against it. Excessive partiality for one foreign nation and excessive dislike of another cause those whom they actuate to see danger only on one side, and serve to veil and even second the arts of influence on the other. Real patriots who may resist the intrigues of the favorite are liable to become suspected and odious, while its tools and dupes usurp the applause and confidence of the people, to surrender their interests.
The great rule of conduct for us in regard to foreign nations is in extending our commercial relations, to have with them as little political connection as possible. So far as we have already formed engagements, let them be fulfilled with perfect good faith. Here let us stop. Europe has a set of primary interests which to us have none; or a very remote relation. Hence she must be engaged in frequent controversies, the causes of which are essentially foreign to our concerns. Hence, therefore, it must be unwise in us to implicate ourselves by artificial ties in the ordinary vicissitudes of her politics, or the ordinary combinations and collisions of her friendships or enmities.
Our detached and distant situation invites and enables us to pursue a different course. If we remain one people under an efficient government. the period is not far off when we may defy material injury from external annoyance; when we may take such an attitude as will cause the neutrality we may at any time resolve upon to be scrupulously respected; when belligerent nations, under the impossibility of making acquisitions upon us, will not lightly hazard the giving us provocation; when we may choose peace or war, as our interest, guided by justice, shall counsel.
Why forego the advantages of so peculiar a situation? Why quit our own to stand upon foreign ground? Why, by interweaving our destiny with that of any part of Europe, entangle our peace and prosperity in the toils of European ambition, rivalship, interest, humor or caprice?
It is our true policy to steer clear of permanent alliances with any portion of the foreign world; so far, I mean, as we are now at liberty to do it; for let me not be understood as capable of patronizing infidelity to existing engagements. I hold the maxim no less applicable to public than to private affairs, that honesty is always the best policy. I repeat it, therefore, let those engagements be observed in their genuine sense. But, in my opinion, it is unnecessary and would be unwise to extend them.
Taking care always to keep ourselves by suitable establishments on a respectable defensive posture, we may safely trust to temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies.
—
Such “temporary alliances for extraordinary emergencies” includes The Allies (England, Soviet Union and U.S.) during World War II, but certainly nothing after the Soviet Union and its communism and Warsaw Pact ended in 1991. The entire ‘Western Alliance’ — basically NATO plus Japan — is anti-American policies by the American aristocracy (controlling the U.S. Government) after 1991, and should therefore promptly terminate, and U.S. armed forces be withdrawn from all foreign countries, in accord with the will and intention of America’s democratic Founders including President Washington. Using the U.S. Defense Department, and the U.S. Treasury Department, as (which neoconservatives do) a vast welfare program for the super-wealthy owners of U.S. weapons-manufacturers and for U.S. and other mercenaries, is unauthorized by America’s Founders, and was explicitly condemned by George Washington.
If any U.S.-based international corporations need those foreign U.S. military bases, then they should pick up all of the government’s tab to pay for them, because that kind of ‘capitalism’ is mere imperialism, which is nothing that any of our Founding Fathers advocated — it’s un-American, in terms of the U.S. Constitution, and the men who wrote it.
As Alexander Hamilton wrote on 9 January 1796, in defending the new Constitution, and especially its Treaty Clause: “I aver, that it was understood by all to be the intent of the provision [the Treaty Clause] to give to that power the most ample latitude to render it competent to all the stipulations, which the exigencies of National Affairs might require—competent to the making of Treaties of Alliance, Treaties of Commerce, Treaties of Peace and every other species of Convention usual among nations and competent in the course of its exercise to controul & bind the legislative power of Congress. And it was emphatically for this reason that it was so carefully guarded; the cooperation of two thirds of the Senate with the President being required to make a Treaty. I appeal for this with confidence.”
He went further: “It will not be disputed that the words ‘Treaties and alliances’ are of equivalent import and of no greater force than the single word Treaties. An alliance is only a species of Treaty, a particular of a general. And the power of ‘entering into Treaties,’ which terms confer the authority under which the former Government acted, will not be pretended to be stronger than the power ‘to make Treaties,’ which are the terms constituting the authority under which the present Government acts.” So: there can be no doubt that the term “treaty” refers to any and all types of international agreements. This was the Founders’ clear and unequivocal intent. No court under this Constitution possesses any power to change that, because they can’t change history.
