Saturday Matinee: Alligator

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By Mike Brooks

Source: Mana Pop

The urban legends surrounding the idea of alligators living in the sewer date back to the late 1920s and early 1930s, which makes it rather surprising that it took until 1980 for such an ideal subject matter to make its way into a horror movie. We got giant ants in the sewers back in 1954 for Christ’s sake why not alligators? It took screenwriter John Sayles to finally pen such an urban epic, but his gator wouldn’t simply be large it would be super-sized!

After the success of Jaws, the rip-offs of Spielberg’s summer blockbuster almost become a genre unto themselves, sadly, most of them were terrible and without any artistic merit but with Lewis Teague’s Alligator we got a truly excellent “man against nature” monster movie, one that turned out better than it had any right to be. While there are plot and character elements similar to what appears in the Spielberg shark film, with the main protagonist being a police officer who is helped by an animal expert, and there is a professional hunter who dies similar to that of Quint in Jaws, but he’s more villainous antagonist rather than part of the camaraderie trio in that film, but what John Sayles brought to the story was an environmental slant with the creatures immense size being due to the dumping of the bodies of dead animals that had been subjected to an experimental growth formula and then being eaten by the sewer-dwelling alligator, thus the cause of its increased size.

The basic plot of Alligator follows the actions of a PTSD-suffering homicide detective named David Madison (Robert Forster), who lost his previous partner under less-than-ideal circumstances, and it’s his investigations of body parts showing up in the local sewer that brings him into contact with a pet shop owner (Sidney Lassick) who has been stealing dogs and selling them to a Slade Pharmaceuticals for growth experiments. And just how evil is this company? Well, not only does scientist Arthur Helms (James Ingersol) cut the larynxes of his subjects to keep them quiet he demands that the pet shop owner only bring him puppies. It’s safe to say this guy will not be around when the end credits roll, in fact, the film’s big smorgasbord of action takes place at Arthur’s wedding, where he is to be married to his boss’s daughter.  It is at the wedding where he and his boss (Dean Jagger), as well as the crooked Mayor (Jack Carter), all meet their untimely ends, which begs the question “Did the alligator get a copy of the script, so it knew where the villains were and who it had to eat?”

Filling in the role of consulting oceanographer Matt Hooper from Jaws we have herpetologist Marisa Kendall (Robin Riker), who doesn’t believe that Madison’s latest deceased partner (Perry Lang) could have been eaten by a sewer-dwelling alligator, stating that a creature that size would have starved in a week and that the toxic gasses found in a sewer are not conducive to a healthy life. Even his boss Chief Clark (Michael Gazzo) doesn’t believe him and wants David to take a much-needed vacation, but lucky for Madison, a yellow journalist (Bart Braverman), who is one of the reporters that have suggested that Madison may have been responsible for the death of his first partner, is killed by the alligator and was kind enough to leave photographic evidence of the creature’s existence. This results in a failed sewer dragnet that causes the Mayor to sideline Madison and bring in big game hunter, Colonel Brock (Henry Silva), to track and kill the beast, this would be the film’s Quint analog, unfortunately, Henry Silva is never given a cool monologue about being aboard the U.S.S. Indianapolis and is just eaten in a dark alleyway.

Stray Observations:

• The alligator’s first victim is a sewer worker named Edward Norton which is an obvious nod to the character played by Art Carney on The Honeymooners.
• That the alligator in question was flushed into the sewers by Marisa’s father, twelve years ago when she was a child and I’m surprised that her dad didn’t get an ironic death in this film.
• The idea of a victim’s camera taking snapshots of the monster during the attack was also used in Jaws 2 (1978).
• Madison gets fired because of his investigation of Slade Pharmaceuticals, whose owner is friends with the mayor, but no actual grounds are given for his dismissal and any Policeman’s Union would be down on this situation like a ton of bricks.
• Henry Silva’s big game hunter hiring three black youths to be his “native bearers” is as brilliant as it is racist and makes his death even more appealing.
• The two men working the gate at the wedding don’t seem to notice that people are being eaten by a giant alligator a few feet away, then again, this is Chicago so maybe that’s normal.

This may have started off as a simple Jaws rip-off but with Lewis Teague’s deft hand at the helm, and the wonderfully tongue-in-cheek script by John Sayles, they were able to produce a film of admirable quality and a lot of this has to do with such a great cast of character actors, a group that is more than aptly lead by the great Robert Forster, who really nails the whole world-weary cop who is “Too old for this shit” to perfection. It should also be noted that Teague did run into the same problem that Spielberg had concerning his mechanical shark, as the mechanical Alligator did not function all that well or often, but the use of a baby alligator on a miniature set worked surprisingly well.

Lewis Teague’s Alligator is easily one of the better examples of the genre, one that has brought the world such “classics” as Grizzly and Orca, but John Sayles elevated things by weaving in some nice social commentary – the creature did seem to eat its way up the social-economic food chain – and the movie even had the balls to have the alligator brutally eat a small child. If this “Man against Nature” film has somehow escaped your notice do yourself a favour and track this one down, you won’t be disappointed.

