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Paul William Roberts

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Monthly Archives: April 2018

Half-Light of the Antichrists

16 Monday Apr 2018

Posted by paulwilliamroberts in Middle East, politics, United States of America

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Tags

arms business, Bush, Crimea, dick cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, General Electric, government corruption, Halliburton, Lockheed-Martin, Military-industrial complex, Moscow, nuclear holocaust, oligarchy, paul william roberts, privatization of military, putin, Russia, russian collusion, russian spies, Syria conflict, the Ukraine, the United States, threat of war, trump, war-business, war-profiteering

 

 

 

Perhaps Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin are not exactly friends in the normal sense of the word – which in any case is not something either man would understand less still seek – but let us theorise that they’re comrades-in-arms, at least inasmuch as they both represent an autocratic oligarchy which sees itself, and always has seen itself as rightful rulers of the earth. Accepting for the sake of hypothesis that this is so, what, you rightly ask, does either of them stand to gain from threatening a nuclear holocaust that would effectively render this planet uninhabitable for millions of years — unless of course you’re a hardy, adaptable and fairly basic organism? What indeed? As we stand at the threshold of what could well be the most serious east-west debacle since the Cuban Missile Crisis of the early sixties, it is worth looking at the benefits to both sides of, not actually going to war but of appearing to be contemplating it. I doubt if any government on the planet believes a nuclear war is winnable or even feasible – and this would probably be because it isn’t. Why then hold the constant threat of one over our heads, and spend trillions of dollars annually on preparing for one? What possible reason could there be for such insanity?

 

Here’s what. Firstly, it is a universally agreed truism that the most frightened populations always elect the strongest, most militaristic governments to protect them from usually unwarrantable fears. While this won’t affect Putin’s transparently phony democracy, the success or failure of Trump’s considerably less malleable but still far from truly democratic one will affect them both, for good or for ill. Secondly, the most profitable businesses in both Russia and America are involved in what we can loosely term the Military-Industrial-Complex (MIC), or in other words the privatized military-supply game, whose products now range from meals-ready-to-eat to missiles ready to fire (at $150,000 a pop). No product is so good a money-earner than a bullet or a missile, and everything in between that can only be used once before you need to order more. Now, both Trump and Putin are heavily invested in MIC companies, from, in America, Halliburton – once run by George Bush Junior’s VP Dick Cheney – to major hardware-builders like Lockheed-Martin and General Electric, for which Bush Junior’s Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld once worked in a senior capacity. In Russia the names are less familiar to us, but their owners or majority-shareholders are the same crew of oligarchs – some in Putin’s case operating partly as frontmen for him. Knowing this perhaps helps us to understand the continued and ubiquitous prevalence over the past seventy-odd years of wars around the globe, as well as the ceaseless threat of a superpower conflagration. That dwindled almost to nothing over the last twenty years, after the Soviet Union collapsed into bankruptcy, and the lull in business was clearly so disastrous that George Bush Senior even had to privatize the more mundane and utilitarian aspects of the lucrative army-supply business just to keep the dollars flowing into the hands of his friends and cronies. Even food was handed over to corporations like Halliburton, whereas things like peeling spuds were once an internal affair, and a useful punishment too. You’d think that security was one matter the army could definitely take care of itself; but no, now it is in the hands of private companies, whose operatives are paid ten times what the grunts get, and are also answerable to no government office at home. In Iraq, for example, these operatives robbed, raped and murdered with apparent impunity (at least none of them has yet be tried in a court of law). Putin et al were similarly busy in the resurrected and profligately capitalist Russia. One great advantage in this kind of business transaction is that the buyer never questions a seller’s price. It’s just taxpayers’ money so who cares?

 

It thus seems to me obvious that the astronomical profits to be made from war and, better still, the threat of war will be irresistibly attractive to those with the contacts and the funds to get involved in such enterprises – and usually to get involved fairly surreptitiously, so conflicts of interest and galloping corruption can be easily and vituperatively denied. Under Putin’s cunning aegis, the Russians got deep into cyberwarfare long before anyone else saw the virtues in it – and the results of this can now be seen almost daily in the west.