Furthermore, the third President Thomas Jefferson said in his likewise-famous Inaugural Address, that there should be “Peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations — entangling alliances with none.” Jefferson’s comment there was also a succinct tip-of-the-hat to yet another major concern that the Founders had regarding treaties — that by discriminating in favor of the treaty-partners, they also discriminate against non-partner nations, and so endanger “peace, commerce, and honest friendship with all nations,” which was the Founders’ chief goal in their foreign policies. But, the Founders’ chief concern was the mere recognition that treaties tend to be far more “permanent” and “entangling” than any purely national laws. This was the main reason why treaties need to be made much more difficult to become laws, and so the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement for passing-into-law any treaty was instituted as the Treaty-Clause, Article 2, Section 2, Clause 2.
Though this thinking — avoidance of favoritism in America’s foreign policies — was pervasive amongst the creators of America’s democracy (or people’s republic), America’s newly developed aristocracy subsequently in the 20th Century targeted elimination of the two-thirds-of-Senate requirement, because it’s an impediment toward their re-establishing the aristocracy that the American Revolution itself had overthrown and replaced by this people’s republic. And, the big chance for the aristocracy to restore its position via an imperial President, and so to extend their empire beyond our own shores, came almost two hundred years after America’s founding; it came in 1974, which was when a law finally became passed by Congress allowing some treaties to emerge as U.S. law with only the normal 50%+1 majority in the Senate (unConstitutional though that is). Without that Nixonian law, George Herbert Walker Bush’s NAFTA wouldn’t have been able to become law under Bill Clinton in 1993, and Barack Obama’s TPP with Asia and TTIP with Europe wouldn’t have stood even a chance of becoming law in 2016. Both of Obama’s proposed mega-treaties were designed to isolate and weaken both Russia and China in international trade, but all that Obama ended up with, before his leaving office, was economic sanctions against Russia for its having accepted the desire of the vast majority of Crimeans to rejoin with Russia after Obama’s Ukrainian coup overthrew the democratically elected President of next-door Ukraine, who had received 75% of the vote within Crimea.
Avlon’s website, as a mainstream neoconservative ‘news’ site, opposed Donald Trump as being insufficiently against Russia. They actually urged punishing Russia for Trump’s election! What would George Washington think about having a person (Avlon) so partisan against George Washington’s vision for our country as that, becoming the popular modern ‘interpreter’ of his famous Farewell Address? Would he like that? What would George Washington, and America’s other early Presidents, think of a country which advances such a person as that, to be a commentator and host at CNN, Editor-in-Chief at The Daily Beast, and a favorably received ‘historian’ of the United States?
This is certainly not the nation that they founded. This ship — now become the wrecker of nations and aspiring global dictator — abandoned its home port in 1945, and hasn’t returned ever since.
—————
Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.
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theduran--2020-01-19--The Geopolitics of Epistemological Warfare: From Babylon to Neocon

I think any sane human being can agree that while war was never a good idea , war in the 21st century is an absolutely intolerable one .
The problem we currently face is that many of the forces driving world events towards an all-out war of “ Mutually Assured Annihilation ” are anything but sane .
While I ’ m obviously referring here to a certain category of people who fall under a particularly virulent strain of imperial thinking which can be labelled “ neo-conservative ” and while many of these disturbing figures honestly believe that a total war @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in order to achieve their goals of total global hegemony , I would like to make one subtle yet very important distinction which is often overlooked .
What is this distinction ?
Under the broad umbrella of “ neo-conservative ” one should properly differentiate those who really believe in their ideology and are trapped under the invisible cage of its unexamined assumptions vs. that smaller yet more important segment that created and manages the ideology from the top .
I brushed on this grouping in a recent 3 part study called Origins of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Jewish Conspiracy .
To re-state my meaning : This group doesn ’ t necessarily believe in the ideological group they manage any more than a parent believes in that tooth fairy which they promote in order to achieve certain behavioral patterns in their children .
While belief in the tooth fairy is slightly less destructive than belief in a misanthropic neocon worldview of a Bolton , Pompeo or Cheney , the analogy is useful to communicate the point .