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Watch Alligator on tubi here: https://tubitv.com/movies/100006257/alligator

The decline of America is becoming an accepted fact

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By Veniamin Popov

Source: New Eastern Outlook

On July 5 of this year, the New York Times published an article titled “America Lives on Borrowed Money.”

It states that borrowing is expensive. A rising portion of federal earnings, money that could be utilized to help the American people, is returned to investors who buy government bonds in the form of interest payments. Instead of collecting taxes from the rich, the government pays the rich to borrow their money.

According to the Congressional Budget Office, the government will spend more on interest than on national defense by 2029, and interest payments will account for 3.6 percent of national GDP by 2033.

The authors of the article believe that the situation is becoming more and more alarming and painful, and therefore radical decisions should be made.

However, with the growing division of US political forces, these alternatives are no longer visible, especially since “Joe Biden’s global vision is too timid and pessimistic,” according to the British-based Economist.

The fact that President Biden has been indicted with impeachment by the Republican-led House of Representatives cannot be overlooked: On June 22, the House voted 219 to 208 to send two articles of impeachment to the Homeland Security and Judiciary committees, one for abuse of power and the other for dereliction of duty.

What is interesting is the evaluation of the current scenario made not only by Americans but also by political analysts from emerging countries. For example, the Saudi-based Arab News reported on June 25 this year that the United States’ political system is in disarray and the country is extremely fragmented.

The author puts the current problem in the United States on a par with the fall of the Roman Empire: “You cannot be a world leader if your society is crumbling and your leadership is divided, indecisive, and weak.” Especially when the media, once lauded as a strong weapon of truth, has devolved into a tool of political bias motivated by profit rather than principle, and free speech is dead in America.

According to the author, American influence in South America and Africa is likewise dwindling: America has never been weaker than it is today in its relatively short history.

On June 19, this year, Marwan Bishara, a senior political analyst for Al Jazeera TV, noted that signs that the American-dominated world order was crumbling had become increasingly visible over the previous decade and that America’s political and economic decline had affected its global influence and credibility.

Attempts to resurrect US leadership through the so-called “rules-based international system,” according to the author, have failed. This system was perceived as a rigged arrangement that benefited the West over the rest of the world and violated international law.

Back in the spring, well-known American journalist Ross Douthat determined that the elites of the Middle East, Africa, and Central Asia favor Russia and China, and that public opinion in emerging countries is more sympathetic to Russia and China than to America.

Richard Haas, a respected American political analyst who led a prominent think tank, the Council on Foreign Relations, for more than 20 years, went even further in his analysis: “The collapse of the American political system means that for the first time, the internal threat has surpassed the external threat. Instead of being a reliable anchor in an unstable world, the United States has become the deepest source of instability and an unreliable model of democracy.”

In September 2022, current US President Joe Biden spoke of American democracy being on the verge of collapse, clinging by a thread.

In response to this, Gulf News, one of the UAE’s leading publications, said that America today is a house divided. More and more Americans acknowledge that the country’s current status is abnormal.

The summer of 2020’s street violence and instability revealed the actual mental state of the world’s most powerful nation. The United States has long had one of the highest rates of violent crime in the world, and deteriorating public order has expedited the spread of firearms. The United States ranks first in the number of privately owned guns. Researchers at the Small Arms Survey estimated that Americans own 393 million of the 857 million available civilian guns, about 46% of the world’s civilian gun stockpile. According to the same publication, there are 120 guns per 100 Americans. According to the Pew Research Center, 48% of Americans believe that gun violence is a major issue in the country.

According to polls, only 17% of Americans believe the US criminal justice system treats everyone fairly, according to the USA Today website.

Currently, the issue of migration in America has seriously escalated.

Of course, there will be ups and downs in American domestic politics, but one of the most notable trends in recent years has been the growing polarization of the elite, which could lead to a major split of the country.

A new presidential election will be held in 2024, and many objective observers believe that both parties, Republicans and Democrats, will protest the results. Since 2000, contesting presidential elections has been a tradition.

When Hillary Clinton lost to Trump in 2016, the Democratic Party functionaries became full-time election deniers, emphasizing that the Democratic Party leadership and journalists, its supporters, had done nothing wrong: Vladimir Putin and the Russians were to blame, having hacked the election.

In 2020, Trump claimed that his loss to Biden had been the result of election fraud: the election had been stolen. Within weeks, the Republican Party’s mantra became “stop the stealing.”

A recent study found that more than half of Americans now expect another civil war “within the next couple of years,” with numerous forecasts for the end of America.

One of them says that if Trump, or any other Republican, occupies the White House, Californians are taking serious steps toward withdrawing from the United States.

Another scenario that is being seriously studied assumes that red, or Republican states will launch an independence movement if the Democratic Party wins, including Biden’s second term.

