THE DRAGON'S TEETH OF THE EVIL EMPIRE

DRAGON’S TEETH & SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS

By Michael Roloff 

At least since 1947 a succession of United States governments has been sowing dragons’ teeth  – 
failed states, endless wars, destitution, self-inflicted wounds, national immiseration - 
dragon’s teeth, big and small: between 1947 and 1953
election meddling in Greece and Italy, finessing the devolution of Colonialism in Indochina by letting the French dangle in the wind at Dienbenphu, the overthrow of 
democracy in Guatemala, the first of numerous dragon’s
teeth, sown in that region, the true molar there 
being Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs which, then, nearly led to a nuclear war between the Soviet Union and the United 
States. 
    The first really really big productive molar – disregarding Korea at the peril of my enumeration - under Ike and the Dulles Brothers,  Alan and John Foster, the third of the Dullesses, a bishop, always busy blessing! - 
however is the overthrow of Mossadegh in Iran in 1953 and installation of the dictatorial Shah – that molar 
has been sprouting baby teeth scores of years in 
the form of a regressive and aggressive theocratic 
regime that ensures forever war and vigilance.

   But the Wisdom Teeth among Dragons teeth, 
the real biggies of the lot, that engendered a 
host of baby dosies, are the Vietnam War and its 
spread to Laos and Cambodia, the destabilization of Afghanistan under Carter/ Brzezinski to draw in 
the Soviet Union bear and the United States 
forever more, and the conquest of Iraq which 
led to the war against ISIS and in Syria and 
and and and the occasional blowback that 
ensures further war. Not to be forgotten are 
the conquest of Libya; the overthrow of Allende 
and, overall, the vain attempt to go against 
the post-WW II post-colonial liberation tide 
to replace the British and French imperiums 
with an American one, nor the specific instances where liberators like Lumumba are assassinated, 
dragons teeth all that continue to sprout baby 
teeth galore; all, in retrospect, entirely 
superfluous; of benefit to no one but the military 
industrial complex and to the resource industries 
and to capitalism; each ventures of a pro-active 
kind and based on paranoia, whereas not only did 
there exist no danger there existed the opportunity 
for friendship, the possibility to assist in the 
liberation from colonialism. Instead there was
created the condition for forever war, no end of
enemies; all done purporting to advance democracy 
and to defend the nation from imminent danger of 
one kind or another; as well as to protect the 
nation from the Martians of Orson Well’s 
War of the World. In short, the United States is 
a nation that terrorizes itself and only needs to 
fear itself

February 2018

WHAT MIGHT MAKE THE UNITED STATES TRULY GREAT?

WHAT MIGHT MAKE THE UNITED STATES TRULY GREAT?

The  one-sentence answer: If it truly lived up to its professed ideals!

The elaborated answer:
1] If it admitted to the crimes of slavery and extermination of the Native people and made amends & effected the necessary redress.

I] If it admitted to the perversion of its Monroe doctrine and apologized – the very  least it could do - to all Caribbean, Central & South American countries for the invasions, overthrowing  of their governments, and to Mexico for stealing a third of its land in the 19the century, and made the requisite amends.

3)If it pleaded guilty to the crimes of the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh, of the 1953 invasion of Guatemala, the attempt to replace the French as overlords of Indochina that led to the invasion of Vietnam; to the criminal destabilization of Afghanistan – and if it did so it would be in defiance of George Herbert Bush’s claim that the United States never apologizes, in his case refusing to do so for shooting down an Iranian passenger plane and killing 250 human beings. And if Uncle Sam also apologized for the madness of his anti-communism he would cease to be known as a mean, small-minded paranoid sadist & instead would set an   example, an example that would shine as bright as the sun.

ON FAKE NEWS

https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/09/04/the-fake-news-fallacy?

THE “FAKE NEWS” CONUNDRUM

It ought not to come as a surprise that a demagogue shouting “fake news“ obtains considerable automatic agreement from his followers, and does so in a world that is overwhelmed with information and where most everything yet is actually knowable and verifiable if you have the time, the time, the time, the patience the patience and the knowledge and capacity to verify.

The matter of the current Trumpian edition of Fake NewS is scarcely merely a matter of normal human, or if you like, mammalian dread as  which it can be accounted in the instance of Welles’ WAR OF THE WORLDS in 1938.

„Fake“ & „News“, two words not found co-joined until recently,  yet  in a short time the phrase  has come to sound as though it had been around for years, loud and clear…. to obscure, to defeat, at least to throw into doubt even the most obvious and rationally ascertainable truths such as the contribution of human activity to the heating of the planet & its exponential consequences.

“We” all know a fake when we see it!  Except for the one’s we miss, or the ones we get used to living with, or where we think what the hell what does it matter.