Modern ideology-shapers serve the same role as those ancient high priests of Babylon , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cults and countless pagan mystery religions recorded throughout the ages .
It is well documented that any cult could comfortably exist under Rome ’ s control , as long as said cult denied any claim to objective truthfulness- making the rise of Abrahamic monotheistic faiths more than a little antagonistic to empire .
Did the high priests necessarily BELIEVE in those dogmas which they created and managed ?
Was it politically necessary to create them ?
Because an Empire , like everything in the world , exist as a whole with parts… but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ law ( justice , love , goodness , etc ) , empires are merely a sum of parts and their rules of organization can be nothing but zero sum ( 1 ) .
Each cultish group may coexist as an echo chamber alongside other groups sacrificing to whatever deity they wish without judgement of moral right or wrong bounded only by a common blind faith in their group ’ s beliefs- but nothing universal about justice , creative reason , or human nature is otherwise permitted .
Here the a-moral “ peace ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ by an oligarchy which wishes to lord over the slaves .
Whether we are dealing with Caesar Augustus , Lord Metternich ’ s Congress of Vienna , Aldous Huxley , Sir Henry Kissinger , or Leo Strauss ( father of modern neo-conservativism ) , “ Peace ” can never be anything more than a mathematical “ balancing of parts ” .
Now it is a good moment to ask : What does this phenomenon look like in our modern age ?
To answer this , let us leap over a couple of millennia @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bit more personal : Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade .
Do Smith ’ s modern followers sincerely believe in the “ self-regulating forces of the free market ” ?
Sure they do .
Did Adam Smith actually believe in his own system ?
Whether he did or not , according to recent research conducted by historian Jeffrey Steinberg , Smith received his commission to compose his seminal book Wealth of Nations ( published 1776 ) while riding with Lord Shelburne himself in a carriage ride from Edinburgh to London in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a coincidence as this was the same Lord Shelburne who essentially managed the British Empire during the American Revolution and who always despised all colonial aspirations to use protective tariffs , emit productive credit or channel said credit towards internal improvements as Benjamin Franklin had championed in his 1729 Necessity of Paper Currency and Colonial Script .
Why develop Industry , asked Smith , when the new “ Law ” of “ absolute advantage ” demanded that everyone just do what they are good at for the best price possible ?
America has @ @ @ @ @ @ @ should stick with agriculture and slave-driven cotton .
Britain had a lot of industry ( don ’ t ask how that happened because it wasn ’ t through free trade ) , so they should stick with that !
India had advanced textiles , but Britain had to destroy that so that India could then have a lot of opium fields so she could do that… which China could then smoke to death under the watch of British Gunships .
“ Free Trade ” demanded it so .
Let ’ s look at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ theory of natural selection Darwin ’ s theory published in his Origins of Species ( 1859 ) was based on the assumption that all changes in the biosphere are driven by “ laws ” of “ survival of the fittest ” within an assumed closed ecosystem of diminishing returns .
Just as Smith asserted that an “ invisible hand ” brought creative order to the chaos of unregulated vice and self-interest , Darwin asserted that creative order on the large scale evolution of species could be explained by chaotic mutations on the micro @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of reason , free will or God could pass ( 2 ) .
Did Charles Darwin believe his system ?
Probably .
But how about Thomas Huxley ( aka : “ Darwin ’ s Bulldog ” ) whose efforts to destroy all competing theories which included “ purpose ” , “ meaning ” , or “ design ” were crushed and ridiculed into obscurity ?
Huxley himself was on record saying he did not believe in Darwin ’ s system .
So why was this theory promoted by forces ( like Huxley ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ many flaws ?
Well , here again it helps to refer to Darwin ’ s own account of his discovery from his autobiography where he wrote : “ In October 1838 , fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry , I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population , and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on , from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants , it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
The result would be the formation of a new species .
Here then , I had at last got a theory by which to work ” .
And here we have it !
Reverend Thomas Malthus ( the cold hearted “ Man of God ” who taught economics at the British East India Company ’ s Haileybury College ) provided the very foundation upon which Darwin ’ s system stood !