Many analysts are debating the prospect of a significant civil conflict in the United States. Meanwhile, some political analysts have noticed a discernible strengthening of the so-called neoconservative positions among the American ruling elite, who are adamant that Washington should be in charge of the entire world and harshly punish those who disagree with them. Their stance on the Ukraine issue has the potential to push the world to the verge of a nuclear war. This group’s careless acts have already generated a sizable number of issues and fresh crises.

In order to find a way out of the current impasse in international affairs, more and more developing countries are turning to Russia and China. They place their expectations in this respect, above all, on the approaching BRICS conference, where the enlargement of this association may be announced.

Ukraine and the great revival of American empire

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By Andrew J. Bacevich

Source: Information Clearing House

Amidst the dross that clutters the New York Times op-ed page on most days, glimmers of enlightenment occasionally appear. A recent guest column by Grey Anderson and Thomas Meaney offers a case in point.

“NATO Isn’t What It Says It Is,” declares the headline. Contrary to the claims of its architects and defenders, Anderson and Meaney argue persuasively that the central purpose of the alliance from its founding was not to deter aggression from the East and certainly not to promote democracy, but to “bind Western Europe to a far vaster project of a U.S.-led world order.” In return for Cold War-era security guarantees, America’s European allies offered deference and concessions on issues like trade and monetary policy. “In that mission,” they write, NATO “has proved remarkably successful.” A plot of real estate especially valued by members of the American elite, Europe thereby became the centerpiece of the postwar American imperium.

The end of the Cold War called these arrangements into question. Desperate to preserve NATO’s viability, proponents claimed that the alliance needed to go “out of area or out of business.” NATO embraced an activist posture, leading to reckless state building interventions in Libya and Afghanistan. The results were not favorable. Acceding to U.S. pressure to venture out of area proved to be costly and served chiefly to undermine NATO’s credibility as a militarily capable enterprise.

Enter Vladimir Putin to save the day. Just as Russia’s invasion of Ukraine provided the U.S. with an excuse to forget its own post-9/11 military failures, so too it has enabled NATO to once more constitute itself as the chief instrument for defending the West—and, crucially, to do so without actually exacting a blood sacrifice from either Americans or Europeans.

In this context, the actual fate of Ukraine itself figures as something of an afterthought. The real issue centers on reviving damaged aspirations of American global primacy. With something like unanimity, the U.S. national security establishment is devoted to the proposition that the United States must remain the world’s sole superpower, even if this requires ignoring a vast accumulation of contrary evidence suggesting the emergence of a multipolar order. On that score, Putin’s recklessness came as an impeccably timed gift.

There is an element of genius at work here. Defeating Russia without having to do any actual fighting becomes the means to restore the image of American indispensability squandered during the decades that followed the fall of the Berlin Wall. For Washington, as Anderson and Meaney appreciate, the true stakes in Ukraine go far beyond the question of whose flag flies over Crimea. If Ukraine “wins” its war with Russia—however “winning” is defined and however great the price Ukrainians must pay—NATO itself (and the NATO lobby in Washington) will claim vindication.

Rest assured that major European nations will then quietly renege on promises to boost their military spending, with actual responsibility for European security once more falling to the United States. With the centennial of World War II now within hailing distance, U.S. troops will remain permanently garrisoned in Europe. This will serve as cause for celebration throughout the U.S. military industrial complex, which will prosper.

Flexing its muscles, the United States will inevitably prod a greatly expanded NATO into turning its attention to enforcing the “rules-based international order” in the Asia-Pacific, with China as the chosen adversary. Ukraine will thereby serve as a template of sorts as the U.S. and its allies throw their weight around many thousands of miles from Europe proper.

The U.S. global military footprint will expand. U.S. efforts to put its house in order domestically will founder. Pressing global problems like the climate crisis will be treated as afterthoughts. But the empire that has no name will persist, which ultimately is the purpose of the game.

President Biden is fond of saying that the world has arrived at an “inflection point,” implying the need to change directions. Yet the overarching theme of his approach to foreign policy is stasis. He clings to the geopolitical logic that prompted NATO’s founding in 1949.

Back then, when Europe was weak and Stalin ruled the Soviet Union, that logic may have possessed some merit. But today the importance attributed to NATO testifies chiefly to the bankruptcy of American strategic thought and an inability to prioritize actually existing U.S. national interests, both foreign and domestic.

A sound revision of U.S. national security strategy would begin with announcing a timeline for withdrawing from NATO, converting it into an arrangement wholly owned and operated by Europe. The near impossibility of even imagining such an action by the United States testifies to the dearth of imagination that prevails in Washington.

Geopolitical Chessboard Shifts Against US Empire

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By Pepe Escobar

Source: The Unz Review

The geopolitical chessboard is in perpetual shift – and never more than in our current incandescent juncture.

A fascinating consensus in discussions among Chinese scholars – including those part of the Asian and American diasporas – is that not only Germany/EU lost Russia, perhaps irretrievably, but China gained Russia, with an economy highly complementary to China’s own and with solid ties with the Global South/Global Majority that can benefit and aid Beijing.

