In his 1961 farewell address, President Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of the growing influence of the "military-industrial complex" on American politics and policy. Interestingly, Eisenhower's original formulation of the menace was the even more accurate "military-industrial-congressional complex." (Emphasis added). Seeing how that network of special interests has worked its tentacles into so many aspects of American political and economic life in the intervening decades indicates just how prescient was Eisenhower's warning.

But there has been an even more subtle and pervasive militarization of American culture. It has been evident since World War II, but it has been accelerating markedly in recent years. Perhaps the most corrosive domestic effect of the global interventionist foreign policy that Washington adopted after World War II has been on national attitudes. Americans have come to accept intrusions in the name of "national security" that they would have strongly resisted in previous decades. The various provisions of the Patriot Act and the surveillance regime and its abuses epitomized by the NSA are a case in point.

The trend toward a more intrusive, militaristic state has become decidedly more pronounced since the September 11 attacks and the government's response, but there were unmistakable signs even before that terrible day. My colleagues at the Cato Institute have done an excellent job documenting the gradual militarization of America's police forces, beginning in the 1980s, with the proliferation of SWAT teams and the equipping of police units with ever more lethal military hardware.The terrorism threat simply provides the latest, most convenient justification to intensify a trend that was already well underway. Most SWAT raids in fact have nothing to do with terrorism; they are used to serve search or arrest warrants in low-level drug cases.


Politicians learned early that the fastest way to overcome opposition to a pet initiative was to portray it as essential to national security. Thus, the statute that first involved the federal government in elementary and secondary education in the 1950s was fashioned the National Defense Education Act. Similarly, the legislation establishing the interstate highway system was officially the National Defense Highway Act. In retrospect, President George W. Bush probably missed an opportunity when he did not label his legislation for a Medicare prescription drug benefit the National Defense Elderly Care Act.

"When the United States goes to war they will introduce a war economy. This means sacrificing everything for the army and war purposes - and misery for the population. How can there be a self-sustaining economy for the United States? In times of peace you have 10 million unemployed - and this in a time of relative prosperity; during crises you have 13 to 14 million unemployed. Moreover you must export. To do this you must import. What? Products that will ruin your farmers, who are even now being supported artificially? No, there is no possibility. Instead, it is necessary to organize a kind of fascism - an organized control of the misery, because what is fascism except the organization of misery for the people. The New Deal tried to do it in a better way but did not succeed, because at that period you remained too rich for a fascist misery. However you will become poorer and poorer, and as a result the next New Deal will be in fascist form...

"Capitalism in the United States is running head on into those problems which impelled Germany in 1914 upon the road of war ... For Germany it was a question of 'organizing' Europe. For the United States it is a question of 'organizing' the world. History is taking mankind directly into the volcanic eruption of American imperialism...The United States cannot enter a world war, or even make serious preparation for it without assuring first the full domination of the Latin American countries...Washington will not permit...a rebellious attitude. The armies, of course, have a world purpose, but the immediate step is first directed to South America to teach them to obey. For the United States, Latin America is like Austria and Czechoslovakia was to Hitler - a springboard to the larger things...Washington will name the terms."

— Leon Trotsky

Just about one half of the year 2016 is in the world's history books. The 16^th year of the 21^st Century, a century that was supposed to usher in a new era of democracy, opportunity, "green thinking", and income for all, has thus far been a bust for much of the citizens of the world. Some 40.8 million displaced people roam the continents of the world due to the effects of climate change and the fallout from varying degrees of conflict/war ranging from the War on Terror and War on Drugs, to covert-overt regime changes in Brazil, Ukraine, Egypt, Paraguay, Iraq, Libya and Honduras. Syria remains a work in progress.

Russia will restore a missile attack warning station near Crimea's Sevastopol to counter increasing NATO activity in the Black Sea, Izvestia daily reported, quoting a source in the Russian defense industry.

The source told reporters that the installation will be based on the Soviet-era Dnepr station (NATO code name Hen House), but that it would be thoroughly modernized. After the facility is overhauled it will be able to register launches of ballistic and cruise missiles, including the latest hypersonic models from the Black and Mediterranean Seas, effectively protecting Russian territory from the south and southeast.

The source also said that in order to make the whole project cheaper, defense industry specialists had opted to restore the abandoned Dnepr station using equipment from a similar station near Irkutsk in Eastern Siberia, instead of building a new Voronezh-class facility.