Thomas Huxley and the other “ high priests ” of Huxley ’ s X Club were always Malthusian ( even before @ @ @ @ @ @ @ always been more focused on monopolizing the finite resources of an age , rather than encouraging creative discoveries and new inventions which would bring new resources into being- overcoming nature ’ s “ limits to growth ” ( a dis-equilibrium not to be tolerated ) .
Whether Malthus actually believed in the system which bears his name , as generations of his adherents sincerely do , remains to be seen .
However his own awareness of the needed extermination of the “ unfit ” by the Ubermenschen of the British Aristocracy preceded Social @ @ @ @ @ @ @ coldly called for the encouragement of the plague and other “ natural forms of destruction ” to cull the herd of the unfit in his Essay on the Principle of Population ( 1799 ) : “ We should facilitate , instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede , the operations of nature in producing this mortality ; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine , we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction , which we compel nature to use .
In our towns @ @ @ @ @ @ @ crowd more people into the houses , and court the return of the plague.
” A little later , Malthus even argued for the early extermination of poor babies who were of low value to society when he said : “ I should propose a regulation to be made , declaring that no child born from any marriage taking place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law , and no illegitimate child born two years from the same date , should ever be entitled to parish assistance… The @ @ @ @ @ @ @ little value to society , as others will immediately supply its place.
” The neo-Malthusian revivalists such as Princes Bernhardt , Philip Mountbatten and Huxley ’ s own grandson Sir Julian who birthed the misanthropic deformity today called the Green New Deal were not ignorant to this tradition .
The disastrous effect of this worldview upon races deemed “ unfit ” in the global south should also not be ignored .
It is no coincidence that those three neo-Malthusian oligarchs founded the World Wildlife Fund , 1001 Nature Trust and Club of Rome @ @ @ @ @ @ @ third world over the bodies of countless statesmen during the Cold War .
The Danger of Creative Thought to an Empire Encouraging creative thought and cooperation among diverse nations , linguistic , religious and ethnic groups tends to result in new uncontrolled systems of potential as humanity increases its capacity to sustain itself while imperial systems lose their ability to parasitically drain their host .
In Lincoln ’ s great 1859 speech , the martyred leader stood up against this Malthusian paradigm endemic of the British Empire when he said : “ All @ @ @ @ @ @ @ man , a miner .
The whole earth , and all within it , upon it , and round about it , including himself , in his physical , moral , and intellectual nature , and his susceptibilities , are the infinitely various “ leads ” from which , man , from the first , was to dig out his destiny… Man is not the only animal who labors ; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship .
This improvement , he effects by Discoveries , and Inventions.
” Lincoln @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , state credit ( greenbacks ) and internal improvements are inextricably linked to this view of man also shared by the earlier Ben Franklin .
Today , the positive paradigm which Lincoln died to defend is most clearly represented by the leaders of such nations as Russia and China- both of whom have come out repeatedly attacking the post-truth neo-liberal order and also the win-lose philosophy of Hobbesian geopolitics ( 3 ) .
The folly of America ’ s new dance with impeachment and the neocon hand shaping Trump ’ s disastrous foreign @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ’ s absolute fear of losing America to a new Eurasian partnership which Trump has promoted repeatedly since entering office in 2017 .
Xi Jinping and Putin have not only responded to this obsolete system by creating an alternative system of win-win cooperation driven by unbounded scientific and technological progress but they have also managed to expose the Achilles heal of the empire .
These statesmen have demonstrated a clear recognition that those ideologies ranging from neo-liberalism to neo-conservativism are entirely unsustainable , and defeatable ( but not militarily ) .
Xi expressed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ trip to Greece .
Even though leaders like Putin and Xi understand this , citizens of the west will continue to be woefully unequipped to either make sense of these chaotic systems of belief , extract them from their own hearts if they are so contaminated or resist them effectively , without understanding that those who fabricated and manage these belief structures never truly believed in them .
Neoconservative founding fathers such as Leo Strauss and Sir Bernard Lewis absolutely never believed in the ideologies their cultish golems like Bolton , Cheney or @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Their belief was only that the sum-of-parts called humanity must ultimately be governed by a Hobbesian Leviathan ( aka : a new globalized Roman Empire ) , and that Leviathan could only be created in response to an intolerably painful period of chaos which their twisted tooth fairies would usher into this world .