Meanwhile, a smatter of Atlanticist foreign policy analysts are now busy trying to change the narrative on NATO vs. Russia, applying the rudiments of realpolitik.

The new spin is that it’s “strategic insanity” for Washington to expect to defeat Moscow, and that NATO is experiencing “donor fatigue” as the sweatshirt warmonger in Kiev “loses credibility”.

Translation: it’s NATO as a whole that is completely losing credibility, as its humiliation in the Ukraine battlefield is now painfully graphic for all the Global Majority to see.

Additionally, “donor fatigue” means losing a major war, badly. As military analyst Andrei Martyanov has relentlessly stressed, “NATO ‘planning’ is a joke. And they are envious, painfully envious and jealous.”

A credible path ahead is that Moscow will not negotiate with NATO – a mere Pentagon add-on – but offer individual European nations a security pact with Russia that would make their need to belong to NATO redundant. That would assure security for any participating nation and relieve pressure on it from Washington.

Bets could be made that the most relevant European powers might accept it, but certainly not Poland – the hyena of Europe – and the Baltic chihuahuas.

In parallel, China could offer peace treaties to Japan, South Korea and the Philippines, and subsequently a significant part of the US Empire of Bases might vanish.

The problem, once again, is that vassal states don’t have the authority or power to comply with any agreement ensuring peace. German businessmen, off the record, are sure that sooner or later Berlin may defy Washington and do business with the Russia-China strategic partnership because it benefits Germany.

Yet the golden rule still has not been met: if a vassal state wants to be treated as a sovereign state, the first thing to do is to shut down key branches of the Empire of Bases and expel US troops.

Iraq is trying to do it for years now, with no success. One third of Syria remains US-occupied – even as the US lost its proxy war against Damascus due to Russian intervention.

The Ukraine Project as an existential conflict

Russia has been forced to fight against a neighbor and kin that it simply can’t afford to lose; and as a nuclear and hypersonic power, it won’t.

Even if Moscow will be somewhat strategically weakened, whatever the outcome, it’s the US – in the view of Chinese scholars – that may have committed its greatest strategic blunder since the establishment of the Empire: turning the Ukraine Project into an existential conflict, and committing the entire Empire and all its vassals to a Total War against Russia.

That’s why we have no peace negotiations, and the refusal even of a cease fire; the only possible outcome devised by the Straussian neocon psychos who run US foreign policy is unconditional Russian surrender.

In the recent past, Washington could afford to lose its wars of choice against Vietnam and Afghanistan. But it simply can’t afford to lose the war on Russia. When that happens, and it’s already on the horizon, the Revolt of the Vassals will be far reaching.

It’s quite clear that from now on China and BRICS+ – with expansion starting at the summit in South Africa next month – will turbo-charge the undermining of the US dollar. With or without India.

There will be no imminent BRICS currency – as noted by some excellent points in this discussion. The scope is huge, sherpas are only in the initial debating stages, and the broad outlines have not been defined yet.

The BRICS+ approach will evolve from improved cross border settlement mechanisms – something everyone from Putin to Central Bank head Elvira Nabiullina have stressed – to eventually a new currency way further down the road.

This would probably be a trade instrument rather than a sovereign currency like the euro. It will be designed to compete against the US dollar in trade, initially among BRICS+ nations, and capable of circumventing the hegemonic US dollar ecosystem.

The key question is how long the Empire’s fake economy – clinically deconstructed by Michael Hudson – can hold out in this wide spectrum geoeconomic war.

Everything is a ‘national security threat’

On the electronic technology front, the Empire has gone no holds barred to impose global economic dependency, monopolizing intellectual property rights and as Michael Hudson notes, “extracting economic rent from charging high prices for high-technology computer chips, communications, and arms production.”

In practice, not much is happening other than the prohibition for Taiwan to supply valuable chips to China, and asking TSMC to build, as soon as possible, a chip manufacturing complex in Arizona.

However, TSMC chairman Mark Liu has remarked that the plant faced a shortage of workers with the “specialized expertise required for equipment installation in a semiconductor-grade facility.” So the much lauded TSMC chip plant in Arizona won’t start production before 2025.

The top Empire/vassal NATO demand is that Germany and the EU must impose a Trade Iron Curtain against the Russia-China strategic partnership and their allies, thus ensuring “de-risk” trade.

Predictably, US Think Tankland has gone bonkers, with American Enterprise Institute hacks rabidly stating that even economic de-risking is not enough: what the US needs is a hard break with China.

In fact that dovetails with Washington smashing international free trade rules and international law, and treating any form of trade and SWIFT and financial exchanges as “national security threats” to US economic and military control.

So the pattern ahead is not China imposing trade sanctions on the EU – which remains a top trade partner for Beijing; it’s Washington imposing a tsunami of sanctions on nations daring to break the US-led trade boycott.