Izvestia also reported that the building of the new station will take about 18 months and that the working site would be manned by 15 specialists.

In early April, a battalion of senior military officials appeared before a Senate panel and testified that the US Army is "outranged and outgunned," particularly in any future conflict with Russia. Arguing for a much bigger budget for the Army, they claimed that, absent a substantial increase in funding, the Russians would overtake us and, even scarier, "the army of the future will be too small to secure the nation."

The Russians are coming! The Russians are coming! And before you know it, Brooklyn will be renamed Putingrad.

From The Quotable Mises, Ludwig von Mises's best nine quotes on gold and the gold standard:

1. Every nation, whether rich or poor, powerful or feeble, can at any hour once again adopt the gold standard.

Source: Omnipotent Government

2. The gold standard has one tremendous virtue: the quantity of the money supply, under the gold standard, is independent of the policies of governments and political parties. This is its advantage. It is a form of protection against spendthrift governments.

Source: Economic Policy

The head honchos of America's 500 largest companies earn 335 times more money than their employees, a new union report found, which also highlighted how corporations are offshoring jobs and hiding their money overseas to avoid taxes.

Intended to shine a light into the wide gap between corporate management and their employees, the report from the AFL-CIO federation of labor unions said that the average pay for workers in 2015 was under $37,000. By contrast, CEOs of S&P 500 Index companies earned an average of $12.4 million.

"The income inequality that exists in this country is a disgrace. We must stop Wall Street CEOs from continuing to profit on the backs of working people," AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka said in a statement.

The ministerial meeting scheduled for May 30 on the peace process in the Middle East between Israel and Palestine will be postponed, French President Francois Hollande said Tuesday.

Last month, French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault announced that ministers of 20 countries would take part in a meeting in Paris on May 30 aiming to relaunch the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Neither Israeli nor Palestinian officials will be attending the event.

"The ministerial meeting, which was scheduled on the 30th of this month on the peace process in the Middle East between the Israelis and Palestinians will be postponed, but it will happen soon," Hollande said in an interview with Europe 1 radio station.

The Russian Defense Ministry has denied allegations reported by the AP that Russia is constructing an army base in the ancient city of Palmyra, which has recently been freed from Islamic State.

"There are no 'new army bases' on the territory of the Syrian town of Palmyra and there will never be," Defense Ministry spokesman Major-General Igor Konashenkov said in an official statement on Tuesday.

Earlier in the day, the AP news agency came out with a report stating that the Russian military is building an army base in Palmyra within the zone listed by UNESCO as a world heritage site, and without permission from authorities. The agency cited an "American heritage organization" and a "top Syrian archaeologist" as its sources, as well as satellite images that appear to show some construction on the edge of the ancient site.


Yet, as General Konashenkov states, the pictures show something else entirely.

"The satellite pictures of this area posted by UNESCO, which were mentioned by AP, show the temporary camp of the International Demining Center of Russia's Defense Forces, which were demining the archaeological monument of Palmyra, and now the broader area of Tadmor city."

The installation of this temporary camp until the area is cleared of explosives has been approved at the Ministry of Culture and other official departments of the Syrian State," Konashenkov pointed out.

As Goldman famously declared on Sunday night when it boosted its near-term oil prices targets (while cutting its 2017 estimates as a result of what it admits will be a delayed rebalancing of the oil market), the biggest upside risk to oil over the next months remains the threat from unexpected supply disruptions...

... such as the Canada wildfire which has mothballed up to 1.5 million barrels in daily production (and which took a turn for the worse earlier today, when new evacuations threatened the restart of oilsands facilities), but mostly the ongoing attacks shaking up, or rather down, Nigerian production, specifically affecting the region of the Niger River delta.

As the government continues to suppress the entire 6,700-page Senate Torture Report, the CIA inspector general's office recently admitted to "mistakenly" destroying their only copy of the classified report. Although CIA Director John Brennan possesses another copy of the torture report, he refuses to send a replacement to the internal watchdog's office.

Last summer, the Senate Intelligence Committee and the Justice Department were privately informed that CIA employees at the inspector general's office had both destroyed the disk and deleted the file containing the full Senate Torture Report. Despite the fact that the Justice Department ordered all copies of the classified document to be preserved, acting CIA Inspector General Christopher Sharpley was unable to locate another copy and eventually informed the Senate Intelligence Committee that his officers has mistakenly ruined their only copies.