Then there are the true believers, say, the Seventh Day Adventist, but how do you prove to them that there are barking up the wrong tree? How can news even be fake? News is news, is new or old hat, but then it ought not to be called news, should it, except by sleepyheads.

 “Fake” is a word that you learn while you are still young.  “That’s a fake,” the kid is told about a wooden nickel! (I have never seen one!) The first fake experience a kid will have is of a false nipple, an appeaser for the longing for the real thing.  “Real” & “fake” will be concepts coupled as diametrically opposed in the kid’s mind.

A “falsie” in adolescence does not refer to a wooden nickel but to whatever it takes – tissue paper, padding of any kind - to make believe it is a mature breast, an enhancement to make a young girl appear more mature and attractive and to enhance her sense of womanliness in the making., which will disappoint the callow boyfriend’s hand. –

The concept “false”/ falta seeps into one’s American being at an early age, never to be disabused, but to be augmented by an increasing number of experiences of buying, being subjected, being fooled by matters that are not what they seem. The breast that the mature lover caressed is of silicone! – No wonder that my caresses fail to elicit the anticipated response, no wonder that the news so often elicits the response “same same.”

On the basis of the above observation you could conclude that the truthfulness of the news that all kinds of media convey is susceptible to serious doubt; the only news you therefore end up trusting are your bodily sensations, what you see and feel and hear; everything mediated is susceptible to doubt.  Whose word do you trust? Family, friends & then there are those who take the Bible literally.

To above cited reasons to distrust the news are then added instances when the government, not just a corporation, has lied to you, to the public. Propaganda.  Propaganda in an Orwellian world.  And has lied for generations. And in the most important matters of war and peace.

In addition, keep in mind the human propensity to deny unpleasant news, for denial, for wishful thinking, for fantasy, for misunderstanding.

Thus, shocking as it continues to be, it is not all that surprising that a demagogue might succeed in devaluing truthful news by screaming “fake” at everything that is critical of him and that disagrees with his views, and have his followers act as his chorus; although, I must say, it continues to surprise that such a major onslaught, even on the most obvious of truths, should find such a wide responsiveaudience. Dommage. And yet another factor comes into play: How much available time exists for the average working stiff to obtain, dwell on and possibly check the truthfulness of the news, local, national, international? Should there be doubt as to a story’s truthfulness how long will it take, on average, to verify – not all that much, say, of a local warehouse fire, although there may be residual doubt as to the fire’s source.  A national story will take hours to track.  Imagine being eighteen years old: how long will it take to have a fair idea of the whys and wherefores of the sixteen-year old Afghanistan war, whose origin dates to Carter/Brzezinski’s destabilization to draw in the stupid Russian bear, the Soviets; that is, to the Cold War. Dwell on the long, propaganda-filled stretches that you need to traverse in this Orwellian world to reach something approximating truth!  Think about the news sources! For example, here in Seattle we have but a single newspaper, it aggregates its out of town news, mostly from AP, Blomberg, McClatchey & the New York Times; two weekly local news sheets of the Village Voice type;  a few T.V. stations whose news output scarcely differs; some variants in cable and radio news and commentary;  a locust plague of info-bits on social media if you choose to expose yourself to it;  a number  of  political and civil interest blogs.  

   

  

A COMMENT ON TIMOTHY SNYDER + REICHSTAGSFIRE

 . SNYDER 

http://www.nybooks.com/daily/2017/02/26/reichstag-fire-manipulating-terror-to-end-democracy/

Professor Snyder’s salutary reminder how governments can take dictatorial control ought not to have left out Hitler’s icing of the cake of his assumption of complete power, the "Night of the Long Knives",

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Night_of_the_Long_Knives

which ought, actually, not feature such a darkly romantic label but be known as the "Days of preventive, competitive, vengeful mass executions & murder" and  was acually enacted during the course of a long weekend & was what led Brecht to draw the accurate parallel between Chicago style gangster execution for his "The Evitable Rise of Artuto Ui," and has been an event close to my heart since the grandfather on my mother's side, Werner von Alvensleben 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werner_von_Alvensleben

not only topped  Hitler’s hitlist but was featured by Hitler’s speech that sought to justify these events; namely, that “a certain Herr von A.” had been about to have the Potsdam garrison 

http://www.preussenweb.de/potsdam2.htm

have him Hitler depose as part of a coup. 

 No such coup unfortunately was in the works, nor was Colonel a.d. von A,, ex-go-between Chancellor Schleicher https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurt_von_Schleicher

& Hitler, in the positiont to do anything of the kind, but Opa A. had made a joke to that effect, as he had made fun of Hitler, the one time that he had H. for lunch, clowning around, instead of poisoning him, about H.’s evident ambition, reminding Hitler, to his chagrin, of Napoleon’s fate at the gates of Moscow - a lunch of which I came to know that his wife, my grandmother, subsequent to the lunch saying “that she just as soon not have the gentleman for lunch again.” Hitler, at the time that the “Long Knives,”  certainly had all the reasons in the world to be paranoid that justified vengence for any number of matters might be near, as paranoia characterized Hitler’s life. 