Russia-DPRK meets Russia-Africa

Only this week, the chessboard went through two game-changing moves: the high-profile visit by Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu to the DPRK, and the Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg.

Shoigu was received in Pyongyang as a rock star. He had a personal meeting with Kim Jong-Un. The mutual goodwill leads to the strong possibility of North Korea eventually joining one of the multilateral organizations carving the path towards multipolarity.

That would be, arguably, an extended Eurasian Economic Union (EAEU). It could start with an EAEU-DPRK free trade agreement, such as the ones struck with Vietnam and Cuba.

Russia is the top power in the EAEU and it can ignore sanctions on the DPRK, while BRICS+, SCO or ASEAN have too many second thoughts. A key priority for Moscow is the development of the Far East, more integration with both Koreas, and the Northern Sea Route, or Arctic Silk Road. The DPRK is then a natural partner.

Getting the DPRK into the EAEU will do wonders for BRI investment: a sort of cover which Beijing does not enjoy for the moment when it invests in the DPRK. That could become a classic case of deeper BRI-EAEU integration.

Russian diplomacy at the highest levels is going all out to relieve the pressure over the DPRK. Strategically, that’s a real game-changer; imagine the huge and quite sophisticated North Korean industrial-military complex added to the Russia-China strategic partnership and turning the whole Asia-Pacific paradigm upside down.

The Russia-Africa summit in St. Petersburg, in itself, was another game-changer that left collective West mainstream media apoplectic. That was nothing less than Russia publicly announcing, in words and deeds, a comprehensive strategic partnership with the whole of Africa even as a hostile collective West wages Hybrid War – and otherwise – against Afro-Eurasia.

Putin showed how Russia holds a 20% share of the global wheat market. In the first 6 months of 2023, it had already exported 10 million tons of grain to Africa. Now Russia will be providing Zimbabwe, Burkina Faso, Somalia and Eritrea with 25-50 thousand tons of grain each in the next 3-4 months, for free.

Putin detailed everything from approximately 30 energy projects across Africa to the expansion of oil and gas exports and “unique non-energy applications of nuclear technology, including in medicine”; the launching of a Russian industrial zone near the Suez Canal with products to be exported throughout Africa; and the development of Africa’s financial infrastructure, including connection to the Russian payment system.

Crucially, he also extolled closer ties between the EAEU and Africa. A forum panel, “EAEU-Africa: Horizons of Cooperation”, examined the possibilities, which include closer continental connection with both the BRICS and Asia. A torrent of free trade agreements may be in the pipeline.

The scope of the forum was quite impressive. There were “de-neocolonialization” panels, such as “Achieving Technological Sovereignty Through Industrial Cooperation” or “New World Order: from the Legacy of Colonialism to Sovereignty and Development.”

And of course the International North South Transportation Corridor (INSTC) was also discussed, with major players Russia, Iran and India set to promote its crucial extension to Africa, escaping NATO littorals.

Separate from the frantic action in St. Petersburg, Niger went through a military coup. Although the end-result remains to be seen, Niger is likely to join neighboring Mali in reasserting its foreign policy independence from Paris. French influence is also being at least “reset” in the Central African Republic (CAR) and Burkina Faso. Translation: France and the West are being evicted all across the Sahel, one-step at a time, in an irreversible process of decolonization.

Beware the Pale Horses of Destruction

These movements across the chessboard, from the DPRK to Africa and the chip war against China, are as crucial as the coming, shattering humiliation of NATO in Ukraine. Yet not only the Russia-China strategic partnership but also key players across the Global South/Global Majority are fully aware that Washington views Russia as a tactical enemy in preparation for the overriding Total War against China.

As it stands, the still unresolved tragedy in Donbass as it keeps the Empire busy, and away from Asia-Pacific. Yet Washington under the Straussian neocon psychos is increasingly mired in Desperation Row, making it even more dangerous.

All that while the BRICS+ “jungle” turbo-charges the necessary mechanisms capable of sidelining the unipolar Western “garden”, as a helpless Europe is being driven to an abyss, forced to split itself from China, BRICS+ and the de facto Global Majority.

It doesn’t take a seasoned weatherman to see which way the steppe wind blows – as the Pale Horses of Destruction plot the trampling of the chessboard, and the wind begins to howl.

$850 Billion Chicken Comes Home to Roost.

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War Reveals U.S. Military’s Longtime Disinterest in War.

Signe’s second toon du jour SIGN17e Military

By Andrew Cockburn

Source: Spoils of War

Watching a recent video of Ukrainian troops scrambling out of a U.S.-supplied Bradley armored fighting vehicle just after it hit a mine, I remembered how hard the U.S. Army bureaucrats and contractors who developed the weapon had fought to keep this vehicle a death trap for anyone riding inside. As originally designed, Bradleys promptly burst into flame when hit with anything much more powerful than a BB pellet, incinerating anyone riding inside. The armor bureaucrats were well aware of this defect, but pausing development for a redesign might have hurt their budget, so they delayed and cheated on tests to keep the program on track. Prior to one test, they covertly substituted water-tanks for the ammunition that would otherwise explode. Only when Jim Burton, a courageous air force lieutenant colonel from the Pentagon’s testing office, enlisted Congress to mandate a proper live fire test were the army’s malign subterfuges exposed and corrected. His principled stand cost him his career, but the Bradley was redesigned, rendering it less potentially lethal for passengers. Hence, forty years on, the survival of those lucky Ukrainians.