 

Those who imagine things are so much better in Canada ought to think again. Compared with the hundreds of millions spent on worthy projects, the hundreds of billions, or even the trillions spent on machines or weapons of death take up a goodly portion of the GDP – or to put it more bluntly our tax dollars. Do we really know who the actual recipients of this largesse are? In some cases we do a little. But mostly we don’t. I have always thought that a useful thesis topic would be the study of and interrelationships found in the boards of certain mega-corporations. When I briefly and cursorily looked into it back in the nineties I was struck by the multiple presence of the same names on different but equally significant boards. Then there were the monikers of certain individuals with profound contacts in the Canadian government registered on the boards of US companies with who Canada was doing very big business. I imagine that the same thing would be true today. Although now more than then it must be remembered that corporate loyalties are not national but transnational. They go wherever the money goes; yet that still does not mean a board member cannot make a vast profit by urging a deal between his or her native Canada and another entity based elsewhere. In fact the rise and rise of interglobal finance makes all kinds of skullduggery and fiscal flimflam easier rather than more difficult to enact. I wish some enterprising post-grad student would pick up this study of what is essentially who runs what and run with it themselves.

 

To conclude the hypothesis: Over the past few years we’ve seen Putin’s Russia almost gleefully willing to play the bad guy, the provocateur and belligerent, whether in Crimea, the Ukraine, England, Syria or in America herself. Why such shamelessly provocative and hostile acts? Well, it could be in wise recognition of the fact that America is far better at playing the alleged good guy in international squabbles and conflicts, since this is what plays well with the notoriously fickle US public. And it certainly adds to Putin’s domestic prestige as tough guy, standing up to the motherland’s incessant bullying by western powers. A friend of mine in Moscow tells me that Putin now genuinely believes his new and improved nukes can slide in the US undetected and impossible to intercept. I doubt it, but much of chess is bluff – and Russia always turns out grand master after grand master. All we can be sure of is that the endless threats, provocations and proxy wars will continue, and continue to make trillions for those in the war-facilitation business. The pity is that we, the people seem incapable of putting a stop to our end of this despicable trade and those involved in it.

 

robertspaulwilliam@gmail.com

Who Breaks a Butterfly Upon a Wheel?

07 Saturday Apr 2018

Posted by paulwilliamroberts in politics, United States of America

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

america, Anti-prostitution laws, call-girls, corrupt politics, cowards, Donald Trump, escort ads, FOSTA, fundamentalist Christianity, harming women, hookers, hypocrisy, injustice, lawyers, media-cowardice, Mid-Term elections, pimping, Republicans, scapegoating, SESTA, sex ads, sex-trafficking, underage sex

 

It’s a line by Alexander Pope:

Let Sporus tremble –”What? that thing of silk,

Sporus, that mere white curd of ass’s milk?

Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?

Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?

Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,

This painted child of dirt that stinks and stings;

Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,

Yet wit ne’er tastes, and beauty ne’er enjoys…

 

Sporus was a male sex-slave favoured by the Roman Emperor Nero, who also personally castrated him. The wheel is an excruciatingly painful instrument of torture and death.

 

Whenever you hear of politicians banning prostitution it’s always either due to feeble-mindedness or because elections are nigh. You can take your pick with the US Congress’s recent fantastically imbecilic and heartlessly cruel piece of legislation, which targets sex-workers, websites and newspapers running “escort” ads. Habitually gutless and unprincipled, these media immediately jumped when the ringmaster’s whip cracked down, dumping all such personal ads. Who cares? Such is the expected reaction from the housewives of America. Their hypocritical spouses know when to remain silent, even in the face of a monstrous injustice – well, most accept these as quotidian: after all,  they’re Americans. No one cares about the media losing ad-revenues, of course. Why would they? What we all should care about profoundly, however, are the many thousands of women whose livelihood has just been trashed, whose means of safeguarding themselves against psycho johns and intemperate weather has been ripped from under them, and who will now be forced to ply their trade under conditions of substantial danger, ill-health and chronic anxiety. Serves them right; they should get themselves proper jobs, you say. If you do say this, though, you’re a fucking bestial moron, unfeeling and mindless.

 

Prostitution may not be the oldest profession, but it’s definitely been around longer than politics – and it will be thriving long after the greed-heads in their suits and ties are scrambling over the world’s edge to flee society’s wrath. This current fool’s errand is largely an attempt by Republicans to play to their base among the trenchantly unchristian Christians and the immoral yapping moralists. Half the escort clientele in Washington are congressmen and senators – and you can be sure their female stables will be unaffected by the current bitch-hunt.