Opa A. was fortunate to have one of the organizers of the murder spree, Count von Helldorf, who himself was executed subsequent to the 20th of July attempt on Hitler’s life

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolf-Heinrich_Graf_von_Helldorff

suggest that he spend the weekend at his hunting lodge, whereupon he was arrested and condemned to death, a sentence that was commuted to a life sentence which, however, appears to have allowed occasional stretches of freedom, for otherwise he would not have been present at my 4th birthday and Christmas & provided the occasion for the most major of my screen memories in my memoir Screen Memories

http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2016/11/screen-memory-i.html

 or re-appear two weeks after VE 1945, liberated by the American army, after four different concentration camps stints, at our place outside Bremen, apparently spry & full of jokes, although, having been tortured, he refused to take off his shirt before his wife or his daughters. But my favorite story among many features the time that he was beaten at Buchenwald. The KaPo asked him whether he, Herr von A. still classified people, whereupon Opa replies yes he did, and that there existed three classes;there was the class of those who were in jail, there was the class of those who had been in jail, and then there was the third class of those who were going to jai, and “to that third class, my dear fellow” is the one to which you belong - where the “my dear fellow” is the one time that aristocratic disdain seems justified, as it is to the spawn of Roy Cohn & McCarthy who calls himself President of the United States.

-- 

*http://moravian-nights-discussion.blogspot.com/2016/08/main-moravian-night-discussion-page.html
<http://moravian-nights-discussion.blogspot.com/2016/08/main-moravian-night-discussion-page.html>*

*http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
<http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name>*

*https://twitter.com/mikerol69 <https://twitter.com/mikerol69>*

 http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2015/12/provisional-obituary-on-reaching-eighty.html

<http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2015/12/provisional-obituary-on-reaching-eighty.html>*

*http://handke-magazin.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-hub-navel-to-todos-handke.html/magazin.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-hub-navel-to-todos-handke.html/>*

*http:/ <http://artscritic.blogspot.com/>**/​
<http://artscritic.blogspot.com/>**artscritic.blogspot.com/
<http://artscritic.blogspot.com/>*

*http://crosscut.com/2011/07/21/crosscut-blog/20410/A-private-bower-wildness-in-Seattle/?page=2
<http://crosscut.com/2011/07/21/crosscut-blog/20410/A-private-bower-wildness-in-Seattle/?page=2>*

*http://www.workliterarymagazine.com/submission/michael-roloff-6302014/
<http://www.workliterarymagazine.com/submission/michael-roloff-6302014/>*

*http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
<http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/>*

*Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society*

*"MAY THE FOGGY DEW BEDIAMONDIZE YOUR HOOSPRINGS! +* *THE FIREPLUG OF
FILIALITY REINSURE YOUR BUNGHOLE!" **{J. Joyce}*

THE U.S. OF A MUST BE THE MOST FUCKED UP COUNTY EVER

 THE U.S. OF A MUST BE THE MOST FUCKED UP COUNTY EVER.
WE HAVE REVERED MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS SUCH AS REAGAN AND BUSH AND CHENEY,
&
BLOW-BACK FOR IMPERIAL WARS
&
A PRESIDENT WHO HAS THROWN THOUSANDS OF WORKERS OUT OF WORK, FAILED TO PAY 100 OF MILLIONS IN TAXES BECAUSE HE’S SUCH A GOOD BUSINESSMEN,
 THE FOLKS WHOSE CRIMES CAUSED A RECESSION THAT COST MILLIONS THEIR HOMES & LIVELIHOODS & SAVINGS NOW ARE MEMBERS OF THE GOVERNMENT
&
ASSHOLE # 1
GETS FOLKS TO WORRY ABOUT NON EXISTENT UP--TICK IN IMMIGRANT CRIME IN SWEDEN - AND THAT IS WHERE THE GNATS ATTENTION IS NOW!
BRAVO YOU FINE PEOPLE FOR HAVING BEEN TAKEN, YOUR ATTENTION & YOUR VERY BEING. 