This largely forgotten episode serves as a vivid example of an essential truth about our military machine: it is not interested in war.

How else to understand the lack of concern for the lives of troops, or producing a functioning weapon system? As Burton observed in his instructive 1993 memoir Pentagon Wars, the U.S. defense system is “a corrupt business — ethically and morally corrupt from top to bottom.”

Nothing has happened in the intervening years to contradict this assessment, with potentially grim consequences for men and women on the front line. Today, for example, the U.S. Air Force is abandoning its traditional role of protecting and coordinating with troops on the ground, otherwise known as Close Air Support, or CAS. Given its time-honored record of bombing campaigns that had little or no effect on the course of wars, CAS has probably been the only useful function (grudgingly) performed by the service.

The Air Force has always resented the close support mission, accepting the role only because handing it to the Army would entail losing budget share. Thus the A-10 “Warthog” aircraft, specifically dedicated to CAS, was developed by the air force only to ward off a threat from the Army to steal the mission with a new helicopter. As it turned out, the A-10, thanks to the dedicated genius of its creators, notably the late Pierre Sprey, was supremely suited to the mission. But its successful record cuts no ice with the air force, which has worked with might and main to get rid of the A-10 ever since the threat of an army competitor in the eternal battle for budget share had been eliminated.

That campaign is now entering its final stages. The air force is not only getting rid of its remaining fleet of A-10s, it is also eliminating the capability to perform the close air support mission by phasing out the training for pilots and ground controllers essential for this highly specialized task. True, the service claims that the infamously deficient F-35 “fighter” can and will undertake the mission, but that is a laughable notion for many reasons, including the fact that the plane’s 25 mm cannon cannot shoot straight. The consequences for American troops on the ground in future wars will be dire, but their fate apparently carries little weight when set against the unquenchable urge of the air force to assert its independence from the messy realities of ground combat, where wars are won or lost. Thus its hopes and budget plans are focussed on costly systems of dubious relevance to warfare such as the new B-21 bomber, the new Sentinel ICBM, and the Next Generation Air Dominance fighter, none of which will fly for years to come, except in the form of cash out of our pockets.

Pentagon spending this year is projected to nudge $850 billion. (The total national security bill is already way past a trillion, but that’s another story.) Yet, even when endowed with such a gigantic pile of cash, the system is apparently incapable of furnishing the wherewithal for even a limited war, such as the one currently underway in Ukraine. The conflict has been marked by successive announcements that progressively more potent weapon systems are being shipped to the Ukrainians -Javelins anti-tank missiles, 155 mm Howitzers, HIMARS precision long range missiles, Patriots air defense missiles, Abrams tanks, with F-16 fighters in the offing. A U.S. military intelligence officer pointed out to me recently the actual basis on which these systems are selected: “when we run out of the last system we were sending.”

Now Biden has generated global outrage by promising to send cluster bombs, known for their ability to kill and maim children fifty years after the relevant war has ended, as any Laotian farmer could tell you. The military rationale for their use is their supposed utility against “soft” targets such as dismounted infantry, radars, and wheeled vehicles. However, a former armor officer and veteran of the 1991 Gulf war recalled to me that “we disliked them intensely and pleaded with the artillery and Air Force not to employ them. They simply damaged support elements and wheels that followed us into action. After the war we treated numerous people wounded by them including our own soldiers, as well as civilians (children).”

Biden has admitted that these devices are being sent only because the U.S. is running out of the artillery ammunition that the Ukrainians actually require. “This is a war relating to munitions. And they’re running out of that ammunition, and we’re low on it,” he told a TV interviewer. So off go the cluster bombs, their passage lubricated by crocodile tears from administration officials: “I’m not going to stand up here and say it was easy…It’s a decision that required a real hard look at the potential harm to civilians” National Security Adviser Jake Sullivan told reporters. (Back when it was reported that the Russians were using cluster bombs in Ukraine, then-White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki denounced such action as “a war crime.”)

So, the richest war machine in history, having scraped its cupboard bare, is now reduced to fielding a device of dubious military utility deemed illegal by over a hundred countries. That’s what we get for our $850 billion.

If You Ever Start Trusting U.S. Businessmen, Remember Henry Ford

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By Mickey Z.

Source: Dissident Voice

Henry Ford, the autocratic magnate who despised unions, tyrannized workers, and fired any employee caught driving a competitor’s model, was also an outspoken anti-Semite.