( 1 ) From this standpoint , it is worth reviewing the character of Calicles in Plato ’ s Gorgias dialogue or Thrasymachus in book one of the Republic– both of whom exemplify the oligarchical world view by denying @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to merely useful tools by which the “ wise ” may lord over the “ slaves ” born into lower classes .
Neoconservative founding fathers like Leo Strauss or Alan Bloom who call themselves “ neo-Platonist ” merely take a literal reading of chosen selections from the Republic and then assert without evidence that Plato really believed in Thrasymacus and Calicles ’ worldview .
( 2 ) For those interested in digging a bit deeper into this topic , the author delivered a lecture in 2010 titled The Matter Over Darwin ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the post JFK years , America ’ s clearest representative of this anti-oligarchical tradition was found consistently in the efforts of the late economist and Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche.- a selection of whose works can be reviewed here .
Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review , BRI expert correspondent on Tactical Talk and has authored 3 volumes of ‘ Untold History of Canada ’ book series .
His works appear regularly on The Duran , Strategic Culture , Sott , Fort Russ , Zero Hedge , L.A. Review of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ and South Front .
In 2019 Matthew co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation .
He can be reached at [ email protected ]

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of this site. This site does not give financial, investment or medical advice.
Originally published on the Strategic Culture Foundation
I think any sane human being can agree that while war was never a good idea, war in the 21st century is an absolutely intolerable one. The problem we currently face is that many of the forces driving world events towards an all-out war of “Mutually Assured Annihilation” are anything but sane.
While I’m obviously referring here to a certain category of people who fall under a particularly virulent strain of imperial thinking which can be labelled “neo-conservative” and while many of these disturbing figures honestly believe that a total war of annihilation is a risk worth taking in order to achieve their goals of total global hegemony, I would like to make one subtle yet very important distinction which is often overlooked.
What is this distinction?
Under the broad umbrella of “neo-conservative” one should properly differentiate those who really believe in their ideology and are trapped under the invisible cage of its unexamined assumptions vs. that smaller yet more important segment that created and manages the ideology from the top. I brushed on this grouping in a recent 3 part study called Origins of the Deep State and Myth of the Jewish Conspiracy.
To re-state my meaning: This group doesn’t necessarily believe in the ideological group they manage any more than a parent believes in that tooth fairy which they promote in order to achieve certain behavioral patterns in their children.
While belief in the tooth fairy is slightly less destructive than belief in a misanthropic neocon worldview of a Bolton, Pompeo or Cheney, the analogy is useful to communicate the point.
Cult Managers: Ancient Babylon and Now
Modern ideology-shapers serve the same role as those ancient high priests of Babylon, Persia and Rome who managed the many cults and countless pagan mystery religions recorded throughout the ages. It is well documented that any cult could comfortably exist under Rome’s control, as long as said cult denied any claim to objective truthfulness- making the rise of Abrahamic monotheistic faiths more than a little antagonistic to empire.
Did the high priests necessarily BELIEVE in those dogmas which they created and managed?
Hell no.
Was it politically necessary to create them?
Of course.
Why?
Because an Empire, like everything in the world, exist as a whole with parts… but since they deny any principle of natural law (justice, love, goodness, etc), empires are merely a sum of parts and their rules of organization can be nothing but zero sum (1). Each cultish group may coexist as an echo chamber alongside other groups sacrificing to whatever deity they wish without judgement of moral right or wrong bounded only by a common blind faith in their group’s beliefs- but nothing universal about justice, creative reason, or human nature is otherwise permitted. Here the a-moral “peace” of “equilibrium” can be achieved by an oligarchy which wishes to lord over the slaves. Whether we are dealing with Caesar Augustus, Lord Metternich’s Congress of Vienna, Aldous Huxley, Sir Henry Kissinger, or Leo Strauss (father of modern neo-conservativism), “Peace” can never be anything more than a mathematical “balancing of parts”.
Now it is a good moment to ask: What does this phenomenon look like in our modern age?
To answer this, let us leap over a couple of millennia and take a look at something a bit more personal: Adam Smith and the doctrine of free trade.