--

 Michael Roloff  [as "Summa.Politico"]
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society



"Degustibus disputandum est" {Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno}
"May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug
of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James  Joyce}
"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." {von Alvensleben}
"Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." {Dante}
"Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of
experience." {Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.}

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

OBAMA VERDICT

OBAMA VERDICT

As African-American intellectuals say:
“A great house-nigger!” I say, Jamie Dimon’s best of the kind. “Yes we can” “stay the same,” - the same old same same - we keep the criminal national security & economic team & of course don’t prosecute, god forbid the  thought, only prosecute truth-leakers, we exercise discretion, we are the smoothest killer from Chicago ever & the idea of putting Old Ossama bin on trial gives us hives, Terror Tuesday tries to avoid wedding parties full of Jihadists as foul meat is with maggots, let’s think of Jihadists a maggots, yes. The only war we pursue is the one the New York Times also wants me to: black sheep in Afghanistan; the biggest mistake we admit is Libya, letting HRC talk us into liberating Libya. Welcome Isis! We made a sensible treaty with the Mullahs in Iran, we instituted half of a health plan for an ungrateful people, we are well spoken, we have a pretty wife and two pretty daughters, and a good enough tan to protect against some of the consequences of the destabilization of the environment, and there, too, we did the best we could, under the usual ideal circumstances. What astonishes me most is that a sensible agenda should have engendered.... such unanimous Pooplikan opposition. What - in many ways - such a dreadful country this is! 

A COMMENT ON REMNICK'S "TRUMP AS AMERICAN TRAGEDY

  

 http://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/an-american-tragedy-donald-trump

Dear Mr. Remnick,
With all due respect to your piece on the American Tragedy that the election of The Great Huckster represents, it is my feeling that the event is merely yet one further manifestation of an ongoing tragedy whose origins may lie as far back as the 1953 overthrow of Mossadegh that was followed by the overthrow of the Guatemalen government, letting the French hang in the wind at Dienbenphu, the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the Vietnam War, the Carter/Brezinsky destabilization of the 25 million people strong Afghanistan (throwing a country of that size to the dogs of war, with further consequences yet to come); the elections of fascistically inclined demagogues like J.F.K., Ronald Reagan, the two Bushes and of Barrack Obama, who ran on the platform „Yes We Can” while not many voters  I expect expected it would mean the retention of his predecesor’s National Security and Economic Team, or that Obama would become a coolest killer from  Chicago yet, and yet be admired as civilized, well-spoken, datable by your daughter, everything that Donald Trump is not – i.e. the difference is one of class, and  and so you are quite willing to disregard his criminal acts (of omission as well as commission) in foreign and domestic affairs, lesser though they be than those of many of his predecessors! Body counts are lower! Hitler Jr. killed only one tenth as many Jews as Hitler Sr.! At the New Yorker you can be a war criminal with class like Obama but not a crude s.o.b., the vilest of the vilest scumbags out of Roy Cohn, like Trump or a war criminal like George Bush (war criminal by the standard of the Nuremburg tribual, or United Nation), which no tribunal will invoke or enforce, Bhoutus Bhutus Gali has no recourse over the U.S. Imperium and we don' apologize! Analogously, HRC (who - like you - was either so stupid - or other-Freedom-fry- directed as only Americans can be - as to believe that Old Badass Saddam Hussein - defeated, supervvised, sanctioned - might pose a threat even if he had one or the other wombat of mass distruction - or fantasize of atomic weapons - and be as gullible and righteous not just once but a second time as in the case of Libya, and dream of doing it yet again in the instance of a Syria that, ultimately, was destabilized into internecine warfare as a consequence of the American Iraq adventure – democracy is, as was 19th century Christianity, a horror that humanity hyenas impose by force of arms, while yet, say since 1945, no imperium has killed a many human beings as has the United States.

Thus your estimate of HRC as intelligent makes me question your own judgment, although in fact I might have voted for her if I lived in a state that was tetering, no mater that her election would have signified a continuation of the ongoing tragedy. HRC deserved to be beaten just not by Trump. She is a cold monster of the kind I encountered quite a few of in NY who are too stupid to learn from experience, but she was not born that way, a Goldwater girl she became that way within the American power struggles - all that the moguls then can do is fight for the ultimate prize of ultimate power - just as the American workers, once Union now disunion, negelected, uncared for by the moguls, have became atomized into chauvinistic racists within the consequences of neo-liberal profit-takig, the indentured servants who think they are better than the straight-out slaves.

Trump does not appear to be part of the imperial team in quite the same way, and so he may never take office, or he might be impeached at the moment that he does; there are all these outstanding legal issues coming to a head. Reagan, Bush, Trump... it’s a fascist country in many ways. What do folks imbibe as of their birth, the boob tube, lying newspapers, advertisements,  major criminals too big to jail while a million petty drug dealers are incarcerated. A formula for fascism, or for socialism with the right leader. Let’s not forget, Bernie would have beaten Trump - Hilary and the DNC went all out to destroy Bernie. One third of the country seemed ready to turn socialist during the primary. The kids, amazingly, were all right! How is it that the kids always seem allright yet from their marvelous heart-leaping inducing joy toddler presence turn into monsters by middle age?

Trump will of course betray the working class just a much as he has his vendors. Atlantic City is going into receivership with the State of New Jersey, chiefly through Trump’s doing, just a Obama betrayed his promises. Trump’s  tax cut for the moguls and piss down on you policy and deregulation while imposing a tax on trade throws the world even further into a Darwinian mode and makes shopping at Walmart a far dearer experience.