In 1918, he bought and ran a newspaper, The Dearborn Independent, that became an anti-Jewish forum. The May 22, 1920 headline blared, “The International Jew: The World’s Problem,” and thus began a series of ninety-two articles, including “The Jewish Associates of Benedict Arnold” and “The Gentle Art of Changing Jewish Names.”

By 1923, the Independent’s national circulation reached 500,000. Reprints of the articles were soon published in a four-volume set called The International Jew, which was translated into sixteen different languages.

“The New York Times reported in 1922 that there was a widespread rumor circulating in Berlin claiming that Henry Ford was financing Adolf Hitler’s nationalist and anti-Semitic movement in Munich,” write James and Suzanne Pool in their book Who Financed Hitler. They add:

“Novelist Upton Sinclair wrote in The Flivver King, a book about Ford, that the Nazis got forty-thousand dollars from Ford to reprint anti-Jewish pamphlets in German translations, and that an additional $300,000 was later sent to Hitler through an intermediary.”

Ford’s plants in Germany adopted an Aryan-only hiring policy in 1935 before Nazi law required it. A year later, Ford fired Erich Diestel, manager of the automobile company’s German plants, simply because he had a Jewish ancestor.

An appreciative Adolf Hitler kept a large picture of the automobile pioneer beside his desk, explaining, “We look to Heinrich Ford as the leader of the growing Fascist movement in America.”

Hitler hoped to support such a movement by offering to import some shock troops to the U.S. to help Ford run for president.

In 1938, on Henry Ford’s 75th birthday, he was awarded the Grand Cross of the Supreme Order of the German Eagle from the Führer himself.

He was the first American (General Motors’ James Mooney would be second) and only the fourth person in the world to receive the highest decoration that could be given to any non-German citizen. An earlier honoree was none other than a kindred spirit named Benito Mussolini.

When appraising history and today’s Titans of Capitalism™, keep your guard up…

Saturday Matinee: Pump Up the Volume

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Looking back at Pump Up The Volume

By Simon Brew

Source: Den of Geek

“Do you ever the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?”

When writer/director Allan Moyle’s work is celebrated, it’s generally Empire Records that gets the acclaim (and with some justification). Furthermore, if the conversation then moves on to cult movies starring Christian Slater, then it’s almost sacrilege to not start with Heathers.

Me? In both cases, I go for Pump Up The Volume every time, a thoughtful film masquerading behind a name that doesn’t necessarily do it a lot of justice. It’s certainly not the first story about a shy-by-day high school kid who assumes an anonymous identity out of hours – although this is a film in pre-Internet days, remember – but it’s comfortably one of the best.

“I didn’t talk to one person today, not counting teachers”

The film centres on Christian Slater’s Mark, a meek, lonely teenager, moved into a strange area by his parents, and attending a high school where he knows nobody. Actually, scratch that, he knows the youngest school commissioner in the history of Arizona – that’d be his father – but other than that, he’s very much alone.

He’s also nervous and shy: early in the film, his writing is read out to the class by an impressed teacher, and his discomfort at his talent being aired in such a way is evident. Mark prefers flying under the radar.

That’s until 10pm every night, when he takes his one piece of company in life, his radio broadcasting equipment (given to him by his parents so he can keep in touch with his old friends), finds an available frequency, and broadcasts for as long as he wants as pirate DJ Happy Harry Hard-On. His collection of music is quite brilliant, and the film’s soundtrack is most definitely worth checking out (although it lacks the version of Leonard Cohen’s Everybody Knows that’s heard more prominently in the film), but it’s what Harry has to say that grabs the attention.

Because in Harry, Mark has an outlet to say what he actually thinks. And say it he does. His views aren’t, in the scheme of things, massively radical. His parents have sold out (his father used to fight the system, we’re told, and now he “is the system”), the school system is warped, and everyone conforms. There’s nobody to look up to, nothing to do. Oh, and he simulates masturbation. A lot.

As if to reinforce the two sides of his life, after one of his early broadcasts, Mark attempts to talk to a girl at school, and she blanks him.

That notwithstanding, though, he inadvertedly becomes the lone voice of protest in the midst of a messed up system. The film centres around the fictional school of Hubert Humphrey High, whose principal, Loretta Cresswell, firmly knows how to get the academic results that her own superiors judge her school on (her eventual demise in the film, arguably, doesn’t solve that much). Root out the problem students, with the below average scores, then find a reason to expel them, and just keep those who get decent grades on the register.

Interestingly, the story does have its roots in a real life situation. Appreciating Hubert Humphrey High doesn’t exist, what does exist is a school that it’s based on, and where Moyle’s sister, according to the Toronto Star, taught.

“This dancing is a privilege, and it’ll be taken away if it’s abused”

Back to Harry, then. His listeners are everywhere, and his audience unites the people who simply don’t talk to each other when they’re together at school. The nerdy overweight kid, the jocks, the prim and proper swot girl: Moyle draws together the usually clichéd characters of the high school movie, and pretty much gathers them around the radio. Some of them have very swish radios, too.