Smith at Her Majesty’s Service
Do Smith’s modern followers sincerely believe in the “self-regulating forces of the free market”?
Sure they do.
Did Adam Smith actually believe in his own system?
Whether he did or not, according to recent research conducted by historian Jeffrey Steinberg, Smith received his commission to compose his seminal book Wealth of Nations (published 1776) while riding with Lord Shelburne himself in a carriage ride from Edinburgh to London in 1763. The date 1776 is not a coincidence as this was the same Lord Shelburne who essentially managed the British Empire during the American Revolution and who always despised all colonial aspirations to use protective tariffs, emit productive credit or channel said credit towards internal improvements as Benjamin Franklin had championed in his 1729 Necessity of Paper Currency and Colonial Script.
Why develop Industry, asked Smith, when the new “Law” of “absolute advantage” demanded that everyone just do what they are good at for the best price possible? America has a lot of land, so they should stick with agriculture and slave-driven cotton. Britain had a lot of industry (don’t ask how that happened because it wasn’t through free trade), so they should stick with that! India had advanced textiles, but Britain had to destroy that so that India could then have a lot of opium fields so she could do that… which China could then smoke to death under the watch of British Gunships. “Free Trade” demanded it so.
Let’s look at another example: Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection
A Not-too-Natural Selection
Darwin’s theory published in his Origins of Species (1859) was based on the assumption that all changes in the biosphere are driven by “laws” of “survival of the fittest” within an assumed closed ecosystem of diminishing returns. Just as Smith asserted that an “invisible hand” brought creative order to the chaos of unregulated vice and self-interest, Darwin asserted that creative order on the large scale evolution of species could be explained by chaotic mutations on the micro level beyond a wall that no power of reason, free will or God could pass (2).
Did Charles Darwin believe his system? Probably.
But how about Thomas Huxley (aka: “Darwin’s Bulldog”) whose efforts to destroy all competing theories which included “purpose”, “meaning”, or “design” were crushed and ridiculed into obscurity? Huxley himself was on record saying he did not believe in Darwin’s system. So why was this theory promoted by forces (like Huxley’s X Club) who recognized its many flaws? Well, here again it helps to refer to Darwin’s own account of his discovery from his autobiography where he wrote:
“In October 1838, fifteen months after I had begun my systematic inquiry, I happened to read for amusement Malthus on Population, and being prepared to appreciate the struggle for existence which everywhere goes on, from long-continued observation of the habits of animals and plants, it at once struck me that under these circumstances favourable variations would tend to be preserved, and unfavourable ones to be destroyed. The result would be the formation of a new species. Here then, I had at last got a theory by which to work”.
Malthus’s ‘Dismal Science’
And here we have it! Reverend Thomas Malthus (the cold hearted “Man of God” who taught economics at the British East India Company’s Haileybury College) provided the very foundation upon which Darwin’s system stood! Thomas Huxley and the other “high priests” of Huxley’s X Club were always Malthusian (even before there was Malthus) since empires have always been more focused on monopolizing the finite resources of an age, rather than encouraging creative discoveries and new inventions which would bring new resources into being- overcoming nature’s “limits to growth” (a dis-equilibrium not to be tolerated). Whether Malthus actually believed in the system which bears his name, as generations of his adherents sincerely do, remains to be seen. However his own awareness of the needed extermination of the “unfit” by the Ubermenschen of the British Aristocracy preceded Social Darwinism by a full century when he coldly called for the encouragement of the plague and other “natural forms of destruction” to cull the herd of the unfit in his Essay on the Principle of Population (1799):
“We should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavoring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. In our towns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague.”
A little later, Malthus even argued for the early extermination of poor babies who were of low value to society when he said:
“I should propose a regulation to be made, declaring that no child born from any marriage taking place after the expiration of a year from the date of the law, and no illegitimate child born two years from the same date, should ever be entitled to parish assistance… The infant is, comparatively speaking, of little value to society, as others will immediately supply its place.”
The neo-Malthusian revivalists such as Princes Bernhardt, Philip Mountbatten and Huxley’s own grandson Sir Julian who birthed the misanthropic deformity today called the Green New Deal were not ignorant to this tradition. The disastrous effect of this worldview upon races deemed “unfit” in the global south should also not be ignored. It is no coincidence that those three neo-Malthusian oligarchs founded the World Wildlife Fund, 1001 Nature Trust and Club of Rome which imposed a technological apartheid upon the third world over the bodies of countless statesmen during the Cold War.