BLACK LIVES MATTER & THE CLINTON INCARCERATION ACT & CONSEQUENCES

 Re: BLACK LIVES MATTER & THE CLINTON INCARCERATION ACT & CONSEQUENCES

In the mid-1970s, editor at Continuum Books/ Seabury Press I was fortunate to publish DRUGS AND MINORITY OPPRESSION by John Helmer (1975) (See the Kirkus Review @https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-helmer/drugs-and-minority-oppression/)

 which found that suppressing the newly liberated slaves was linked with the criminalization of drug use. Meanwhile, more than a century later, with African-American ghettos in most major and smaller American cities, both the suppression of drug use – for pleasure & to suppress pain of all kinds - and the incarceration of African-American continues while simultaneously there has developed a black criminal underclass, sort of like the Japanese Yakuza, that is in and out of jail. (The number of incarcerated African-Americans actually exceeds the number of slaves at emancipation.) The underclass that is in and out of jail did not exist at the time when slavery ended, did not come into existence until large numbers of African-Americans started to live in ghettos in the cities, were the poorest paid and first laid off. Thus these gangs have a history and have reservoirs that replenish them generation after generation; that is their college, post-graduate education in criminality.

    As editor of Rober Kalich’s THE HANDICAPPER http://artscritic.blogspot.com/2015/10/the-handicapper-or-adventures-in.html

and one day I happened to be taken along to meet the head of the Jewish Mafia, Abe Margolis, and who would happen to be there but the head of the black mafia in New York,  all that was missing at this fine Fifth Avenue venue with Louis IV furniture, was the Italian equivalent ( whom I then met at “Abe’s Place” on Third Avenue); Abe's brother Robbie was known as Frank Costello's best friend. I forget the name of the black fellow, the year is 1978 or thereabouts, he was arrested of course, and so was Abe. The Jewish mob gambled on college basketball, Robert Kalich their handicapper, novelist! Editing the book meant $ 40 K for Urizen Books. The lives of editors take adventurous turns, don't they? It is/was for the black mobsters that the black kids sell drugs. So the current discussion/ controversy, as far as I am concerned, is what? Meretricious? Out to lunch?    

President Clinton’s accommodation to Reaganism, his crime bill of the 90s, to put masses of “predators into jail,” a law that meanwhile has been used and not only by Black Lives Matter to attack his spouse's presidential campaign, was the usual kind of superficial stop-gap American response to a problem that can only be solved or ameliorated over the course of several generations of assured living wages for all impoverished Americans.

 Michael Roloff

KIRKUS REVIEW

Helmer begins by questioning both the popular wisdom and psychological theories about addiction, but this is not a wide open polemic like Szasz' Ceremonial Chemistry. Instead this sociological analysis focuses on Helmer's contention that narcotics use has for the most part been concentrated among the working class, and that the war on drugs is and always has been a form of class warfare. The second half of this argument is the most convincing. Tracing the rise of public concern over Chinese opium indulging, Mexican-American marijuana smoking, and Black cocaine and heroin addiction, Helmet levels a barrage of statistics to demonstrate a connection between campaigns to stamp out the drug menace and downturns in the business cycle and/or minority group inroads on a limited job market. Helmet isn't as clear about why narcotics should be a primarily working class phenomenon. There are hypotheses--such as the frustration of unemployment and the flooding of the market by drug speculators (Chinese businessmen paid wages in opium during the mid 19th century), but the lack of information on hidden narcotics habits among the upper and middle classes makes the argument problematic. While he is an apparently prodigious researcher, the author doesn't always define the exact scope of his argument and he extrapolates rather freely from his data. Obviously he is on to something, but his model of the dynamic interaction among economic conditions, drug use and law enforcement policy remains fuzzy.

/bernie-sanders-and-the-american-mainstream/

I tried to re-blog but it's not working thus
here is the link to Jay Bookman's fine  piece
http://jaybookman.blog.ajc.com/2015/07/07/bernie-sanders-and-the-american-mainstream/

U.S EMPIRE IN ZUGZWANG DOWNWARD SPIRAL

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2014/may/08/ruthless-dick-cheney/

END OF EMPIRE

Upon Hitler's mugging of Poland

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invasion_of_Poland

on September 1. 1939 Admiral Canaris,

the head of German Counterintelligence (the Abwehr)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Canaris

is said to have blanched,

and then said, “this is the end,”

as, indeed, it was the beginning of the end of Germany.

At that moment of the realization of the inception of a great tragedy Canaris yet managed to be annoyed that Hitler had used the very Polish uniforms that his service had been employed to provide, to stuff some German criminals into and kill them as alleged Polish “weapons of mass destruction.”