This wins him a gradually building word-of-mouth audience, which is where Mark’s problems begin. Kids start ringing each other up, to help pass the broadcast on. Tapes do the rounds. More people start to notice. Moyle demonstrates this by gradually congregating more and more people at the physical spot where the reception for Harry’s show is at its best.

Consequently, much to the growing consternation of his father and the principal, more and more people take seriously what Harry has to say. A calm school population starts to take on a rebellious flavour, and a small system that works on complicity starts to unravel.

It doesn’t help, of course, that Mark/Harry has access to documents and information that don’t show Hubert Humphrey High in the best of lights. And when he particularly highlights the case of one student who has been expelled for her problems, although really for her grades, then suddenly, Harry is on lots of people’s radar.

The turning point for the movie, though, comes surprisingly early: it’s the suicide of one of Harry’s listeners. As his army of followers know, if you include a number in your letter to Harry (he’s a pirate radio DJ with a  PO box), you get a call back. In this case, it’s all a little too late. One on-air conversation with Harry later, said caller commits suicide, and the system has its scapegoat. Moyle’s film makes no bones about the way the system looks for the obvious, public fix rather than examining what really drove a youngster to kill himself, and it’s in moments like these when it’s at its best.

There’s also a foil of sorts to Mark/Harry, and that’s with Samantha Mathis’ Nora. The film was made in 1990, and it shows just what my predictive powers are like that I was fairly convinced at the time she’d go on to be a bigger star than she became. Her choices of films didn’t massively help – the Super Mario Bros movie is a stain on most people’s CV – but there’s real potential in her performance here.

For Nora is a far more popular person than Mark by day, yet she too feels the need to express herself anonymously. In her case, it’s her letters to his show, signed from the Eat Me Beat Me lady. It’s Nora who fairly quickly works out Mark’s true identity, and the irony of their relationship is that by them both talking to nobody, they both find somebody.

“Like everything else, you have to read the fine print”

It’s around then, though, that the film starts to run out of steam. It lands lots of punches in its first hour, in pretty quick succession, yet its momentum falters a little, and it goes just a little more conventional (the romance, certainly, is well done, but less interesting). Thus, the final act of the film is more concerned with those in authority tracking down Harry, and shutting down his show. And it all comes together via Harry’s last broadcast, which ends up taking place from the back of a 4×4.

It’s worth acknowledging too, that some points jar just a little. Some of the reaction moments to people listening to Harry’s broadcasts feel a little out of place. Furthermore, while Moyle takes time to briefly explore why the parents, staff and authorities act the way they do, he doesn’t invest too much in it.

Why do they come up with daft schemes such as BIONIC (‘Believe It Or Not I Care’)? Why do Mark’s parents not see beyond the tick box obvious? There are moments with Mark’s dad in particular, to be fair, where you get a glimpse of what he was, and contrast that with what he’s become (check out the moment where he catches Mark and Nora in the basement). But Moyle is, understandably, a little harder on their side of the story.

Still, for its few foibles, and appreciating that the film tailors off a little, at no point in its 102 minute running time does it feel like it’s outstaying its welcome. There’s sometimes a rawness to it, and there’s also a bunch of strong performances from the predominantly young cast.

I should focus on Christian Slater in particular, though. He’s electric here, in the midst of Harry’s raging monologues, but it shouldn’t be overlooked how well he conveys Mark’s innate shyness. It’s one of the more trickier characters he’s tackled, and the issues he has to talk about – sexual abuse, suicide, sexuality, loneliness – mean he has to balance the tone just right. I’d suggest he very much does. Moyle’s writing, too, is at times exquisite. The monologue he pens for Slater to deliver on the simplicity of suicide is dark, gripping material for a supposed teen movie

“I am not perfect. I have just been going through the motions of being perfect”

I find it odd that Pump Up The Volume, a film with a misjudged title and a not wonderful promotional campaign behind it, seems to have been lost a little. Appreciating that at most we’ve had a basic DVD release of the film, and it’s never likely to be ripe for Blu-ray, it’s still comfortably one of the best teen movies of the 90s (and the 90s were hardly short of strong teen movies), and also, a qualityaddition to the unnaturally strong genre of radio DJ movies (seriously: how many bad ones can you name?)

Even if you take just the romance element in isolation (arguably the weakest ingredient) between Mark and Nora, the scene where Harry takes to the airwaves to tell her his feelings, unable to look her in the eye and voice them face to face, is really well done. It’s the kind of stuff that romcoms stumble over all the time. Here’s a teen movie that handles it with class.

When the film is quiet in particular, and when good actors are being trusted with long passages of dialogue, Pump Up The Volume is brilliant. And it still is. Moyle has fashioned here an intelligent, well made and strongly written film, with something to say, that – in an age of Internet anonymity – might even be more resonant over two decades later.

And if it isn’t? Well, to take the works of Harry himself, “so be it”…