The Danger of Creative Thought to an Empire
Encouraging creative thought and cooperation among diverse nations, linguistic, religious and ethnic groups tends to result in new uncontrolled systems of potential as humanity increases its capacity to sustain itself while imperial systems lose their ability to parasitically drain their host. In Lincoln’s great 1859 speech, the martyred leader stood up against this Malthusian paradigm endemic of the British Empire when he said: “All creation is a mine, and every man, a miner. The whole earth, and all within it, upon it, and round about it, including himself, in his physical, moral, and intellectual nature, and his susceptibilities, are the infinitely various “leads” from which, man, from the first, was to dig out his destiny… Man is not the only animal who labors; but he is the only one who improves his workmanship. This improvement, he effects by Discoveries, and Inventions.”
Lincoln’s economic commitments to protective tariffs, state credit (greenbacks) and internal improvements are inextricably linked to this view of man also shared by the earlier Ben Franklin.
Today, the positive paradigm which Lincoln died to defend is most clearly represented by the leaders of such nations as Russia and China- both of whom have come out repeatedly attacking the post-truth neo-liberal order and also the win-lose philosophy of Hobbesian geopolitics (3). The folly of America’s new dance with impeachment and the neocon hand shaping Trump’s disastrous foreign policy agenda is tied to the oligarchy’s absolute fear of losing America to a new Eurasian partnership which Trump has promoted repeatedly since entering office in 2017.
Xi Jinping and Putin have not only responded to this obsolete system by creating an alternative system of win-win cooperation driven by unbounded scientific and technological progress but they have also managed to expose the Achilles heal of the empire. These statesmen have demonstrated a clear recognition that those ideologies ranging from neo-liberalism to neo-conservativism are entirely unsustainable, and defeatable (but not militarily). Xi expressed this insight most clearly during his recent trip to Greece.
Even though leaders like Putin and Xi understand this, citizens of the west will continue to be woefully unequipped to either make sense of these chaotic systems of belief, extract them from their own hearts if they are so contaminated or resist them effectively, without understanding that those who fabricated and manage these belief structures never truly believed in them.
Neoconservative founding fathers such as Leo Strauss and Sir Bernard Lewis absolutely never believed in the ideologies their cultish golems like Bolton, Cheney or Kristol have adhered to so religiously. Their belief was only that the sum-of-parts called humanity must ultimately be governed by a Hobbesian Leviathan (aka: a new globalized Roman Empire), and that Leviathan could only be created in response to an intolerably painful period of chaos which their twisted tooth fairies would usher into this world.
Footnotes
(1) From this standpoint, it is worth reviewing the character of Calicles in Plato’s Gorgias dialogue or Thrasymachus in book one of the Republic– both of whom exemplify the oligarchical world view by denying the existence of moral principles- relegating them to merely useful tools by which the “wise” may lord over the “slaves” born into lower classes. Neoconservative founding fathers like Leo Strauss or Alan Bloom who call themselves “neo-Platonist” merely take a literal reading of chosen selections from the Republic and then assert without evidence that Plato really believed in Thrasymacus and Calicles’ worldview.
(2) For those interested in digging a bit deeper into this topic, the author delivered a lecture in 2010 titled The Matter Over Darwin’s Missing Mind.
(3) Throughout the post JFK years, America’s clearest representative of this anti-oligarchical tradition was found consistently in the efforts of the late economist and Presidential Candidate Lyndon LaRouche.- a selection of whose works can be reviewed here.
Matthew Ehret is the Editor-in-Chief of the Canadian Patriot Review, BRI expert correspondent on Tactical Talk and has authored 3 volumes of ‘Untold History of Canada’ book series. His works appear regularly on The Duran, Strategic Culture, Sott, Fort Russ, Zero Hedge, L.A. Review of Books, LeSaker.fr, Vigile Quebec, and South Front. In 2019 Matthew co-founded the Montreal-based Rising Tide Foundation. He can be reached at matt.ehret@tutamail.com
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