Bush, Cheney, Rummie, Wolfies et al's knowingly false and long-planned 2003 conquest of Iraq can be said to mark a similar beginning of an end, in this instance of an actual empire, not of a wanna-be.

However, one could hold that the beginning of this end lies even further back and had its inception with Carter/ Brzezinski's destabilization of Afghanistan, to draw Russia into a bear trap – imagine that: tossing a country of 25 million to those dogs of war! And then creating the Mujahedin and equipping them with Stingers to wound the bear! And then abandoning the Mujahedin! 

Or, if you want to go all the way back , you could point to the idea that “containment” meant to go against the tide of history and assume the fractured European imperialist impulse and bed with everY evil mother fucker in the world.

But perhaps, in light of its hoary beginnings, the idea that “the United States” might have taken an alternative path is foolish.

The end will not be as protracted as that of the Roman empire, yet in similar fashion it will be a Zugzwang during which it will rush from one site of warfare to the other. Domage.

Sincerely your,

The Geopolitical Monster Michael Roloff.

in Seattle

--
 Michael Roloff  [as "Summa.Politico"]
http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
Member Seattle Psychoanalytic Institute and Society
http://www.roloff.freehosting.net/index.html

This LYNX will LEAP you to my HANDKE project sites and BLOGS
http://www.handke.scriptmania.com/favorite_links_1.html

"Degustibus disputandum est" {Theodor Wiesenthal Adorno}
"May the foggy dew bediamondize your hoosprings + the fireplug
of filiality reinsure your bunghole! {James  Joyce}
"Sryde Lyde Myde Vorworde Vorhorde Vorborde." {von Alvensleben}
"Siena me fe, disfescimi Maremma." {Dante}
"Ennui [Lange Weile] is the dreambird that hatches the egg of
experience." {Walter Benjamin, the essay on Leskov.}

http://analytic-comments.blogspot.com/
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

A COMMENT ON THE SYRIAN SITUATION + NY TIMES DISCUSSION

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/31/world/middleeast/john-kerry-syria.html?hp



  I notice a furious all around debate yet feel entirely frustrated for lack of immediate details and historical context, e.g, 
http://www.scribd.com/doc/164272259/U-S-Government-Assessment-of-the-Syrian-Government’s-Use-of-Chemical-Weapons-on-August-21-2013?utm_source=Mondoweiss+List&utm_campaign=a610d7e3a5-RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_b86bace129-a610d7e3a5-398411721
and
David Rief's piece in the New Republic that references a lot of them
http://click.newrepublic.com/email/v1/click?v=3&e=f18dQhb0S65M1PNfs.VLZBZ683KP7VW2pJbqy6BL9F2W87hR1Q3QJ5HJW1mCkMb8JZdFnW4NY.tv8NQrh3W7vJmpp6p8SJVW59yJW_8mPD0bW3Q79T_3n_bzCW40N27T7SQlRBVnfRSP32D9ygW1mkrTt1yYyWBW6CFgD83nqtmzW8vqdSR1k4k7rW65dsG_1W6nDrN5W3VFmZl5NCW4Q9cWT2p5Y5TW6fJDQw5v0dtLW8_Vjjt7JNz3cW3g_GKW4tbQBvW5gj9JR8FSczXW6MwlLy4d0.7nW4P.5SG15sTs8102It It appears that the U.S, has been trying to destabilize the Syrian government since the days of G.W. Bush's Iraq adventure.
 So this then is what you get!
Syria had a Ba'ath type socialist government although it appears not as perverted as Saddam Hussein's became. Bashar al-Assad, a trained ophamologist, suceeded his father Hafez upon that man's death in 2000. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bashar_al-Assad
Whatever I read, pro or con intervention, of whatever degree, however agrees, in the highest moral dudgeon, that the Assads are the equivalent of "old badass Saddam" - as compared to the somewhat differentiating reportage of the ongoing ground conflict (s) of the insurgency - its various foreign backers and components, Islamist and Alawite, Shiite and Sunni factions.

Does a government have the right to defend itself against an insurgency? Especially insurgencies sponsored by various foreign interests that wish the country  to disintegrate?

Now specifics. It is said that the Obama government has electronic evidence of an Assad defense minister who is upset at the carnage wrought by the poison gas attack. Who recorded or overheard this conversation, where when, quite aside the interpretation of the evidence. According to Leon Wieseltier in the New Republic Dexter Filkins of the New York Times has evidence of 35 different poison gas attacks on the part of the Assad regime.
http://www.newrepublic.com/article/114488/leon-wieseltier-chemical-weapons-syria?utm_campaign=topic-email&utm_source=hs_email&utm_medium=email&utm_content=10139816
What if any reason does the Assad regime have to target a neighbourhood, that neighborhood
in Damascus? Was / is this an opposition hotbed? And if not, was this event an accident
as the overheard conversation might lead one to believe?
Another point: is Assad's Ba'ath regime so entirely evil that in fact there needs to be regime change with all the consequences of regional spread of warfare that such a decision entails?