 

The new laws need to be examined closely, however, because they’re really not very new and of questionable legality. There are States’ Rights and Constitutional issues here, which we’ll leave to the Civil Liberties’ people. The two main prongs of this pincer attack are just anachronistic sheep in 21st-century wolves’ clothing – the garb being what it usually is: semantics, or language-harassment. Pimping, or “living off the avails of prostitution”, has always been illegal, just as brothel-keeping has in the majority of states. The same is true for sex acts involving minors. These three antiques are now cloaked in the new sex-crime tag that involves something called “sex-trafficking”. This makes it sound like the slave trade, of course, hides it under a cowl of more-frightening darkness; whereas in reality – apart from a few exceptions, statistically very few in fact – these villainous “traffickers” are just the same old low-rent pimps and specious petty criminals we’ve always had. And this is another time-honoured line of work, one that may seem repugnant and objectionable, yet also one that has its indisputable advantages and value for the women involved.

 

Accepting money for sex per se cannot be made illegal without potentially making every housewife a criminal. So what these laws have done is frighten a lot of often desperate, downtrodden women, removing the means by which they conducted business in reasonable safety. We can understand why the media fled in fear. You run a thousand sex ads daily and get charged with “facilitating sex-trafficking”, you’re facing a thousand very tricky law suits. Because you have no way of knowing what lies behind each ad – and you’ll have to prove in court that none involve any so-called trafficking. A nightmare – ruinously expensive too. So you have to shut them all down. Common sense and pragmatism demand it.

 

But a woman charged under this same act only has to convince a court she’s not being trafficked (or pimped) – case closed. Some 85 percent of sex-workers say they have no pimp or coercer. Yet the fear generated by these laws makes it all seem so much worse than it this. The really sad thing is that when you persecute the outcasts and underdogs of any society hardly anyone will step up to defend them. It’s the same with smoking and the “vice Taxes” (e.g. booze and tobacco).

 

These women are thus being scapegoated in exactly the same way as the Jews, gays and gypsies were in Nazi Germany. A conspiracy of silence was the enabler then, and it is now. No one has the guts to stand up in defense of these oppressed ladies. And all it’s about, most disgracefully of all, is winning votes from the prurient, the priggish, the hypocrites, and those self-righteous Sunday-Christians whose knowledge of scripture can be engraved on an eyelash and certainly doesn’t involve the frequent and compassionate attitude toward prostitutes Jesus is recorded displaying. As he says of the woman taken in adultery: “Let he who is without sin among you throw the first stone…”

 

I don’t know what American “fundamentalist” Christians believe, but it’s scarcely fundamental and seems contrary to every core teaching allotted to Christ. “Blessed are… Do unto others as you would have others do unto you…” In all the ranting hyperbole and twisted hellfire nonsense, I don’t see much Jesus at all. Hypocrisy may not be listed by Thomas Acquinas as a “deadly sin”, but it sure as hell is one. And hate is the worst one of all. These church-going, Bible-thumping sinners have another woeful strike against them too: How sad is it that they’re unable to perceive the self-serving machinations of their alleged representatives in the capital? How pathetic is it that these pious prudes think Donald Trump is on their side? God assuredly isn’t.

 

To all those women whose trade is their own flesh, I say: Chin up, ladies. It isn’t as bad as it seems. When I was a kid we saw postcards in doorways: FRENCH LESSONS FIRST FLOOR, or SWEDISH MODEL – RING BELL. No one thought it was about linguistics or Scandinavia. There never were, or ever will be laws prohibiting advertisements for language-tutoring and freelance modelling. An escort agency only providing dinner companions for ladies or gents alone in a strange city is not responsible for whatsoever their escorts do by themselves on their own initiative, and agents cannot be prosecuted for it. There can also never be a law against anyone in any occupation receiving gifts from and/or having a brief fling with someone they meet during the course of their work or leisure.

 

This most ancient of professions has always found a way – and it always will. But it would help now if someone courageous and principled, ideally a lawyer or legal authority, stood up and fought these two-faced, duplicitous scumbags back into the rank sty where they belong. But when the Mid-Terms are over in November it will all fade away… until the next halfwit or the next election comes around, naturally. In the meantime, America, try a little tenderness, thought and compassion – they work wonders. History attests to the fact.

 

robertspaulwilliam@gmail.com

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