  

malte-herwig-flakhelfer + struck/ keuschnig rezenzion

 



http://www.glanzundelend.de/Artikel/abc/h/malte-herwig-flakhelfer.htm

http://www.begleitschreiben.net/stoerung-der-gemuetlichkeit/

Jemand der folgendes schreibt "Die Interpretationen Herwigs sind stimmig und mit Virtuosität vorgebracht; die Methode kennt man aus seiner Handke-Biographie »Meister der Dämmerung«, in der er auch wie ein Philip Marlowe das Werk nach biographischen Verwundungen und versteckten Bekenntnissen absucht. " dem, dessen Urteil ist leider nicht zu trauen. Denn in dieser und vielen anderen Hinsichten, strotzt Herwig's Handke Buch nur so von Fehlleistungen - Sammeln, aufstoebern kann er, guter "Gumshoe" ist er; Verstaendis von Literatur und ihrem Zusammenhang mit dem Leben des Autor, eigentlich nicht vorhanden. Und dass er Nachrichten.at mit einem 60 K Klage droht damit sie die Colbin Rezension zurueckziehen - damit hat Herwig sich selbst zerstoert! Und dass Struck/ Keuschnig der doch viel sich mit Handke beschaeftig das nicht bemerkt... Struck/ Keuschnig laesst ja auch keine wirkliche Kritik an seinen eignem Zeug zu!

http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/2010/12/full-length-review-of-herwigs-handke.html


http://handke-discussion.blogspot.com/2010/12/marie-colbin-review-of-herwigs-meister.html

 Was die Flakhelfer betrifft, wenn man sich wirklich nur patriotisch gegen die Luft Annihilierung aufgerafft hat, ihre sonstige Unwissenheit ueber das Crimen Regime ist leicht zu entschuldigen. Ich haette es auch als 8-jaehriger! Wurde aber nicht vor die Wahl gestellt, und ich hasste den einzigen SS Mann den ich kannte, den Volkschul Lehrer, und die Eltern haben nur durch groesstes Glueck ihre Gestapo Inhaftierung wegen ihrer Teilnahme am 20ten Juli ueberlebt. Und da sie seit 1934 im Widerstand waren ganz schnell zur Partei um gut getarnt zu sein.

http://www.lukasverlag.com/neuerscheinungen/titel/317-gestapo-im-op.html

Es hat wohl in vielen Faellen, wie Grass, mit Scham und sich schaemen zu tun, und Dummheit. Erstmal als 17 Jaeriger sich zu der Waffen SS zu schleusen zu lassen , und dann so dumm zu sein es nur ganz spaet im Leben zu gestehen und damit viel zu verspielen - Scham scheint ein grosser Grund dafuer, hoffentlich auch Scham fuer die Dummheit, und dann so pathoshafte und ueberhebliche Gedichte wie das Netanjahu / Lieberman Israel Gedicht!.
http://goaliesanxiety.blogspot.com/2012/04/gunter-grass-what-must-be-said.html
Was sollte denn leichter sein  Netanyoo-Liebermann als Fascisten zu bezeichnen, die zufaellig Juedisch sind? Die Spitze des Amerikanischen Neo-Con Faschismus die es ohne Amerikanische Unterstuetzung es kaum geben wuerde?

Ihr Michael Roloff
 


 http://www.glanzundelend.de/Artikel/abc/h/malte-herwig-flakhelfer.htm

THE IRAQ WAR ANNIVERSARY

THE IRAQ WAR ANNIVERSARY

Allessandra Stanley’s NY Times review of the Dick Cheney documentary

http://tv.nytimes.com/2013/03/15/arts/television/the-world-according-to-dick-cheney-on-showtime.html?ref=arts

has it that that truly miserable man “snookered” Dick Armery the then, 1993, leader of the House Republicans, into supporting the “war resolution” by telling him that old Bad Ass Saddam  Hussein, the U.S. Government’s once favored s.o.b., had the capacity to put a nuclear bomb into a suitcase – and if Cheney actually did this, but also if not - for cause at any of the many events - elicits in me the idea to pack this stupid monster into an old suitcase and dump him in the Sea of Araby for the there sharks, whom the body of Ossama Bin Laden has helped develop a taste for flesh of evil, who ought of course have been put on trial as ought Cheney and his “mission accomplished” accomplice, who certainly accomplished the ruination not just of Iraq but of the U.S. economy. – These men are as evilly stupid as Hitler and Co. who invaded Poland under false pretenses in 1939, whereupon the head of German counter-intelligence, which had provided the Polish uniforms into which Hitler & Co stuffed some disposable German criminals prior to murdering them as alleged Polish soldiers, Admiral Canaris is said to “have blanched” and said “this is the end.” Is there or was there anyone as foresighted in the so-called U.S. intelligence services?
Whom do we have to blame for having had Bush II as president? Anthony Scalia - who signalled how he would vote even prior to the Florida case ending up in the Supreme Court. Let us not forget our forever Anthony among the cavalcade of shame.

Rumsfeld’s first thought upon 9/11 is reported to have been that “Iraq has the better targets.” Were similar brilliant propositions coursing through  George W. Bush’s noggin as he was reading, to some kids, for five minutes, that children books about goats during the 9/11 attack? Bombs away, Rumsfeld! Bombs away Wolfowitz! Has there ever been as cowardly a terror campaign as Uncle Sam’s “shock and awe?” of a country that had just lost a war, that was quarantined? Has there ever been a greater worldwide terrorist than Uncle Sam and his 1000 + and expanding bases, the marines in the middle of Australia?

There is a New York Times editorial at the anniversary

http://www.nytimes.com/2013/03/20/opinion/ten-years-after-the-iraq-war-began.html?hpw

decrying – rather belatedly, no? - the Iraq war and warning of a repeat of this world historical crime by attacking Iran;

and here  a link to all their editorials and opinions including all those CIA/BROOKINGS Michael O’Hanlon updates that Auntie featured for years on end!

http://query.nytimes.com/search/sitesearch/?vertical=opinion/#/iraq+editorial/since1851/allresults/1/allauthors/relevance/opinion/

a better record of this infamy + links can be found at Tom Dispatch

http://www.tomdispatch.com/

and a day or so ago  Auntie reports that those politicians, of both parties, who are still in power in D.C., were largely silent, no comment on the anniversary.
 

also posted at
http://summapolitico.blogspot.com/

OPEN LETTER TO CHRIS HEDGES'S COURAGE TO RESIST

the_courage_to_resist

re 
http://www.truthdig.com/report/page2/the_courage_to_resist_20130224/

  Dear Chris Hedges,
The year is 2013 I believe and I must confess
this is a pretty pathetic piece that you have delivered yourself of -a once again warmed up story about von Stauffenberg.

I happen to be the child of two conspirators who survived the siege of
Berlin in their respective Gestapo prisons in spring 1945

http://www.lukasverlag.com/neuerscheinungen/titel/317-gestapo-im-op.html

and later in life was sufficiently intrigued to look at the entirety
of the resistance to Hitler, and also how he came to power, and then
seized the dictatorship.

The initial and forever consistent resistance was on the part of the Communist party, who also held together best when imprisoned.

Here is the list, all you had to do was use Google!

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liste_aller_Attentate_auf_Adolf_Hitler

Their attempt at Hitler's life in the FAMOUS Munich Buergerbraue Beer Cellar attempt only failed because it was foggy and Hitler took to train back to Berlin, instead of waiting for the fog to lift so as to take the plane. 

In 1938 the Swiss seminary student Maurice Bavaud had infiltrated the anniversary of the 1923 coup attempt during the Munich October marchby, but did not shoot because he was afraid he might also kill Goebbels and Himmler. The year is 1938.

I happened to have translated Rolf Hochhut's Bavaud bio for Little, Brown about
30 years ago. It was torture!

In 1938 CAnaris and the Abwehr, German counter intelligence, were ready to move the resistance within part of the German army goes back to 1934, as does my parents, for among immediate reasons  my grandfather's Werner von Alvensleben having been on the hitlist during the Night of the Long Knives.

In 1942 the Rote Kapelle was discovered, a big wave of executions.

I spent a lot of time the Institute for Zeitgeschichte [contemporary history]
in Munich researching for a biography of Oberst Grosskurt, Canaris's right hand
man, who however was captured at Staligrad and died as a Russian p.o.w.

The 20th of July assassination attempt at the Wolf's Lair occurred on the property
of my Uncle, Heini von Lehndorf, who meanwhile had become the courier for the
conspirators, and was promptly killed. I grew up with his kids, the most famous
of whom became Verouchka.

If your piece is meant to be analogous to the current situation, or perhaps
to the ongoing U.S. imperiliast semi-fascist way of being, I - who tends to regard the world thrugh the eyes of a romantic WW II conspirator ! - would say it misses the spot.
What would be needed would be the kind of general disaffection of the armed forces with the dictator. I see little of that here, rather the opposite, the forever
possibility of the seizure, not in Latin American fashion, but gradually of military
interests of the powers of government. Emergencies, emergency laws. As long as you and I and Tom Englehardt can get on our soap boxes and proclaim the truth we do not pose a threat to the powers that be.
Stay cool, stay dry!
Best Michael Roloff

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http://www.facebook.com/mike.roloff1?ref=name
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